QUAIL MUTTERINGS #32. Ramona’s own NUTCRACKER is Here! (December 9, 2014)

Posted on December 9, 2014 by chivarnado

Now back from Thanksgiving break we resume our classes and rehearsals for The Nutcracker. Everyone seems refreshed and gung-ho to amp up our march toward the performances. The vacation did us all good for we are now ready to put on our dancing shoes and slip into whatever character roles we are set to assume. For some, there are multiple parts which make for interesting personality changes. I love it when the students transform into their new identities.
The Sugar Plum Fairy and the Cavalier arrive an hour early on Tuesdays to rehearse their five-minute duet. The nuances in the music and choreography dictate the timing and steps, and provide the base for them to come into their new identities.
“Hold your landing longer.”
“Stay with the music here, but push it there.”
Don’t forget to point that back foot and flare the leg. Beautiful!”
And so go my comments to carry the dancers closer to the desired ends. The Snow Queen stays later on Saturdays to rehearse her dance, as Clara gratefully sits down to remove her pointe shoes.
“I remember when I was the clown doll,” says Helen who’s now playing Clara. “I loved that dance. I think it was my favorite part.”
This surprises me since it’s a short, silly kind of part. I remind her of playing the “Jittery Fairy” in Sleeping Beauty. She agrees that she enjoyed that one as well.
Over the weekend I’ve pulled the Christmas-wrapped boxes out of our barn and brought them to the studio to use as props. The Intermediate children need to get used to carrying them on stage, in the beginning of the story, and putting them in the right places under the giant Christmas tree. They have already practiced galloping around on stick horses with the beginners. Act I in The Nutcracker is colorful and festive. Countless repetitions of all the dances in order, without pausing, are necessary for the ballet’s preparation. Drosselmeyer, played by Morgan, almost always brings laughter from the cast as he continuously makes impromptu changes to his dance. Or when he fills in for other dancers, engaging in off the cuff, exaggerated movements. Morgan also plays the Cavalier, a soldier, and the Mouse King. It’s so rewarding to me when the students transform and become their character enough to feel at home in it and act accordingly. When they take ownership of the role and adjust it for themselves, that’s when I get the biggest charge. I am then entertained by what the story has become after I’ve put the basics onto their bodies.
This year, the Ramona Dance Centre is staging two performances of The Nutcracker. The first is on Friday evening December 19th at 6:30 PM in the Olive Peirce Middle School Performing Arts Center. The second one is the following afternoon, Saturday December 20th at 2:00 PM. Tickets are $5 at the door. In connection with the Saturday matinee we are holding our Reunion. This is to celebrate thirty years of story ballets and thirty-five years of teaching. At least two alumni will be guest performing – including Erica Buechner who now dances professionally in San Diego. I’m hoping many prior students and parents will join us at the Reunion. It’s a potluck, so come one, come all and have a ball at Ramona’s own Nutcracker Ballet. For more information visit www.ramonadancecentre.com.

Chi Varnado is a contributing writer for The San Diego Reader. Her memoir, A CANYON TRILOGY: Life Before, During and After the Cedar Fire and her children’s book, The Tale of Broken Tail are available on www.amazon.com. Chi directs the Ramona Dance Centre. Her collection of essays, Quail Mutterings, can be found on www.chivarnado.com.

QUAIL MUTTERINGS #31. Wine Wednesdays (September 19, 2014)

Posted on September 20, 2014 by chivarnado

QUAIL MUTTERINGS #31. Wine Wednesdays (September 19, 2014)

