Hope, Dancing, and Tacos

Today was a pretty good day.

I started off the day right-- with ballet barre at Hope Stone. I love Hope, it's like some kind of Disneyland but with more ballet. I went yesterday for barre; Jane had her two awesome dogs there, and it was LM's birthday so we all sung "Happy Birthday." When I got there today, the intern at the desk had her 14-week-old Aussie Shepherd puppy-- Translation: CUTE. And, well-- just replace the word "Kitty" with "Puppy" and you'll understand how I reacted to this:

from xkcd.com

(In other words, this was me: "YAY, PUPPY! YOU'RE SO CUTE!")

JD was also there, with her one-month old baby girl (who is adorable, by the way). JD is a total rockstar-- the baby started fussing during barre, so she picked up, held her with one arm, held the barre with the other, and did grand battements like it was the easiest thing in the world. It's pretty awesome.

I left after barre and realized I forgot to eat breakfast, so I stopped at the Awesome Taco Shack by the theater. You might as well say it's the Official Taco Place of our dance company, because we all just love their tacos. I ran into LP while I was there, so we sat and chatted until our food was ready. We got to the theater with just enough time to snarf down our tacos (bean and rice with the green hot sauce) before we kicked into action.

We open in three days, and things are pulling together. We reheared in the studio for the first few hours, then went onstage to do a dress-run of the first half of the show. The opening piece always makes me a bit nervous, but I got through it okay (I think). We're also dancing an excerpt from a piece we're performing next weekend, called Misa. For this program, we're just dancing the opening section--which involves lit candles. It's a little scary to me, Our Lady of the Accident-Prone, so this is what went through my head the entire time:

Things I did not set on fire: My hair, my costume, anyone else, the building. The flame stayed in the jar where it belonged, and I was happy. Although I must say that doing attitudes turns while holding a lit candle over your head is a bit terrifying. Try it sometime.

I got through our new piece, Huelga, without much incident. It's a tarentella, but not with tambourines-- with picket signs. It's a ballet about workers going on a strike. The movement style was hard for me to adapt to, but I'm at the point now where it's in my body enough that I can just dance through it. It's kind of fun; I love the music.

I'm grateful for my fellow dancers and the way we support each other. If someone has a "moment," the other girls are there to offer support. It happened to me last week, and today it happened to a good friend of mine. It's so nice to have that good vibe going; to know that there's always someone to offer encouragement or hugs.

It's the start of Tech Week. We have two more and then we open, baby. Stay tuned. For now, here's your moment of Zen:

"I became a performer because it was what I enjoyed doing. "
~ Richard Pryor.