the great Amer­i­can musi­cal (or not)

-- November 29th, 2008 --
carouselmusical

When Avery was a lit­tle, lit­tle girl, per­haps four years old, she made a brief foray into the world of bal­let. All her friends were doing it, it seemed a shame to let her child­hood pass by with­out a pink leo­tard and a tutu. So off she went to first the rather (very) seri­ous Jof­frey Bal­let, where she was nearly kicked out for insub­or­di­na­tion. She did not take kindly to the auto­cratic meth­ods of “Miss Liz”, the prissy instruc­tor, but she kept going because her friend Annabelle was show­ing real tal­ent and has con­tin­ued to be a true Nut­cracker bal­le­rina as the years have gone by. But Avery? No. The low­est point came when Avery and all her friends decided to attend a dance class com­bin­ing bal­let and sort of mod­ern move­ment, with a crea­ture at the helm called “Miss Kim­ber­ley.” Miss Kim­berly had a high, grat­ing voice like a char­ac­ter on the Simp­sons, and a way of fran­ti­cally clap­ping her hands as she lost con­trol of the class, shout­ing inef­fec­tu­ally, “Dancers! Dancers!” After attend­ing sev­eral of these classes with me, one of the other moth­ers turned and made poking…