Repertory Dance Theater Performance

Dance Company performed in a showcase with Repertory Dance Theater at the Rose Wagner. It was their very, very last performance together. The dance was beautiful. Ruby is so at the top of her modern dance game, it's hard to see it end. I love her dance friends, too. It sure is rewarding to watch them, especially in such a cool setting with all these professionals.

Ruby is pretty idolized.

Tziporah was isnpired after the show and got on the stage to do a little interpretive dance. It was in the black box, so the stage is right there. Very intimate venue. I wish Freestone could have seen it. He was right down the street, at ballet, like he always is. Araceli had ballet too.

So many endings this time of year with our senior, but so many beginnings on the horizon.

Dance Company Winter Concert

Friday was the Dance Company Winter Concert.  It's an all-day workshop involving four schools with performances in the morning and at night, with classes in between.  This year, Davis High hosted it, so the girls didn't have to travel except for one rehearsal last week at Ben Lomond.

In the afternoon that day, Ruby texted me, "If you want, you could bring me one of Michelle's cookies."  (The night before, Michelle Fitz had dropped off a plate of the coveted goodies so that the Chinese girls could experience America properly!)

I rushed to the school to find the girls in the dark auditorium watching some staging.  Ruby took the time to sit by me and whisper for a few minutes.  Our conversation was mostly about chocolate chip cookies.  How good they are, how it defies all reason, and how comforting it is to receive them. We marveled at my friends' generosity and goodness, and how all of that is exemplified in one of Michelle's cookies. 

Every moment with Ruby is burnished by the knowledge that she is leaving soon.  I would bring her a cookie and sit with her every single day if I could.  When I lived for a semester in Paris in 9th grade, chocolate chip cookies were what I missed most about home.  Every Sunday evening, Nana Ruby had her cookies set out for us, in a shirt box from ZCMI, the layers separated by wax paper.  How I depended on those cookies!  In Paris, I periodically would schlepp clear across town to Les Halles where there was a Laura Todd cookie store, similar to Mrs. Field's.  I'd breathe in the baking smell and think of my family.

I don't know what Ruby will think of when she's away from home, but I do know that I'll remember that moment in the auditorium, because it represents so many moments.  A whole childhood of dance and music and cookies.  That night, as I watched the girls dance, I tried not to think of all their past performances.  I definitely tried not to picture their chubby 8-year-old legs in my class, some of them, adding their first plies and tendus to their repertoire.  I avoided remembering back to the moment we saw the first Dance Company list that Ruby was on.


I just basked in the moment of beauty and gave thanks for all of it.

Dance Company

Ruby is Dance Company president this year, and she is loving it.  So by extension, the rest of us are loving it, too.  I got to be the first mom to host the Friday lunch.  Except this one was on a Wednesday because of an assembly.  Ruby and I planned to make Elmeda's to-die-for chicken roll-ups, but who am I kidding?  That's a two-day project and I had exactly one morning.  I called my mom and said, "I need you to talk me down from making chicken roll-ups for Dance Company."  She was successful, and helped me come up with Plan B.  It was lovely and the girls were thrilled.  The gasps of delight when they came in and the thank-yous when they left were proof of their satisfaction.

My mom is the best at jumping into the fray.  She is available for any type of help, anytime.  I could not do anything without her, from hosting lunch to raising 7 kids.  And by the way, this was all happening during a bout with cancer and major surgery.  Everything is fine.  But everything was not fine for a few weeks there.  Can you tell by this picture?  Of course not!  Coco looks glamorous and confident, at all times.

Unlike me!  I laugh so hard at this picture.  Look at my hair!  And I wasn't even facing cancer and surgery.  All I was facing was picking up a stack of David's Pizzas!  Rest assured, I was beautiful on the inside.  Tee hee.  And that's Kim King, the teacher we love, who mentors all these bright young dancers.

I love this group, especially Ruby, who is holding up Tizzy so she can be in the picture.  Ruby always, always sacrifices herself for others.  It's in her nature.  She has the beauty on the inside AND the outside.

Next up, the Homecoming parade.  It lasts for 20 minutes, but it's packed with excitement, from the drumline at the front to the last trailing stream of confetti at the end.  I took Ptolemy and he got an enormous amount of candy.  Freestone went with Frank.  It was a good intro to American high school life.

The next day, I cooked 40 pounds of pulled pork and set up the tailgating party for Dance Company.  It sounds like a lot, but it was super, super easy because all the other parents go above and beyond, and the girls plan the whole thing.  I just showed up with my assignment and my people.  Except for Ruby, who was at her "day date" for Homecoming.  It was funny and sad that she had to miss the tailgate.  It was the best one we've ever had!  Oh well.  She had fun, and went to the game afterward.  In fact, the whole family went to the game except Tizzy, Xanthe and me.  We went to Bennion Crafts and relaxed at home all night.  It was so nice to be able to go home and take off my shoes and not have a zillion people to drive around or put to bed.  A perfect end to one of those fall days that you wish would last forever.

