Tag: dancer

I remember why I don’t audition much

I got a text message from the babysitter of my daughter’s friend, she was running 15 or 20 minutes late and could I pick up the twins after school.

OK, I responded.

It was not big deal.  If the sun is out and there are no lessons or sports practices to rush off to,  the kids like to run around together in the school yard.  I was going to be there anyway for at least half an hour so it wasn’t a big deal at all to watch some extra kids.  The mom’s often call each other for help at pick up time, especially if we are just running late, about to get on a train and know we’re not going to be there right at 3:00 when the teachers let go of the children, but will be there in about 15 minutes.  The kids are taken back into school to wait for their adults in the auditorium, but if they can be picked up by someone else’s mom so they can involved right at the start of a game of wall ball or tag, all the better.

So, the babysitter never came.

The kids were playing nicely, and it was good for them to run around after a day of standardized tests, so I didn’t think anything of it until about quarter to 4.  I called her and she didn’t answer.  The twins used my phone to send her texts which she didn’t answer.

By 4:00 I was worried.  It was beyond a conversation running long or a subway train held in the station.

I told the other mothers on the playground and our imaginations were not generating positive images.   I called the mother of the twins at her office. I held off calling her as long as I could.  I didn’t want to disturb her at work.  She’s a friend of mine.  I know this her  the long day at the office, the one she she pays extra for.  But, she hadn’t heard from the babysitter either and the babysitter wasn’t answering her phone.

There was a 5:00pm baseball practice that would have to be missed, and that was upsetting to the boy who was starting to act out towards his sister and My Kid.

The father of the twins didn’t answer his phone.

I was going to take them to my apartment in another neighborhood until the father got off work.

It was getting a little scary.  I was getting worried about the pretty young babysitter who had disappeared without a trace in broad daylight in Manhattan.  I was still believing in a subway service interruption and/or a dead cell phone battery but my mind was beginning to create darker scenarios.

Finally at 5 o’clock the apologetic babysitter arrived at the school playground.

She was near tears.

She’s a dancer and had been to an audition at the Met in Lincoln Center.  She had been told her audition would be over by three.  They were in an underground studio with no cell reception.

I’ve been in that situation.

It’s so stressful.   Rent paying survival jobs are lost all the time because of auditions like that.  It’s one of the things that makes a career in the performing arts seem so impossible.  It isn’t always about the level of commitment to the art.  Sometimes it’s the level of commitment to other people that gets in the way of a career.

Kid’s Clowns

The New York Downtown Clown Revue, a monthly late night venue for edgy stage clowns, produced and early evening show for children.  So I took My Kid and a Classmate Neighbor Boy to see the fun.

As familiar as My Kid is with the clown genre, she and the boy-she’s-known-since-they-were-in-diapers-but-who-is-not-a-friend-because-he-is-a-boy chose seats for us in the very back row right under the light booth from which there was no chance of getting squirted with water, hit with a pie or being pulled onto the stage.  Other peoples children chose to sit right on stage at the feet of the performers.

Joel Jeske and Christopher Lueck opened the show as a couple of brothers releasing the pent-up energy of patter clowns born to play three shows a day six days a week but they can’t because Vaudeville is dead.

Silly Billy, who was My Kid’s favorite clown last year, failed to impress this time with his kazoo and color changing scarf magic.  But then, My Kid and that-boy-she-was-sitting-next-to are in fourth grade this year, an upper grade in elementary school.  They have experience and standards.  On the way home, My Kid told me that as a 4th grader she knows the difference between real magic and fake magic.

Lulu the clown, aka Juliette Jeske, introduced as a woman who will perform anywhere for money, appeared in a tailored jacket, crinoline skirt and stripped tights.  Her suitcase of props was set up on a stand covered with a handmade quilt demonstrating the Midwestern crafty aspect of  the American children’s party clown style.   She works A LOT, much of it costumed character work at corporate events.  She also writes and produces short films for the internet, hosts variety and burlesque shows and wrote and performed the stage show Princess Sunshine’s Bitter Pill of Truth Funhouse.  Her performance was filled with the kind of visual puns, like a banana phone, that are popular with the preschool and kindergarten demographic.

Rounding out the evening were “Bucky and Gigi”, Chris Allison and his wife Gina, longtime Ringling circus clowns, she’s also a dancer.  They wore bright neat costumes.  We watched him get panned as “Coney Island Chris” on America’s Got Talent.  But, with a red nose on, he is as appealing as a cartoon character like SpongeBob SquarePants.  It was a goal at clown college to become a human cartoon.  Normal was called “pedestrian,” something to be avoided at all costs.

My kids didn’t seem impressed, but they were inspired.  On the way to the subway they sang;  “My Little Pony.  She’s thin and boney.  She went to the circus and farted on purpose.”  

And then on the train, The Neighbor Boy demonstrated a perfect three point prat-fall.  Hanging from the hand rail he: 1) dropped to the seat on his knees, 2) fell forward onto his face, then 3) rolled off the seat onto the floor and jumped up smiling!

Ta Da!!!