Rodent Regatta

I’ve traveled nearly all of my working life. It’s enjoyable, but tiring. The last ten years of air travel have had more uncertainty than the ten before. Deregulation brought cheaper tickets, but it introduced rapid change. There was a time when a ticket in hand was as good as cash in hand. Any airline; any time; day or night, if they were going your way you could go with them. Not any more.

That’s not my point.

I mentioned that daughter #3 caught a flight at dark thirty yesterday morning. By midday she was on the ground and oriented. She had read about the Big Apple almost continuously since learning of the outcome of her audition back in February. So, what did she do?

Rather than move into her apartment and ”collapse.” She went to class. ”Class” in the dance world means something a little different from what I once thought. In a lot of classes, there isn’t a huge amount of new instruction. Rather, it’s a supervised time for working out. If you’ve never been around a professional dancer, they are athletes. They go to class (multiple times) every day.

At a class a teacher or an artisitic director puts the class through a series of required movements. There’s time at the bar. There’s time dancing specific movements to music. It’s not a rehearsal for a performance. It’s a time to perfect, condition and improve.

Drive me to the airport at 3:30a.m. Change planes once. Arrive in a different time zone seven hours later and I’m going to take it easy. Have a nice dinner. See a show. Get to bed early. Youth with a dream is different. She found a way to catch a subway and change trains twice. She found a class. She danced on Broadway! Did I mention I’m proud?