Big eyeball face right here.

Celi and her friend Emily

My two boys.

Things don't slow down, do they?  The Davis High Performing Arts Spectacular was the next weekend.  I love this thing.  It's so fun to see all the high school kids do their thing.  Even the stage crew is made up of students.  The are impressive.  This year was especially fun for us, because Ruby choreographed one of the pieces that Dance Company did.  It was a jazz piece that was awesome.  I would have been happy sitting there watching it over and over.

Bruce and Marlene, our superfans!

Spring Show

Watching my children dance is the best confluence of life's beautiful elements that I can imagine.  It's all the pride and wonder of parenthood, the payoff for hours and years of work, it's the visual beauty of the art form, and it's all set to music.  It's synergy of the best kind.

And all year, we anticipate the Dance Company Spring Show for this very reason.  Ruby was in Europe when Kelly Oram took his incredible photos of Dance Company, so we tried to capture some fun movement one evening in the field.

Ruby is beautiful.  Since she was tiny, she has intuitively understood the mechanics of ballet and modern dance and put that understanding to gorgeous use in her movement.  She has also had a fun and positive experience in Dance Company with her friends.  They're a group of the best girls.  Ruby said the other day that if it weren't for these girls, she is certain she would have dropped out of high school already and moved to a foreign country.  She's not even kidding, as you know.  I'm glad she's still here, surrounded by such a loving group of friends.

We all went to both shows, and I even got to watch the dress rehearsal.  It's too good to miss any of it.  Grandma and Grandpa were there too, and Tricia and Jim and Jennie and Izzy, but my camera died.  We love when our people admire our kids. :)  Thanks, guys! 

The two Ms. Kings, who taught at Davis together for many years and sat right net to each other at alphabetically-organized parent-teacher conferences. They're both passionate about teaching, and it shows.

Old DC friends Connor, Golda and Ashley

Lunch With Dancers

Ruby is in charge of the Dance Company lunch schedule this year, so I nabbed the first date of the year.  I love having these girls over!  I wish it could be more often. They do lunch together at someone's house every other Friday, when they have rehearsal right after.  Since they only have a half hour for lunch, the food has to be plated and prayed over by the time they start arriving so they can immediately dig in.  All of the moms do an exceptional job welcoming the girls and feeding them.  It's a real highlight of their week to relax in someone's home and be fed at a beautiful table and taken care of.

This Thursday and Friday, the night before and the night of the lunch, was the Davis High Performing Arts Spectacular.  Dance Company did two pieces.  The first one was described by the choreographer as "my most minimalist piece.  There's hardly any dancing!"  And it was 12 minutes!  Even for modern dance, that's pretty long.  It's incredible that these dancers have the maturity to sustain 12 minutes of material that has no counts and very little choreography, yet has to convey to the audience the idea of the piece, which happened to be transformation.  Each dancer also had to invite a civilian in street clothes to perform the dance onstage with them, with no preparation.  I think the piece blew the audience away.  I'm sure some of them felt like they were in an alternate universe.

The other piece was beautiful, too.  Dance Company this year includes a young man, Gabe Adams, who is missing his arms and legs.  Watching him dance is powerful.  He has the stage presence of a true dancer, yet his physical limitations are on display in a stark way that pushes the audience hard to scrutinize their own preconceived notions of what dance is, and what the limitations of dance are.  Maybe dance truly has no limitations.  Maybe physical differences can be overcome to a greater extent than you previously imagined.  Having Gabe in Dance Company is a huge boon to the dancers, as well as the audience.  I love that he is part of the group, and I love how readily he was accepted by the girls.  These young women are, collectively and individually, so talented, driven, hard-working, kind, open-hearted, generous and grateful.

I made chicken caesar salad.  Here's the recipe:  marinate the cooked chicken in Italian dressing the night before, and the cooked pasta the day of, then toss it with all kinds of good greens, tons of fresh romano and parmesan, and caesar dressing.  Plate it and throw a twist of fresh ground pepper and some croutons on top.  I served it with an apple, so they could take the fruit with them in case of a time crunch.

Dessert: chocolate chip cookies.  Our ovens have been broken for a year and a half now, so I'm way out of practice with baking, but Ruby said the dancers really like chocolate chip cookies, a predilection I can completely identify with.  So I took four batches of dough to my mom's house where my mom and I proceeded to turn out batch after batch of horribly disfigured cookies.  The ones that melted into a giant cookie, I turned into pizza shapes.  Some were square, some were extremely fluffy.  All of them were delicious.

Ruby, Abi, Natalie, Lauren, Alise, Amanda, Emily

My mom is the classiest.  I'm always tricking her into helping me.  After making cookies at her house, I "forgot" the forks I wanted to borrow, so she brought them over.  Then of course, she had to stay and help me pour juice and plate salad.  Thanks, Mom!  WWIDWOY?

First place for funniest cookie.  It looks like it has flames coming out of its head.