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The Joys of an Amateur’s Performance On Stage
The agony, ecstasy, and downright joy of performing as an amateur dancer and vocalist.
The stage. A place somewhere between the Twilight Zone and Nevernever land. Every time I step out on a stage as an amateur singer or dancer, anything can happen. One minute I could be singing in a group to women in jail, another to a group of nuns. Or perhaps dancing in a performing arts theatre.
A dancing school in my home
I caught the performance bug at the age of five. My first stage was my living room, which had been converted into a ballet studio for my mother’s dance school. I flitted and floated in a pale green tutu to a tinkling piano piece by Chopin and managed not to bump into the dozen awkward neighborhood kids around me. Dancing awakened a need to perform in me that stays with me to this day. It also evoked a terror of falling on my face and being laughed at, but the pull to perform was stronger.
In the years to follow, my mother’s school grew to thirty or forty kids. Once a year, hundreds of proud parents and relatives of the girls crammed into various venues to see us prance about in a recital. And prance we did: Italian tarantellas, Brahms Hungarian dances, Arabian silk swirling with belly buttons showing, “Tea For Two” tapping, and ballet classics like “Clair De Lune.”
