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My preamble
“Dance, dance, dance”, What else can you call a post that’s about dancing? Victor’s school year has recently come to an end with three nights of dancing. As devoted parents, we delighted in attending every single night. “Now understand”, as one of Lucia’s mentors is fond of saying, we weren’t attending because our darling little cherub was one of the dancers, but rather because we anticipated, each and every dance would be a marvel – up and down the lineup.
There has been talk of the school closing due to financial difficulties. Lucia says, “We can’t let the school close ’cause then we won’t get to see these wonderful performances.” I concur with her. We concur on many things. We sent a gentle ask email about this recently, and before I dive into this post, we wanted to thank those who were able to send some support. For those of you who were thinking of sending support or who missed the email, we are still accepting help.
Meanwhile back to the school and the dancing.
The school
The school is called, “Artifice”. You can read all about the school on Artifice’s facebook page. What I want to write about are some of our experiences with the school. I wanted to write about some of the drama in the lives of the six to nine year olds (Victor’s cohort) navigating the world. I wanted to write about the parents of those children trying to navigate the world with their children and with each other. Together, the children and the parents are our community.
Back to the beginning
At the beginning of the school year, the parents met in an office that Lucia rents. Conveniently, the office is around the corner from the school. Sitting there together for the first time, drinking coffee and eating huge overly sweet chocolate chip cookies from Costco, the parents shared their experiences of the prior year. They shared their thoughts on what they would like to see in the upcoming year. This was all done in Spanish so I listened intently and ate cookies. After the fourth one, I wished the cookies weren’t so disgustingly sweet.
The meeting concluded with a list of action items, prioritized. I had one priority, which was to revamp the playground. Everyone agreed that that could be my project. As limited as my Spanish was, I understood that I had received the blessing of the group. It was decided that the playground and all the rest of the prioritized list would be presented to the founders of the school and together the administration and the parents would create the school that none of us had had as children but dreamed of having for our children.
The playground revamped?
Revamping the playground turned into clearing out all the debris in the garden area, which was next to the playground area. Clearing out the debris included replacing the wooden skids that made up the fence with a real metal fence. Someone decided, and I don’t remember who, that the garden area needed to be dealt with before the playground could be upgraded. Replacing the fence, in true committee fashion, took three months. Before we knew it, the winter holidays were well underway. Someone was kind enough to give the existing playground a fresh coat of paint, which if I am to be honest, wasn’t what I, nor the children (who had been consulted), envisioned as being revamped.
Somewhere between our initial meeting, and the completion of the garden fence, the parents had all moved on to other things. I am sad to report that the playground remains pretty much the same as at the beginning of the year, albeit with a fresh coat of paint and no complaints from the children.
Let things slide and then see what happens!
During our meeting one of the parents promoted the idea that all the parents should take a course exploring the budding sexual awareness of our children. The idea was to help us, hapless as we were, to navigate the changes that our children would go through as they learned of, and explored, sex. We were provided with a general outline of the course and the costs etc. In true committee fashion, we never reached a consensus of, if and when, to take the course.
As we reached the end of the school year, all hell broke loose when some of the children, returned home and reported to their parents the existence and discussions taking place in the “Amores Turbios” club (translated, as close as it gets, “Sketchy Love” club). In one household the child reported to his mother, in graphic detail, the intimate encounters of grown adults. Then promptly credited this information as having come from one of his classmates. While in another household, a daughter needed assurances from her mother that cucumbers were only for eating.
Quicker than you can say “sex”, the mothers called a meeting. By the end of the meeting, which took place at Lucia’s mother’s house while I looked after some of the children down the street at our house, the mother’s had agreed to take the course promoted at the beginning of the school year. They decided to take the four hour version of the course. When I asked one of the mother’s, “Why four hours?” She replied, “The meeting was three hours, the course has to be longer!”
At the time of this writing, the course has been taken. The parents have reinforced and strengthened their bond. When all is said and done, parents will begin the next school year prepared for their children’s exploration of “Sex”. Well not really. If anything, I’ve learned that our children will always be way ahead of us in most things.
