usually, a thrill of anticipation runs through me when theater lights dim and stage lights come up. But I've learned to squelch all positive expectations when attending a dance recital. Because of Annette's job as choreographer and dance instructor, I've attended innumerable recitals, each of them featuring the same interchangeable parts: a diapered chorus line, wobbly ballerinas, arrhythmic tap dancers, and a soulless token hip-hop number. Sitting through yet another recital seems easy, if compared to rats eating your face off.
Even though I sit in the second-to-last row in a large auditorium, I can hear tiny whoops, titters, and lots of shushing coming from backstage. I roll my eyes and slump in my seat. Such noises rarely precede great theater.
Meanwhile, on stage, the lights have just come up to reveal five or six high-school girls dressed in brown earth tones, standing in a circle. The proscenium and the cyclorama dwarf their little circle, isolated in the center of the huge convention center stage. The program lists them as members of Gotta Dance!
"Yeah!" shouts a lady behind me. "Woo!" Nothing has happened yet. She has suspicious amounts of enthusiasm. She must be related to Gotta Dance! somehow, so I sit up and tell Face to behave.
From a superb sound system, steel-string guitar strums fill the theater. This improves my mood immediately. Local dance recitals traditionally begin with a panoply of sound system mishaps, ranging from "is this mike on?" (no), to "lobe-shattering feedback." This system sounds clean and rich, comfortably loud, and I recognize the opening bars of
Republica's hit, "
Ready to Go." Any self-respecting music critic would agree this song has the historical significance of a paper plate. Even so, its
hooky chorus can seriously burrow into your head like an ear worm.
The six dancers launch into an energetic routine, limbs and ponytails flying in all directions. The style is more jazz than tap, but they are good and the choreography is fresh. My spirits pick up.
Soon another six girls in outfits of the same tan, rust, and brown join the first group. Some wear skirts, some wear dresses, some pants, but they all coordinate. A good choreographer can create a lot of shapes, movement, and kinetic energy with a dozen girls, and these young ladies have a great choreographer behind them (and, as it turns out, behind me). I wish I knew the terminology to describe what they are doing. I don't. All I know is, by the time the full rhythm section of electric guitar, bass, and drums drives the song into its first poppy chorus -- "From the rooftops, shout it out, baby I'm ready to go!" -- I am no longer anticipating boredom at the Dance Masters of America benefit. I am rocking in my seat and having a great time.
The verse starts again, the point at which any routine can start to drag due to repetition. But suddenly the Musical Theater Junior Army storms onto the stage, and their sheer numbers electrify the routine. I count as fast as I can: twenty more boys and girls, all wearing coordinated earth tones and tap shoes. The older kids fade into the back row and let the twenty younger kids stamp in chorus. They're not perfect, but they're moving together and it looks impressive.
As the song pounds on in pop rock glory, I find I'm viscerally connecting to the dancers as never before. It is irrational, especially when I have practiced dance on my own a mere two times, but that doesn't stop my heart from singing, I am part of this! I get this! I do this, too! I bounce in my seat like a kid on too much Mountain Dew Code Red.
The Musical Theater Junior Army finishes its 16 bars and fades upstage.
Another huge group of dancers runs out. My jaw drops. The audience bursts into whoops and cheers. I know how hard Annette works to get a dozen adults to a class, yet here are a miraculous
fifty kids all in one number. And they are not merely going through the motions. They are killing, and they sense it. The dancers have generated some ineffable excitement, and the crowd has locked into it, and together the dancers and crowd pass it back and forth, making it grow.
The song soars on. More platoons of young dancers storm the stage, each joining the pattern of rhythm and movement while raising the energy level. The sound of tapping feet swells until the floorboards shudder like thunder, and the shouts from the audience grow to match it. More kids. More energy. More sound. And the kids' dancing fills Republica's vague anthem with exuberance: From the rooftops, shout it out!
My disbelieving eyes count again. There are literally one hundred kids on stage. Moving in interweaving patterns, they look like a million kids, all dancing their hearts out. It's like being confronted by the zealous might of a Tap Dance Nation.
The music cuts off. The grrl vocals end with a final
a cappella phrase: "Baby, I'm ready to go!" The dancers freeze in a carefully structured mob, some prone, some kneeling, taller ones standing in the back, all hundred faces visible and beaming.
The crowd of parents, friends, dance aficionados, and Dance Masters goes nuts. It sounds like The Beatles at the Ed Sullivan Theater, except the adults are just as far gone as the youngsters.
I forget to clap and cheer, because I am all tears.
This completely embarrasses me. When I freelanced as a music reviewer in the 80s, almost nothing moved me. I was so hard on records that my editor finally asked me to lighten up a little. Now here I am, cool guy critic, acting just like those sentimental overweight women with out-dated hairstyles blubbering at a Neil Diamond concert. I am really going to miss mocking them.
I can sit like a stone through any speech, sermon, or demagoguery, on guard against anyone manipulating my thoughts. Talk is made of words and reason, against which I have built formidable barricades. But dance slips past my defenses because it is neither logical nor illogical, but
alogical. It simply
is. The kids perform, my mind fills with longing for an entire civilization dancing in joy, and the vision catches me totally off guard. My cynicism crumples as promptly as that scimitar warrior that Indiana Jones shot. The sense that I have relationship with that dancing civilization, however tenuous, enchants me. I glimpsed something wonderful, and it glimpsed me back and whispered, "You're included!"
Shut up, man. Just shut up.
That was merely the first four minutes of the recital. I can't believe how efficiently Dance took me apart. Thank the gods of dignity that I have plenty of time before the intermission to hide in the dark and reconstruct my pleasantly unimpressed façade. Ironically, I am now rooting for the rest of the recital not to be so good.
But even after I get it together, behind those dry eyes, I'll be changed. I glimpsed the Dancing Planet. Just tell me what I do to get there, and baby, I'm ready to go. ##
