In an earlier blog I wrote about an intensive discussion I had at about the age of 8 with Regina, a very good friend who lived down the street from me, about who was the better ballerina, Moira Shearer or Margot Fonteyn. In this blog I want to share the great fun I had dancing in Regina’s very large living room.
I am not sure where Regina got the half parachute that we played with, but what a joy it was to wave it, dance under it and use our imagination to turn it into whatever we wanted.
We lived on the same street about a half a block from each other. Regina is only about two months older than I am, but because her birthday is at the end of November and mine isn’t until January and the cut off date for kindergarten was December 31, we weren’t in the same grade. She was a half year ahead, having started kindergarten in September while I began in February. (The Pittsburgh School district had admissions to start in both September and February, and one could even graduate in February from High School. I doubt this still exists.)
Anyway, back to the living room. It was very large, reminding me of the living room in my grandmother’s house that I use to dance in as a toddler. There was lots of open space for us to move in. I remember in one part of this magical space, close to where you entered, was a record player along with lots of musical theatre records. During our grade school years and into the beginning of middle school I remember spending so many afternoons listening to musicals of that period such as The King and I, Oklahoma, and Kiss Me Kate. Regina had a lovely singing voice and she would sing along. I did not, so I was strictly about dancing. We talked about a favorite actress, Gertrude Lawrence, who was the original Anna in The King and I and was on the recording we regularly listened to. Her biography, Gertrude Lawrence as Mrs. A, became a favorite of mine. I saved that book for many years, occasionally returning to re-read it. That book and Agnes de Mille’s Dance to the Piper were major sources of inspiration during my pre-teen and early teen years.
Another favorite actress that I remember liking during this time was Celeste Holm, who was the original Ado Annie in Oklahoma. With my awful, out of tune voice, I sometimes tried to sing I’m Just a Girl Who Can’t Say No. Alas… even this kind of song did not work for me. It was a good thing I liked to dance, ‘cause a triple threat (singer, dancer, actress) I would never be.
Those early after-school/weekend times influenced me in several specific ways.
Many years later, when I built the Creative Dance Center in Tallahassee, Florida (See https://mostlydance.com/2018/11/09/feminism-meets-the-bank-building-a-dance-studio/ [1]) one of the first things that I made sure to have was a parachute as a prop to use both with children and adults. This time it was a full parachute that I was able to purchase from an Army Surplus Store. It was an all-time favorite of all ages. Sometimes we just made a large circle and watched the wonderful waves it made. Other times we lifted it as high as we could, making the shape it would be in when it floated down from the sky and then brought it back to the ground. Sometimes I would invite a child to be in charge of how she wanted the rest of the class to hold the parachute so she could dance under or around or what she was imagining it to be, such as a roaring ocean waves.
When I do a search for creative movement with a parachute, the results are usually focused on pre-schoolers or young school-age children, and there are lots of fun ways the parachute has been used. However, nothing comes up for use with adults, and I found that use equally satisfying. Leading adult workshops, particularly in Tallahassee when I was doing “permission” workshops as part of Transactional Analysis Training (that’s another later blog), I used it with great success especially with encouraging adults to find or rediscover their inner child.
Clearly those afternoons fostered and reinforced my love for musical theatre, which led not only to attending theater but also choreographing and directing some musical theater.
Regina and I continue our friendship and creative journey to today. Over the years we have led workshops together, and sometimes as we are dancing around a room with 20 or so participants, we pass each other and smile remembering those times so many years ago when we were doing something similar in her living room.
