I'm ready now to head to the National Dance Institute's teacher-training session in New York City, daily thanking God and Jacques (d'Amboise) for the scholarship, but I� must wait until June. Mentally, I'm packed. Emotionally? Well, I confess to some nerves at the intensive two weeks that await us. None other than Jacques and Ellen Weinstein will be critiquing us. One doesn't get better without guidance and mentoring, but this will be the highest level of professionalism I've faced, and in the Mecca of the arts world.�
And all of a sudden it's May. I'll be on a train to Boston in barely a month, with a terrific and physically challenging few weeks ahead, beginning with the New York City Ballet Workout Intensive. I highly recommend getting the book and the video until you can get to a live session, as I will next month. You don't need to be certified to use the NYCB Workout, but you do need that certification to use their name in your advertising. The process includes passing a test, sending in a video of your teaching a class, processing fees, then waiting with baited breath to see if you came up to their standards. If so, there is a one-time charge for the use of the the NYCB Workout name in your advertising. It seems very fair. I'll be writing this up for Dancer later, along with the NDI experience for this national publication and a local one.
I'll certainly be in prime shape for teaching those exercise and conditioning classes to the Gaelic Roots participants at Boston College.
Unitl then, I'm booked with my two day jobs for my chiropractor and my doctor, teaching dance, conditioning and acting in three cities (soon to change to four), writing locally and nationally, taking class and trying to maintain my personal workout, and keeping up with the usual matters that one must render to Caesar in the 21st century.
Mentally, I'm beginning to pack over three weeks of leotards, tights, assorted dance shoes (ballet, Celtic and jazz), books, civilian day and evening clothes, lecture note and writing pads in one portable - OK, rollable - duffle bag.
Using the holidays to do the usual things - rehearse, sew headpieces and costumes, catch up on correspondence, and finish my August pieces for Dancer now since I'll be in Boston in the middle of the ennervating and exciting Gaelic Roots session at Boston College as our deadline looms.
Amtrak called full of apologies and hopes that the schedule change they had to make on my Boston to New York trip would not cause undue stress. My train will not leave a 9:05 a.m. I must be prepared to depart at 9:00 a.m.
Would that the airlines were so courteous!
Dreamed that I was in class at the National Dance Institute. Jacques called on me to give a combination to the kids. It was so unimaginative and sub-par that he cancelled my scholarship on the spot. So far, none of my dreams have been prophetic. I pray that stays the case!
I attended a memorial service today for a fellow dancer. Anthony White died September 11 in the World Trade Center attack. Elbert Watson, a member of the same company we were in in the late '60s, performed magnificently at his service this afternoon, the day the US began bombing Afghanistan. The good news is that the U.S., with Britain, also dropped food and messages telling the Afghani that we are not attacking them but the Taliban. I wonder if they believed what they were reading.