July 1, 2022, 8:48 p.m.
Local Ballet Troupe Presents 90-Second Recital
“Waltz of the Fwowers,” announces Sloane, “from the Nutcracker,” says Kina; audience roars in approval
The Daily Kina
Kina, age three, had just started taking ballet classes when the lockdown hit. Her ballet school had arranged for a recital in June of 2020, and we’d ordered a little pink tutu from the school that was due to arrive in May. It did not arrive on time, as you might imagine, and the recital never happened. We picked up the tutu at the front door of the studio in September, and Kina proceeded to wear it at home every day for several months. I wrote about this on September 5, 2020, under the headline “Ballerina, Denied Recital, Wears Tutu Nonetheless”.
According to this august publication, Kina and Sloane started taking secret Covid dance classes all the way back on March 19, 2021. At the time, those classes were really more of a hopping-and-balancing school than anything else, conducted by a local dancer whose performance work had (understandably) dried up. Fast forward just two months, though, and our local ballerina was teaching her parents how to execute a perfect port de bras. In April of this year, Kina admonished me to focus if I wanted to be a ballet dancer.
And yesterday, with her friend Sloane, in a brand new pink tutu, she danced the Waltz of the Flowers from the Nutcracker, which took all of a minute and a half to play out, but represented the culmination of fifteen months of joyful practice. It was delayed a week as their teacher recovered from Covid, but unlike Kina’s earlier pandemic recital, this time the show went on.
We all clapped a bit too loudly, and the girls covered their ears. Pizza was served, and Sloane shot hoops in the backyard with her tutu still on. It wasn’t the end of something, but it was a kind of change—a moment to breathe—and we were all grateful for it.
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