4th July 2011: My House Tastes Like Pink
So my mum runs the Scholarship Committee at my ballet school, which is basically the group of people who organise everything the owner of the school has no time to organise. Costumes and hire, timetables, funds, events, ritual witch burnings. Stuff like that.
It's mostly made up of upper middle class women, usually recently divorced, who have more free time than sense yet still do not know how to sew and aren't much good at selling fundraising chocolates either; who send their children to dancing because it's a good way to offload them while they go get a manicure.
Come to think of it, most of the mothers at the school are like that. Oh, I lie, some of them are vicious stage parents who live vicariously through their child's success, even when the child isn't all that into the whole ballerina thing, they just want to jump around and whack people with fairy wands. And some of them are single dads with no idea what else to do with their daughters.
I know those are stereotypes, but I shit you not they're all pretty much accurate.
But I digress.
Anyway, my mother runs the committee, which no one else does anything for, so she, and thus we, the rest of my family, often end up with all the leftover jobs which no one wants to do.
One of those is costume storage.
The owner of the school, who also owns almost all of the costumes we hire out, either has no room or absolutely no desire to clutter up her house with 17 blue tutus and a dozen Russian National Character costumes that look somewhat like these:
None of those people are me, but I'm pretty sure I've compete against some of them and the costumes are the same style.
(Those things really hurt. I'm pretty sure I still have a dent in my head from one of them. And the dresses were itchy. But the dances were fun and the teacher who used to do them, Rita Dubovsky, was amazing. She danced at the Kirov in Russia before she came to Australia to teach. She spoke absolutely no English at the time but demanded a job, and she damn well got one. Her husband would play the accordion for her while she taught classes. She was the most terrifying, most spectacular woman I have met in my life. She used to tell us "I want to see bruises because you're working so hard!". She had this thing where you could tell that she liked you if she yelled at you a lot, because it was her way of saying she though you worthy enough of her time, and that she wanted to you to improve. I got yelled at a lot. And I did improve.
She died of cancer in 2007 (so it goes). Her husband still plays the accordion for classes, but people don't go as much anymore because the replacement teachers are young and Australian and nice, and no one has to show up every week. I had debating on Tuesday nights so I had to stop. I really kinda miss getting yelled at.
Anyhoo.)
So, as a result, not only does mum make half the costumes, we get to store them all at our house. And oh, there are so very many.
Among just my own costumes, I have a Snow White dress from when I was about 12, an Aladdin-style Arabian princess outfit that should have been aquamarine but is instead hot pink, and a Tweedledee costume (my teacher has a penchant for Disney musicals, the two of us and Darren Criss apparently have that in common).
And they just keep coming in droves. Everyday this week we've come home with more, because they need to be collected for when eisteddfod season starts next term.
This morning I had to transport at least ten massive, fairy floss pink, sequined tulle skirts for "Waltz of the Flowers", from the boot of my mother's car to the house, and then up the stairs. I nearly died, because it's difficult to see anything through a mound of pink tulle. The sequins fell off everywhere, so it kind of looks like someone blew up a fairy all over the hallway. When you pile the skirts up they look like little hills, like the ones in Beethoven's Pastorale in the first Fantasia movie (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvgxssCZQBE&feature=fvst).
I'm pretty sure our neighbours think we run some kind of fairy fantasy live action role play game.
I mentioned this theory to my mum. She said: "I'm starting to think we are too."
It's mostly made up of upper middle class women, usually recently divorced, who have more free time than sense yet still do not know how to sew and aren't much good at selling fundraising chocolates either; who send their children to dancing because it's a good way to offload them while they go get a manicure.
Come to think of it, most of the mothers at the school are like that. Oh, I lie, some of them are vicious stage parents who live vicariously through their child's success, even when the child isn't all that into the whole ballerina thing, they just want to jump around and whack people with fairy wands. And some of them are single dads with no idea what else to do with their daughters.
I know those are stereotypes, but I shit you not they're all pretty much accurate.
But I digress.
Anyway, my mother runs the committee, which no one else does anything for, so she, and thus we, the rest of my family, often end up with all the leftover jobs which no one wants to do.
One of those is costume storage.
The owner of the school, who also owns almost all of the costumes we hire out, either has no room or absolutely no desire to clutter up her house with 17 blue tutus and a dozen Russian National Character costumes that look somewhat like these:
None of those people are me, but I'm pretty sure I've compete against some of them and the costumes are the same style.
(Those things really hurt. I'm pretty sure I still have a dent in my head from one of them. And the dresses were itchy. But the dances were fun and the teacher who used to do them, Rita Dubovsky, was amazing. She danced at the Kirov in Russia before she came to Australia to teach. She spoke absolutely no English at the time but demanded a job, and she damn well got one. Her husband would play the accordion for her while she taught classes. She was the most terrifying, most spectacular woman I have met in my life. She used to tell us "I want to see bruises because you're working so hard!". She had this thing where you could tell that she liked you if she yelled at you a lot, because it was her way of saying she though you worthy enough of her time, and that she wanted to you to improve. I got yelled at a lot. And I did improve.
She died of cancer in 2007 (so it goes). Her husband still plays the accordion for classes, but people don't go as much anymore because the replacement teachers are young and Australian and nice, and no one has to show up every week. I had debating on Tuesday nights so I had to stop. I really kinda miss getting yelled at.
Anyhoo.)
So, as a result, not only does mum make half the costumes, we get to store them all at our house. And oh, there are so very many.
Among just my own costumes, I have a Snow White dress from when I was about 12, an Aladdin-style Arabian princess outfit that should have been aquamarine but is instead hot pink, and a Tweedledee costume (my teacher has a penchant for Disney musicals, the two of us and Darren Criss apparently have that in common).
And they just keep coming in droves. Everyday this week we've come home with more, because they need to be collected for when eisteddfod season starts next term.
This morning I had to transport at least ten massive, fairy floss pink, sequined tulle skirts for "Waltz of the Flowers", from the boot of my mother's car to the house, and then up the stairs. I nearly died, because it's difficult to see anything through a mound of pink tulle. The sequins fell off everywhere, so it kind of looks like someone blew up a fairy all over the hallway. When you pile the skirts up they look like little hills, like the ones in Beethoven's Pastorale in the first Fantasia movie (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvgxssCZQBE&feature=fvst).
I'm pretty sure our neighbours think we run some kind of fairy fantasy live action role play game.
I mentioned this theory to my mum. She said: "I'm starting to think we are too."