Tuesday, June 10, 2008

A chorus line

I don't consider myself to be horribly uncoordinated, and yet there are moments when I feel that I should reconsider my self-evaluation. Last week (or was it 2 weeks ago? It all runs together) we had a dance call to determine which of the singers would be used as "featured dancers." (actually they call them "singing dancers" to distinguish them from the "real dancers.")

I will mention without a hint of pride that I have been a featured dancer twice in the past, and come to think of it, it was in two separate comic kick lines... which might explain it. Once I was a Russian model with a giant hat in an "impromptu-models-of-the-world" kickline. The other time was in Pirates of Penzance in the With Cat-Like Tread encore. We had glittery hats. I am quite sure that I wrote about it here. It simply gets no better than a Pirate kick-line.

Now to others that were in attendance on that fateful dance call morn, what I'm about to describe may not have even registered with them (unless they were among the fallen.) I should mention too, that I left my bag of dance shoes in NYC in the big rush to Des Moines after Drake's graduation in Texas. I decided that my black puma ballet flats would do. (no buckle, no tie.)

I'll keep this short, cause it all happened within a minute. So all the ladies are holding hands in a circle and we are to do a grapevine which gets progressively faster until we are running with this simple dance pattern. One of my shoes flew off, and one of them simply stayed on the floor where my foot had been and where the other 20 girls were about to step since we were holding hands and running in a circle. Needless to say everyone tripped and the tripping stopped only with the dance instructors intervention. The show must go on, and such.

I don't recall anyone actually hitting the floor, so much as a great and growing stentorian outcry as each colleague twisted an ankle or disrupted the pattern. I confessed promptly, since I was the only one left entirely shoeless in the course of events and hid in the back of the room for the rest of the morning.

I was not selected as a featured dancer, even a funny one this year. But then again I bet none of the selected dancers ever got to rock a Pirate Kick Line.... ;)