ballet observation day

yesterday was a beautiful first day of spring. the sun shone and the birds sang in the morning . . and i spent the day in bed with a low fever, headache and cough. today i'm better, but left with the nasty cough . . the embarrassing and very uncomfortable kind where you have a constant tickle in your throat and you can't stop hacking away once you start. i'm drinking echinacea tea and taking vitamin c, so i'm hoping tomorrow is a lot better. we have an appointment today with a new dentist who is supposed to follow a more holistic path in her practice . . we shall see if she actually does. (we visited a dentist last week who made the same claims, but we didn't find him all that holistic). today is very grey outside, but the birds still sang me a wake-up song. the picture above is morgana in her dance class with marina stevetskaya. it was ballet observation day at manhattan youth ballet, and i sat and watched and tried not to cough for an hour and a half.

morgana has improved so much. her footwork has become more precise and clean.

she has wonderful height in her jumps, which really means nothing when you're a ballerina.

here her teacher complimented her: "nice morgana, pointed toes, straight legs and a plie." receiving a compliment from marina is not easy. morgana cherishes every word of praise.


marina only works with one pianist: a compatriot from russia (who often remembers the students names better than marina! morgana has a story where the pianist corrects marina, "no no, marina, that isn't natalie, that's bridget.") anyway, her compatriot friend plays so beautifully! here she played "matchmaker" from fiddler on the roof and i couldn't stop singing the song all week . . that i finally streamed it from netflix one night with morgana and chanda (who had never seen it before). it's a long movie, we still have an hour and twenty minutes to watch.

her pointework has improved also, though her love for pointework has not increased an iota.

it was fun. i could sit and watch for hours . . if i didn't have such a cough!!! (oh! and the dentist turned out to be very nice. she described everything she was doing to chanda, and her office was peaceful and didn't smell of antiseptic. she had yoga journals on the table along with national geographic and the new yorker, and a bubbling fountain and photographs of a field and trees).