Brava!

These beautiful young women call themselves Noir Nine, and they performed at Dance Concert 2012 last Thursday through Saturday. Dance Concert is a (for me, breathtaking) annual event at my daughter's high school. As soon as photos from the show are posted I will share them here. The group above were the dancers my daughter choreographed to the soundtrack of "Heavy in Your Arms" by Florence + The Machine. It was a haunting and poetic piece of motion, a rather dark exploration that my daughter says was about wrestling with heartbreak. If you knew my child, if you regularly experienced her usually sunny disposition, you would be intrigued by her subject matter. But then she is a rather deep thinker on our human condition, her heart wide open. She was a real little mother to her dancers too. Most of them are freshmen and sophomores and several of them play on the soccer team with her. She came to adore every one of these girls, and they her. (You should see the spa basket she lugged home on the train today, a big box of goodies they picked out for her as a thank you.) While some of the choreographers from the advanced dance class fielded conflict with their dancers, Noir Nine was fairly smooth sailing. I must say, they did mama proud!

The second photo is of the group that performed one of the numbers my daughter danced in. This was one of my favorites of the whole show, a flowy dreamlike piece that I watched with my mouth hanging open, unable to believe that graceful, precise, possessed creature leaping and twirling on stage was my child. She has come such a long way since her first Dance Concert. You can no longer tell the difference between how she moves on stage and how those dancers who have been training their whole lives move. She always was a quick and determined study. Watching her on stage this year, I couldn't help but recall the first day of pre K when she was four years old and saw a girl swing effortlessly, hand over hand across a long high row of monkey bar loops. I saw my daughter's intake of breath at the sight, her eyes like saucers, and then every day after that she would ask her dad or me to take her to the playground where she would practice and practice on those monkey bars, falling from what was then a great height again and again, then jumping up and climbing back up and trying again. Over and over, day after day, never discouraged, never deterred, until she was able to swing herself across those chain loops as effortlessly as she had seen her classmate do. That was when I understood that this girl will do anything she sets her mind to. She's not afraid to work at a thing until she masters it. That's what she has done—is continuing to do—with dance.

Below are some more backstage moments: My girl with her dance crew; with some of the other members of the advanced dance class; lying on the ground writing in a card for her teacher; and the last photo is of all the choreographers and their teacher, Katie, wearing her well-deserved crown.