My sister and I were looking forward to having veggie salads with bleu cheese dressing on that evening in mid June. We had specifically chosen that day because one of the local restaurants held Wine Wednesdays in which they offered a bottle of wine for half price when meals were ordered. Of course, the day we went was the day they ended this deal. Boo hoo. “We’ll just have to create our own Wine Wednesdays,” I said. The salads were delicious anyway and we each got a glass of wine.
During the month of July I hosted my own Wine Wednesdays out front under the oaks for my liberal-minded crone friends. They were a hit. My sister would arrive early and help cover the picnic tables with table cloths, take out the pitcher of iced cucumber water, pick flowers for the rustic vases, and carry out the wine glasses, plates, utensils and napkins. Semi-elegance in the summer shade with a light potluck.
When a bunch of women over fifty get together the discussions can be quite interesting as well as entertaining. M says that her husband wonders what we all talk about. On one occasion someone has brought up that a friend’s ninety-year-old mother is getting chemotherapy.
“Can you imagine going through that at that age? I can’t even fathom it.”
“I sure wouldn’t do it. I’d just take the morphine.”
“I think that the local Indians, back when, would just take peyote and jump off a big boulder when they got too old and sick to cope anymore.”
“My husband said that if he ever got so senile that he’s incoherent then we should go out and have a hunting accident.”
“Yeah, and then you’d go to jail for shooting him.”
“Our laws aren’t too keen on assisted suicide, are they?”
“You know, in Oregon, they’re more lenient and understanding about it. And they are a lot more generous with the drugs for palliative care.”
“Boy, I can’t wait to tell my husband what we talked about today!”
We all laughed as a light breeze rustled through the trees above. The trickling water from the two fountains helped to camouflage the time of year, but still the temperature was pleasant. A dove landed on a branch overhead and called several times.
The month of August was too difficult for most of us to commit to Wednesdays, with work or trips, so we took a hiatus until mid September when we agreed to try to get together once a month during the school year. This last Wednesday was our selected day – right at the tail end of a triple digit heat wave. I wondered if we’d have to cancel since I have no air conditioning in the house and the coolest place actually is out front under the oaks. This could be disastrous for a bunch of menopausal women. We persevered.
My sister and I set up two standing misters that attach to hoses and even though we got a little wet it was better than nothing. Thankfully, when 4:00 rolled around it was already a bit cooler than it had been. We all seem to look forward to these ‘mini vacations’ to stop a while and enjoy each other’s company. None of us drink that much at all. It’s more about the label on the bottle. Is it interesting or pretty? I guess we just need an excuse to get together and connect, in an old-fashioned, real sort of way. Not texting, emailing or tweeting. There’s no cell phone service here anyway.
I told them about my substitute teaching job on Monday when it was too hot for the middle schoolers to go outside for PE. So each class of fifty or more students came into my classroom, which was only equipped for about thirty, for an hour with no lesson plan. Another PE teacher brought me a sports video, but there was no DVD player in the room. A lot of good that was. So, I got to wing it. I knew I had to keep them occupied or complete chaos would reign. Luckily, after taking roll some ideas came to me.
“How many of you want to go to college?” I asked. A show of hands.
“How many of you don’t want to go to college?”
“Who will probably go to college only because your parents want you to?”
Then I asked them what they might want to major in: PE? Science? History?
“Now,” I said. “Each table and the surrounding students sitting on the floor is a company. I’d like you to come up with an idea or a product and select a spokesperson for your group to sell it to the rest of us. You’ve got five minutes. Go.”
The decibels in the room grew substantially. Each table gave their spiel. Then after hearing all the groups I gave them two minutes to either improve their idea or pick a new one. Then we all listened again. Lots of students had questions about the products or “what if” scenarios so we spent the rest of the time fielding these inquiries. I told them that this was most likely how they’d have to think or work no matter what they ended up doing as a career. They were jazzed.
M said, “I’ll bet they’ll want you to sub at that school a lot in the future.”
“I doubt it,” I said. “I’m only available on some Mondays and Fridays since I’m busy at the studio on the other days. Besides, they’ll probably never even hear about it.”
“Hmm,” said R. “That’s probably true. A big institution like that. The kids, most likely, won’t talk to their parents at that age and everyone is so caught up in their own thing. Nobody really cares anyway.”
D began sharing about the trip she’d be taking with a friend in June. It was going to be to the south of France.
“Can you take me with you?” I asked. We all drooled over travel, especially to there or Italy.
She told us about other adventures she’d been on with her life-long friend. One of them had included meeting some people who were instrumental in re-populating Trumpeter Swans in Canada.
As our second hour wound down we each carried armloads into the house. Coming back outside, we paused under the oaks.
“You know,” S said. “The south of France doesn’t have anything on this place.”
“Really? You think so?” I asked.
“Yeah. I’m sure of it.”
It makes me happy that my friends like being here. I like sharing the canyon with them. Perhaps this is my true purpose. It feels right being a steward for this special place in nature, and providing a time and place for others to find respite from the onslaught of modern life.

