Excerpt from The Wrong Side of the Room:
The 4-Year-Old Rebels at First Dance Class
My mother decided that dancing school was just the thing for me. One
afternoon just after my fourth birthday, I was taken to this large studio,
painted in that noxious institutional pale green that was so prevalent in
dentist’s offices at the time. Ominously, the repellent room was filled with
about twenty-five young children, their mothers proudly doting on their
little future prima ballerinas and premier danseurs.
The future Broadway chorus boy at age four.
The teacher, an overly giddy and exuberant older woman, dressed
in flowing lavender chiffon announced in her chirpy voice, “Now, children,
today we will be airplanes, starting low and flying high into the sky.”
To demonstrate, she glided ethereally about the room. “We all feel light,
light, light.” She then indicated the counterclockwise direction of the
flight pattern. At this announcement, my left eyebrow arched so high that
I felt pain in my forehead. Arms were fully extended out to the sides. Beginning
in a slightly crouching position, we began to run.
After the first turn, legs were straightened, and then light, light,
light, we began reaching for the stratosphere. I observed the swarm about
me as we ran and was reminded more of a flock of small birds of prey
rather than graceful aircraft soaring in the clouds. After the third turn
around the studio, I abandoned the flight plan, marched determinedly
over to my mother who was smiling, so pleased with her Norman, and
informed her in no uncertain terms that it was time to leave. She erroneously
assumed that I simply hated dancing school when in point of fact
my mini-adult self could not abide the idea of running around a room
like a silly airplane. How utterly childish, I thought. Foolishly, I never
communicated this to her, creating a misunderstanding that would have
life-defining implications.
To obtain a copy of The Wrong Side of the Room: A Life in Music Theater click here.
