Freestone is fun. His life is amazing. I love to hang out with him because it's just so easy and funny. He does half of his 9th grade classes online, so I take him to school at 9:30. Then he walks to my music store at 1 and works for an hour while I run errands. He catches the bus to Salt Lake at 2:30 and is at Ballet West for the rest of the day. Either Scott or I pick him up at night, usually along with Ptolemy or Xanthe after their Nutcracker rehearsal. He always has stories to tell about his friends or his teachers. Ballet West is such an incredible place.
My favorite stories are about "Mr. Jeff," or Jeff Rogers, Freestone's favorite teacher. When I was 14 years old and finally made the Ballet West Nutcracker, it was the highlight of my life. I was an Oriental Servant during the epoch when BW had taken out the actual dance, so Servant was what they referred to as a "furniture part." Yes, I was furniture in a turban and pancake makeup and I loved every second! At that time, Jeff was at the beginning of a brilliant career at Ballet West. In fact, that was the year he won the Princess Grace award, an award that wasn't won by a member of BW again until just this year. So I was completely gobsmacked by Jeff. I was going to marry him. He was just so cool, it was hard to take it all in!
Well, I never married Jeff, luckily for Scott ;) (and Jeff's husband.) But I do love to hear stories about him. He is an excellent teacher and works Freestone to death, which Freestone loves. Freestone started class at Ballet West last January, after making friends with all the other kid in Nutcracker. In less thanone year, he has made so much progress it would make your jaw drop. He works SO hard. He takes extra classes. He stretches and conditions at night after he gets home from hours of class. Right now, he's taking regular class, plus rehearsing for two Nutcracker productions, the BW gala performance, another BW performance that I can't remember the name of, and also has private classes to prepare for his YAGP solo in February. He auditioned to be represented by BW in YAGP, just for the experience, and he got it. I was stunned! It will teach him so much.
As I've said before, I'm sad for our girls, especially Golda, who loved Ballet SO much and dreamed of dancing at Ballet West. We just couldn't afford it. Freestone started out with a half scholarship and this year, was awarded a full scholarship of $4,700.00. It is humbling to see what he is being given along with that scholarship, and also sad to watch what any kid could have, if they just had the money. I'm grateful for that initial scholarship, because it truly changed Freestone's life. And we get to be along for the ride!
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