Tag: ballet

The Lydster: Her career choices

barbara-jordan_congressI saved this Ask Roger Anything question, from Chris, until now:

Do you feel like you’re pushing your daughter towards certain career choices or letting her choose, or both? Do you think you’d be supportive of a career where it would be difficult for her to make a living, e.g. actress or musician?

Oh goodness, no. That’s a function of her needing to figure out what she wants to do. And honestly, I don’t have a strong sense of something I want her to do. I suppose I don’t want her to do something that involves a lot of danger.

Thinking about some of the things she has tried out:

Ballet – did it for two or three years, decided it wasn’t for her. But the lessons she learned have been useful, and she still likes to choreograph her own moves.

Soccer – she did youth soccer for three or four seasons, decided it wasn’t for her. So I was a bit surprised that she signed up for modified youth soccer this fall. What she learned before has come in handy.

Playing clarinet – her mother played, and she seemed to enjoy it. Moreover, I thought she got to be rather good at it, but she suddenly dropped it a couple of years ago. I was surprised when she pulled it out once this past summer. Maybe she’ll go back to it, maybe she won’t.

Things she’s interested in currently:

Art – she’s quite good at it, and she received some local awards for it. She DOES agonize over her work, though.

Clothing design – She’s been taking old clothes, cutting them up, stitching them together. Well not so much in the school year, but it was a business she wanted to look into this past summer.

Law – right now, she says she wants to be a lawyer. She sees injustice on the news on TV and wants to fix it. I wanted to be a lawyer for a time, so that would be fine.

One of the things that seems constant in this narrative is that everything learned has value. Maybe it won’t be applied directly, but it won’t go to waste.

Would I discourage her from a career path that might be difficult? No, and frankly, it would not have occurred to me. Now that I think of it, neither of my late parents EVER said, “you ought to do” X for a living. My father had a varied career, and I doubt it would have occurred to HIM. My mom was easygoing about those things, as long as we were happy and not involved in some criminal activity.

 

MOVIE REVIEW: A Ballerina’s Tale

Misty Copeland’s potentially career-ending injury was also a major focus.

A-Ballerinas-Tale-posterI was rather familiar with the story of Misty Copeland, largely from this 60 Minutes clip, about how the ballerina, who didn’t even dance until she was 13, became the first African-American woman to be named principal dancer of the legendary American Ballet Theater.

What was interesting about the documentary A Ballerina’s Tale was less about the dancer herself, and more about the social context of her achievement. It wasn’t just her race but her “muscular” body that had precluded someone who looked like her to be the swan. Her potentially career-ending injury was also a major focus, and she showed tremendous resolve getting through it.

I also enjoyed learning about the history of black ballerinas. Her interaction with the apparently legendary Raven Wilkinson – who I had never heard of – was fascinating, in part because Misty too was learning about her dance roots. A group of successful older black women took Misty Copeland under their wings and helped her feel less alone, and that was touching.

This was a Kickstarter film from Nelson George, who I know best as a writer of the book Hip Hop America, and Where Did Our Love Go?, a book about Motown. Before that, he was a critic of the black music scene for Billboard.

Here is the movie trailer.

A Ballerina’s Tale was playing at the nearby Madison Theatre. We thought the Daughter would want to see it the day before Thanksgiving, but she declined. So the Wife went to the 5 pm show, and I the 7 pm viewing; we were the ONLY persons to watch it, and that was a shame because it was worthwhile.

Yet there’s an arm’s length distancing from the film’s primary subject which made her somehow less compelling. The Variety review says it best: “She’s immensely humble and focused on her goals, which makes her an excellent performer and an equally strong ambassador for dancers of color, but a tougher nut to crack as a documentary subject.”

The Lydster, Part 116: Calendaring

Lydia is in the church musical of The Lion King. Not only is she participating, she’s going to play the pivotal role of the young Nala.

Most of the time, I try to come up with a narrative about the Daughter. This time, just the calendar.

This fall, she was playing soccer. Unfortunately, in the very first game, fairly early on, she got kicked in the foot, left the game in pain, and never returned. But she was back in action by the following week. She likes playing defense, and is more interested in protecting her team’s goal rather than making a goal. However, for her homework, she has to write sentences, and she has allowed that someday, she WOULD indeed like to score a goal. That phase ended on November 2.

Both last year and this, there were two weekends where she had soccer, PLUS two rehearsals of the Albany Berkshire Ballet’s production of The Nutcracker, in which she will again be an angel. The performance is Saturday, December 21 at 1 pm in Albany.

Much to my surprise, she wanted to try out for the church musical of The Lion King. Not only is she participating, she’s going to play the pivotal role of the young Nala, young Simba’s best friend. She gets to sing some lines by herself, and make a few dance moves. She has played the soundtrack – this is NO exaggeration – over a hundred times since rehearsals began in September. One day she played it FIVE TIMES, and she always goes to sleep listening to it. The production is on March 2, 2014 at our church.

Then there is the aforementioned homework. I have railed about it in my Times Union blog HERE and HERE and HERE In brief, the new Core Curriculum is making my daughter sad and anxious, and she’s not the only one. It’s not that I oppose standards. I do object though to inane questions (see third link just above) put together by non-educators, which what the EngageNY syllabus adopted by the NYS Department of Education has deemed appropriate. Homework takes too long, and chews up both her and my time. Makes me cranky.

The Lydster, Part 103: In as a clown, out as an angel

She’ll be performing on Saturday, December 16 at 6:30 p.m. at the Egg.

What a strange weekend we had in the middle of last month.

On Saturday, I took the Daughter to play her first soccer match. She had gone to the practice on the previous Monday night and been assigned to a team in the U8 (under eight) division. But when we got there for her 11:10 a.m. match, we found that she had been moved to the U10 division, and thus on another team. Worse, because the opposing team in their 12:20 p.m. match was initially shorthanded, she was temporarily traded to the other side. She was more disappointed than unhappy by all of this, but she particularly enjoyed being back on her U10 team when more kids arrived. She was a little bored on defense; her teammates kept the ball at the other end of the field most of the time. But she liked being on offense. And we got to see a bald eagle flying overhead.

On Sunday, the Daughter tried out for the Albany Berkshire Ballet’s performance of The Nutcracker. Based on her age, she was supposed to be trying out to be a clown. But based on her height, she was asked to wait around so she could try out as an angel, which tended to be a role that slightly older girls get. At the end of it all, she got the role of an angel. She’ll be performing on Saturday, December 16 at 6:30 p.m. at the Egg, a local performing arts venue.

The commonality of these two events was that it took a bit longer than we had anticipated, but ended up with a good outcome.

The Lydster, Part 77: Dancing Queen

Lydia is the house choreographer.


As I may have mentioned, Lydia has been taking ballet lessons once a week since October 2009. It was almost inevitable, since, in the year or two before that, she would move around the room so gracefully and deliberately that people kept asking, “Is she taking dance lessons?”

This was NOT anything that we pushed her into doing, but rather something she asked to do a few times before we relented. While I’m not anticipating her become a prima ballerina, it has instilled in her a sense of confidence she had been lacking.

It has also made Angelina Ballerina on PBS her favorite TV program.

Her school did a recital in June – this was Lydia’s costume – and she said she was nervous, though she didn’t appear to be so.

Now, she is the choreographer at home; not only does she design the moves, but she also selects the music, quite well, I think. Her mother has become her primary dance partner, with her stuffed animals and me as her captive audience.

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