Recital Time!

Monday

May232016

Dance recital weekend.

There was a time when those three words sent me into a fit of twitchy annoyance. And yet, today I found myself saying, "The recital was fun!"

It has happened. I have fully embraced my fate. My fate is to watch all of the dance performances and recitals and do so with a smile because Alexis is all of the happy when she's on that stage.

Soooooo ... in her first year with harder classes and higher expectations, Alexis opened the show with a mistake. It was an obvious stumble on a pirouette, which in the grand scheme of things is no big deal at all.

But I wondered, would it be a big deal to her?

The Alexis of old, the Alexis who was enrolled in dance because she needed to get better at handling uncomfortable situations, would have folded. One little mistake would have led to a future approach filled with conservative movements and half-attempts. At her core, Alexis is still that kid who doesn't admit what she can do to anyone until she can do it absolutely perfectly.

As Alexis walked off-stage after the dance that was wonderful other than that one little mistake, I realized her next performance was for Jazz/Gym. I knew exactly what she would do -- tame down her tumbling passes. For that particular class, each girl makes their way across the stage doing whatever tumbling they're currently working on. Most of the girls did back walkovers or cartwheels, but Miss Alexis is in a different place. She is a rumbly, tumbly little thing who can do back handsprings and back tucks like they're no big thing.

I figured she'd cut the back tuck out of her first sequence and only do two of her three back handsprings.

I would have put money on it.

So when it came time for the Jazz/Gym class and Alexis began to cross from one side of the stage to the other, I waited for the downgrade in action.

It didn't come.

For her first tumbling pass, she did exactly what was always planned.

VICTORY.

And then came her second tumbling pass. I expected to see a roundoff-back handspring-back handspring and maybe one more back handspring. That was what was planned, so since she was staying her course, I was sure she would continue to stay her course.

Instead, she did a roundoff and then FOUR back handsprings. So when faced with adversity, Alexis doubled down.

Later, I asked Alexis why she decided to do more. The fact of the matter is that she can do 8-10 back handprings in a row without veering terribly off course, but I only know that because she forgets that I can see the backyard from inside the house. She wouldn't do that long of a sequence for anyone because she would be afraid she would mess up. It was impressive that she went with four of them when she had an audience.

"Mom, I had to make up for my mistake somehow!"

I don't know where this version of Alexis came from, but rock on with that doubling down when the going gets tough thing. Rock. On.