Of club cancellations
The cancellation of the “Amores Turbios” club also meant the cancellation of the “Horror Club”. The “Horror Club” was established by Victor and one of the other children. I understand they mostly talked about horror video games, which if what I’ve watched Victor playing, lacked horror. In any case, Victor was very upset by this turn of events. He made no secret of his disappointment.
During one of the dance performances under dark lighting with eerie music and lots of dry ice; where the dancers picked at their faces, stretching the nylon coverings masquerading as skin, Victor looked up at me and declared, “and they cancelled the Horror Club!”
Upon further investigation, it turned out the “Horror Club” hadn’t been cancelled. Those doing the cancelling were unaware of its existence. They had simply asked the children to vote on cancelling the “Amores Turbios” club, and like all democratic processes, one seldom gets what they voted for.
I was chatting with another parent about all this cancelling and he informed me that his daughter had reported that the Horror Club kept a book filled with names of people who were designated to die. Apparently one of the younger student’s name had been written down in the book. She was very upset. She was a girl that Victor complained about all the time. This bit of information concerned me.
I confronted Victor with the new found information. His response, “A book? What book? What colour is it? What does it look like? Who told you this?” This was the best grilling I’ve ever received, let alone from an eight year old. To really put the existence of the book to rest, Victor informed me, “No one would put her name in such a book. No one would want to kill her cause she is loved by everyone. If they did, they would be hated by everyone!” And of course I understood that the unsaid was, “and I don’t want to be hated.”
Upon further investigation, and there is a lot of it going on these days, the Horror Club had no such book. And given there was no book, the girl’s name did not appear in the non-existent book. However, and here’s where things get murky, Victor did have a book called “Death Note” that he had brought to school one day to show his friends. He had made this book himself from a notebook he insisted he needed.
The “Death Note” book was from an amine series created in 2003. The main character has supernatural powers and a book — the Death Note. If he writes someone’s name in the book, they will die within 48 hours. Now it’s not just anyone’s name he writes but rather the name of evil people. With this book in hand, he travels the world and rids it of evil people. When Victor was explaining all of this to his friends, he joked that they might put the girl’s name in it. One of the other children instead opted to write two other names — one of which was everyone’s favorite villain. (Please note, both people whose names were written into the book, as does the classmate whose name was not written into the book — many months later — continue to live active lives. Some reeking more havoc than others!)
And what’s all this got to do with dancing?
The events described above, along with the financial challenges of the school, set the stage, no pun intended, for the year-end performances. There were three nights of dancing.
The first was in the Teatro J. J. Herrera, named after the 14th president of Mexico. It is part of Xalapa’s arts district, located in the centre of the city. The theatre and its use is financed by the Ministry of Culture. My understanding is that community groups can book the facility, put on their performance, and keep the door. The theatre is the real thing: big stage, big lights, big sound. Perhaps this is what impressed us so much last year — seeing Victor and all the other students of the school performing on the big stage.
The second and third nights were at the school’s recently converted garage which had been transformed into a stage. We remembered watching some of the older students come in on their own time to transform the floor of the garage, complete with dance floor, lights etc. This took place at the same time we were attempting to revamp the playground.
The Dancing
The clips below are limited to those I had access to. They are a small selection of the dancing that took place. They are a small selection of Modern Dance and Flamenco.
First flamenco dance performed by students age 6 to 10.
Second flamenco dance performed by students age 6 to 10.
Third flamenco dance performed by students age 6 to 10.
Flamenco dance performed by students age 11 to 14.
Modern dance one performed by students age 11 to 14.
Modern dance two performed by students age 11 to 14.
Modern dance performed by senior students ages 15 to 20 (or so).
The dancing will start up again in late August and we are looking forward to seeing what a difference another year makes in the performance of each of these cohorts.
Again, if you would like to support this school and it’s work, you can visit the gofundme page and make a contribution. In a world filled with so much bleakness, it is refreshing to watch these dancers give us an alternative.
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