The Most Perfect Thing I Have Ever Seen

We interrupt your regularly scheduled NYC review to bring you this super-important story!!!

Recently, Pepper invited me and the Seamstress to a dance event that she, Pepper, was clogging in. I saw Baby Sister in clogging competitions a half a million times, and Pepper, from what I know, seems to be a very good clogger.

BUT. This blog post is not about Pepper. (Sorry, Pepper.) No, indeed. This blog post is about someone else.

Pepper's performance was scheduled for the end of the program, so the Seamstress and I had to sit through quite a lot of children dancing before she appeared. Some of it was better than others.

Six numbers in, a tumbling class consisting of one small boy and two small girls came out and began to tumble on mats.

Partway through this tumbling, I noticed that the boy, while not clumsy, was definitely not graceful. He would do a perfect backbend but then sort of flail about at the finish. He would do a somersault and keel off to the side at the last second. What's more, he was around ten years old--too old for his inexpert tumbling to be adorable. It bordered more on the edge of amusing instead.

The Seamstress and I were, indeed, amused. We were more amused when he returned to the stage a few numbers later to dance a jazz number with two different girls.

This is when things really got good. The young dancer, it became immediately clear, was very into his dancing. He proved to be very flexible, very uncoordinated, and very uninhibited. This made for a glorious combination. There was more flailing as he spun and danced around the two girls.

Not long after, the young dancer returned onstage with a junior ballroom class. He danced as he had before, this time with a small girl around his own age.

But the crowning glory was at the end, when the young dancer's ballet class performed to "Colors of the Wind."

He came onstage first, a bunch of pastel flowers in his hand. The music began, and the rest of his class--all girls--danced onto the stage. They passed him one by one, and he handed each a flower until only one was left. He sniffed it thoughtfully, then violently cast it aside. Then he took his place in the center of the girls.

As the only boy, he was a soloist in this number. He leapt about like a crazed grasshopper, his expression dignified and serene. Then, as the girls danced a bit by themselves, he waited and watched with his hands behind his back. He was contemplating his mortality or whatever it is that serious artists such as him do when they have a bit of downtime. Then he spun in a drunken imitation of a top and leapt some more.

The music swelled. The girls circled around him in the formation of a trickling fountain and he, the statue at the center of it all, danced and danced passionately. Then they uncircled--the girls walked offstage in single file, handing him their flowers--and he sniffed the bouquet in a beautifully soulful manner as the music ended.

AWKWARD MORMON GIRL: That was the most perfect thing I have ever seen.

THE SEAMSTRESS: There are tears in my eyes from laughing.