Busy Days

Wow--the last two days have been busy, busy. And I am very tired and should go to sleep, but am too wound up to sleep.

On Thursday, I was working in my office and heard a student giving a tour to a group of people. I realized it was a girl named Lauren, who I thought was one of David Day's students, but actually she is a folk dance student who was working with/under David Day to create some displays to go along with the conference of the National Folk Organization, which was being held at BYU from Thursday through Sunday. And as I was listening to them talk, I realized that I wanted to attend that conference, and why wasn't I doing that, since it was local? How dumb is that? Should take advantage of local opportunities, shouldn't I?

So I looked it up, emailed our controller to ask if BYU would pay my one-day registration so I could attend on Friday, and I could, and did.

Thursday was also super busy in and of itself, because we had dress rehearsal for our French choir concert, then I had to run to our anthropology last day of class and hand in all of our assignments that hadn't already been handed in (5 for Josie, 3 for me) and then run to gamelan rehearsal, and then run to the French choir concert. And that was all after working the whole day first.

So on Friday, it was really nice to only have to attend the NFO conference. And I learned that Dance Conferences might be my new favorite conferences, because they are fun, and what they do is dance. They don't just talk about dancing; they dance. At music conferences, they talk about music, and a select few people perform, but just hey let's everybody do this--not so much. So it was refreshing.

Here is a link to the program.  It started out with a guest speaker, Carrie Eakins, who is a BYU graduate (BA and MA) and incidentally also Dallin Oaks' niece. She is a year older than me, so she would have been dancing at BYU back in those days when I tried out for the folk dance team once and didn't get in, and tried out for Young Ambassadors once and didn't get in, and then didn't really try again. (I was in Women's Chorus, but you did not have to audition back then. You do now.)

Well we did active things! We stood and did clapping and music (which I am totally going to do with my kids in primary tomorrow) and then we did drumming and movement, and it was a blast.

The room before I went in

Ed Austin directing traffic; Carrie Eakins is in the black. It looks like she knew I was taking her picture, but I honestly did not realize she was even in that picture until this moment.

The girl in the black and white skirt is the dance teacher Jessica Jones I will refer to later in this commentary.

This was the green ball I was using.

Carrie Eakins got into drumming when she was havin gsome serious health problems nearly 20 years ago, and was in a wheelchair because she could not dance because she could not even walk. But she is a dancer, so sitting in a wheelchair every day got very old and boring. So she took up drumming, and she also did lots of therapy and had some surgeries, and she is definitely dancing again. Also finishing up a PhD, and traveling the world doing drumming activities all over the place.

Next was kecak with Jeremy Grimshaw, which of course I have been doing for many years. Fun to watch the reaction of the dancers to the strangeness of kecak.

After lunch, we learned a hula dance--one about Pele. I was not very good at it, and I no longer remember the names of all the steps we learned, even though she had us repeat them several times, and I am sure I can't do the dance anymore already, but I really, really hope that I was pretty darn good at being bad at doing that dance!

Our teacher was Kaui Tu'ia

The people in front of me. There is Jessica again!

Showing us how it is done

After hula, I had to run pick up Josie and take her to a spontaneous reyong sectional since Dallin was STILL WRITING THE PARTS for the performance that we would be doing on Saturday. And Josie was one of the four people doing that part. So I missed a bit of Mary Beth Johnson's report on her NFO grant funded trip to Ukraine to learn from dance teachers there.

Then Laraine Miner reported on her NFO grant funded work on the folk dances of the Mormon Pioneers. (They were the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints pioneers actually factually. We apparently need to go back in time and tell them to please call themselves that.) That was super interesting. Her new book about it has a DVD as well, and she talks about what they wore as well. Then a girl I know named Jessica Jones (who coincidentally is NOT the other Jessica Jones I know who used to play in the gamelan with me) had her dance students there to dance the dances. They were wearing clothing made from actual patterns of pioneer clothing. So interesting. Some of the dances were really fun. Some were rather dull. Everyone wore gloves--no touching the opposite sex or even anyone at a dance with your fingers!

Then they were coming to our gamelan rehearsal. So it is kind of comical that BYU, who pays me to work, then paid for me to go to the class I normally go to as a part of the registration for this event.  I got to gamelan ahead of the crowd. Most of the instruments were already in the room because Josie and Amelia had moved all of them before they began their reyong intensive clinical. But they (the instruments--not Josie and Amelia) were pretty far forward in the room, so I suggested to Jeremy that we should move the instruments back, and put some rows of chairs at the front for the visitors--oh yes! I neglected to say that when I read the program on Thursday when I registered, I was all "What the heck?" because he had not mentioned that a whole boat load of people were coming to learn about the gamelan on our LAST PRACTICE (save the two hours of dress rehearsal) before a performance!!! When Dallin had barely the day before finished writing the ending of a piece!!! And we had suling players coming from Music 307 who did not even know what a suling was!!!! ARRGH!! Such excellent timing without any warning to anyone in the group!

So he did not take my suggestion and we got all set up, and then people from NFO were coming and coming, so THEN we had to all move the instruments back to make more room. When--hello--we could have done it that way from the beginning--just saying...

And then, at the end of gamelan rehearsal EVERYONE DISAPPEARED. Dirk and I and this Music 307 student named Raimundo and Josie and Amelia were the ONLY ONES LEFT. Jeremy had run out to his car to get two new flat carts for moving things, and he came back and was all "Where is everyone?"

Anyways, attending NFO was very fun, and I know that the folk dance professors were all super happy that I was there because now they realize that I actually, truthfully, demonstrably AM interested in what they do. Which is fun--they do fun things.

Today I wondered about trying to squeeze in going to Miriam's organ recital, or going to the morning of NFO classes (Ed Austin said, "You need to come to MY session on Saturday morning!) but decided I should stay home and do things like the banking before rushing off for set up.

And--they were still putting up the risers for the gamelan when I got there. So that took easily twice as long as I expected. Then a quick stop at the store and then home to pick up Josie and go back for two hours of rehearsal. (Josie did not come and help set up, because she and Amelia had single-handedly (but there were two of them, so double handedly?) done the Friday set up, and then after THREE HOURS of rehearsal, playing reyong, so some upper body work out for sure, had been part of the small group of us who put everything away, and she was not feeling well, so she decided to save herself for the rehearsal and performance.)

Then practice, then home for a brief respite, and then back to perform, and then home to drop Josie off (still not feeling well, but she played well on the reyong part, so all the hard work paid out) then back to help put things away.

SO IRRITATING--we started with Belaganjur, and I put my suling and Josie's suling together at the back so I could pick them up on my way for the third piece. The second piece, I played jublag, and the suling were where I had left them. After that piece, JOSIE'S SULING WAS GONE. She had been playing cheng-cheng in front for the two pieces, and when she came, I just told her there was no suling for her to play, so she just had to go to the back and sit that piece out. What else could she do? She was playing a high suling, and I was playing a medium suling, so they are different. Well, she spent the time going over the reyong part and praying. So it worked out in the end.

So yah. Those were a busy few days.

Steps and miles:
Thursday -- 4.2 miles / 10,104 steps
Friday -- 4.9 miles / 11,758 steps (dancing will do that!)
Saturday -- 3.6 miles / 10,839 steps

Please explain Thursday and Saturday to me?! (These numbers seem--confusing...)

And what the heck, blogspot.com? WHY is there no edit from the page itself? That is annoying.

I am a little bit annoyed tonight. Probably need some sleep.