Owl Serenade

Posted on September 3, 2014 by chivarnado

Every night lately, the owls have been making their voices heard in the canyon. One evening, when I got home after dark, I could hear two owls nearby, in the creekbed, communicating in the old familiar “whoo whoo” language. I heard another up on the mountainside.

I love hearing the symphony of the owls each night floating in through my open window. Even if I’m having trouble sleeping, the calming sounds of nature are soothing and make me wish that our world could always feel this peaceful. The moonlit nights in the week leading up to the full moon always give me pleasure; I love to look out over the creekbed or up at the shining boulders speckling the mountainsides. There’s a magical feel to it, lending a possibility to all hoped-for good things, even if only right here and right now.

I wonder how owls have become affiliated with wisdom? Is it because they can swivel their heads up to 270 degrees independently from the rest of their bodies? Is it those big, inquisitive eyes that seem capable of pulling your thoughts straight out of you? Or is it simply their habit of staying up all night like some intellectual member of academia?

I remember my mom writing a little song when I was a kid. She was taking a piano class, as an elective, while attending San Diego State College (not “University” yet) and pursuing her geology degree. The lyrics were as follows: “The wise old owl sat in an oak. The more he heard the less he spoke. The more he heard the less he spoke.”

At the time, it had sounded rather simple and repetitive to me, but I think I understand it more clearly now. As a teacher, I can see its significance. We, as parents and educators, may find ourselves continuously preaching at our children. Sometimes, it seems that the more we say, the less they listen. If all they hear from us is constant noise, then it can’t help but dull their senses. At some point, everyone needs to shut down in the face of anything annoyingly repetitive, just to keep from going crazy. It’s a little like that torturing where they strap you down and simply drip water onto your forehead at regular intervals.

John Holt, a well-known child advocate, teacher, and author, once said that, as an adult, when he noticed his own defensive reaction in response to not grasping what was being taught, he asked, “…Please stop talking about it, and just let me look at it.” Then he thought to himself, Remember what you have learned about learning. Be like a child. Use your eyes. Gag that teacher’s mouth inside your head, asking all those questions. Don’t try to analyze this thing; look at it, take it in.

I’ve noticed, too, that kids pick up on things when they’re interested and care to learn about it. Hammering a youngster with letters and numbers when they don’t have any context for the information begins an exercise in frustration for both student and teacher alike. That’s one reason why it’s important to expose our youngsters to many different experiences: so that when they are learning to read, they can associate the words with some real thing they can identify with. Without tangible evidence in our memories, there’s not much hope of understanding or absorbing anything, not when the task of learning how to read is so new and challenging in and of itself.

On the other end of this spectrum, when we’re older and have been reading for decades, simply flipping through a magazine has the potential to spark a new interest. Perhaps something we didn’t even know we cared about. That’s partly because we’ve had more exposure to life’s experiences and can associate what we read with many things.

Anyway, just last month we traveled to Pennsylvania for my husband’s stepmother’s funeral. She was a wonderfully positive person who was always interested in others, letting them expound about themselves instead of going on about herself. Listening and helping others feel worthwhile came naturally to her. She constantly allowed herself to learn new things. A wise old owl.