A Little Girl’s Performance

Long vacations are for adults to invent things to occupy bored tykes.  For our four-year-old Angel, the playground was out. There’s this neighborhood bully with whom she didn’t stand a chance. So we enrolled her in keyboard playing class. It was a comic fluke.

True, Mozart played the piano when he was three years old, but Angel is far from being half a Wolfganga. All she did was pound the keyboard with her fists and climb the poor instrument.  When she asked why she had to go to school when she can do it at home, we pulled her out.

Dance lessons came next. If it failed, there’s still swimming or karate, even Latin, anything but the playground. Angel scoffed at Hawaiian dance but ballet fascinated her.  When she joined the exercises on the second day, we sighed with relief even if the required tights, leotards and ballet shoes were a trifle big on her. Those are the smallest anywhere, we were told.

Parents dream great for kids. My dreams are, er, simpler. If she can’t be a Mozart, a Fonteyn or a Macuja isn’t bad.  What’s bad was when Angel came home after classes and insisted on teaching us adults her day’s lessons, including instructions (Hold the bar!  Point, turn, up… higher, HIGHER!)

Angel pulled our legs up, higher, while we held the backs of chairs for dear life.  We learned two things:  It’s beyond her understanding that adult bones are different from hers, and that pain is bearable when we cross our eyes.
As everything has an end, including what parents cough up in terms of expense, I put my foot down when more four-figure expenses were laid out for the concert, i.e., culmination in a mall stage.

My kid sister, who explained to the school management why Angel wasn’t joining, had a better idea.  Only Angel was out, she realized.  Then she added more profundity:  How would she feel if she finds out?  She was already measured for the costume!

Who cares? I haven’t said yes nor have I lost sight of the raison d’etrê for her ballet class attendance.  Keeping her away from that neighborhood bully was a success.

It’s just like my kid sister to come up with solutions.  She volunteered to pay half of the expense and had asked that Angel be placed at the back during the show so she can follow the dance movements of others who can make it to daily practice, unlike Angel who’s easily drained by the commute.

If she won’t dance on performance day, I told her, I’d have your head.  That was my way of saying yes.  Yes to Angel’s dancing in a program that I expected to be riotous, devoid of backstage rules that I revere, music is at an ear-splitting decibel, and numbers can entertain a home for the aged.

D-day came. Angel had four attendants, including myself. One took charge of dressing her up in that multi-layered ballet costume and taking them off anytime Angel wanted to go to the rest room.  It was for me to comb her short hair into a ballerina’s bun.  A bottle of gel allowed me to cement her hair to perfection.  My kid sister had a convenient meeting and was nowhere.
Did I hear a Mozart piece stirring?  Eight diminutive ballerinas came onstage. I expected the smallest Angel at the back, but there she was in the middle, alone with a bigger girl who behaved like her sitter, which she was, I learned later, having been assigned to take care of Angel.

Angel was expressionless, her eyes intently looking at her partner’s feet. Compared to the rest, she was always a split-second late in the dance movements except in the pirouettes when she was always a split-second ahead.  She turned the fastest!  When strangers cheered and egged her on with her perfect timing, I knew I had no regrets.

Vacation’s over and so is Angel’s first ballet class. It looks like she wants to go on.  The husband said that it’s fine if it improves her poise. I have other considerations. Years of practice could strengthen her legs and make her stumble less.  If those legs could stand up to a bigger bully, it’s fine by me.

(2006)