Two weeks down, four to go…

Julian is sad that the weeks are flying by. He’s completed two weeks already and has just four to go. However, they are definitely taking their toll on him. I’d recommend that everyone – girls and boys alike – really get in shape for a summer intensive like the American Ballet Theatre six-weeks in New York. It’s grueling, especially if you don’t normally dance seven hours a day (in humid, hot conditions). It also makes a difference if you don’t normally give 150 percent in your classes but you feel pushed to do so once at the intensive – both by the calibre of teachers and students.

After a day at home sleeping off a night of stomach upset, Julian went back to the intensive only to find himself sick again at the end of the day. He managed to throw up just once and then hobbled through watching the ABT performance of Swan Lake. We did, however, have to take taxis there and back. Once home, he suddenly got hungry and at the rest of the soup I’d made for him and then slept for 10 hours and woke up hungry.

While there we ran into a former Teen Dance Company artistic director, and a current master class teacher, professor at Buffalo State University in New York and choreographer for TDC (who will also be teaching at the upcoming TDC summer intensive), Carlos Jones, and he commented, “This is how you are supposed to feel.” This was after we asked him to come down to Julian’s seat at the Metropolitan Opera House to see Julian, who could not bring himself to move from the spot without feeling sick! (I guess that made us feel a bit better, although we haven’t heard of anyone else feeling this way. Of course, Julian is coming from a very dry climate – California – and Carlos said the humidity would be a tough climate change for him.)

I promised some more accurate information on the levels at ABT. They are from lowest to highest: yellow, red, blue, green, violet, aqua, indigo. Green and below are intermediate and everything from violet and above is advanced. The boys of all levels have men’s history and conditioning classes together. Otherwise, they are separated. So the intermediates, for instance, have partnering and men’s class together.

Julian is actually very satisfied with his level. He wanted to be in green but when he saw how good the boys in green were, he knew he was in the right level. Plus, the boys in green spend a fair amount of time with the boys in blue. In fact, Julian has friends in green, and they all seem to hang out together and help each other and teach each other things. Julian sometimes knows something a fellow green dancer doesn’t know and vice versa, so it works out well.

As for competition, I assume the boys all push to do better than the next, but at least at the intermediate level, the boys are friendly and nice and don’t seem to let competition get in the way of freindship.

Julian really adores his classes at ABT. In particular, he is getting a lot out of the partnering classes. This is the first chance he’s had to really work on ballet partnering. He hasn’t done much “guy stuff” in the men’s class, but he likes the camaraderie of being with all the boys. Technique classes are enjoyable also, and his choreography class, which is a jazz piece set to Elton John music, he says is awesome.

All in all, the classes, while tiring, are improving him already. He says he’s much better after just two weeks in New York.

As for his foot, which is better after one day off this week, the best I can do is to relate what chiropractor George Russell wrote to the physical therapist at ABT:

Julian appears to have a chronic sprain of the left anterior portion of the deltoid ligament of the ankle. It’s tender to the touch and hurts when he lands from jumps. the posterior part and the spring ligament appear fine. He’s pronated and in his barre work I coached him to even the two malleoli and get his weight a little more onto the heel, balanced inside to outside. I gave him a different foot exercise — lifting and spreading the toes, looking at the balanced malleoli and lifted arch in the mirror, and then letting the toes down without losing the alignment. He was doing doming over a tennis ball and resistance band work, which didn’t allow him to pay close attention to form and talar positioning.

Adjusting and icing the foot has helped, as it has in the past. Two days off will help as well. Julian does not plan to dance over the weekend. We had hopes of using the weekends for dance classes, but at least right now, he’s way too tired and needs the weekends to recover.

Tomorrow we go to see Marymount Manhattan and to find out about it’s dance program. We’ll get a tour from a TDC alumni.

Julian will be staying with another dancer and his mom for five days next week while I’m at a conference. I pray he stays healthy while I’m away! I really hate going at this point, but I can’t get out of it now. Hopefully it will all go smoothly. I will instruct him to drink lots of Gatorade and to use the packets of electrolytes that I have purchased at Whole Foods as well as better tasting Emergen-C packets. He’ll get much more sleep at their place, and it’s air conditioned. So, hopefully he’ll be okay. They do go to Broadway Dance Center twice a week to tap, but I told him not to tap if he doesn’t feel up to it. He can just watch. Or he can take part of the class.

Ugh…my nervous, worried mother is setting in. Why did I ever think I could leave him here in the city without being a wreck? If he hadn’t gotten sick this week, I’d probably be fine with it, but now… Okay, positive, creative thinking: It will be just fine. He’ll be just fine. I’ll let you know when I get back in a week.

ABT Summer Intensive Takes Its Toll on My Boy

Okay, well, I guess the New York Times article I read about the boy who went to the American Ballet Theatre summer intensive and suffered from shin splints and such painted a correct picture…or we’ve just hit some bad luck and made some bad choices. Julian is a week and a half into the ABT summer intensive himself and on Monday he slightly injured his left foot and tonight he has an upset stomach.

The slightly injured foot definitely comes from overuse and his tendency to pronate. (Remember, boys, think about this!) The chiropractor here in New York, George Russell, is a former dancer, and after he watched Julian do a few things, like plie, he saw exactly how Julian was straining his foot. Of course, he also has jammed his heel with jumps. I’ve been taught to adjust the heel, and that is helping, as is icing.

As for mistakes…well…First, we went off to a tap class with Jared Grimes at Broadway Dance Center last night knowing that Julian’s foot was not 100 percent. Also, he’d just danced 7 hours. He took a tap class at Broadway Dance Center last week, but it was nowhere near as strenuous. So, we didn’t help the foot, nor did we help Julian’s general state of fatigue.

And he is fatigued, let me tell you. He’s better this week, but last Friday after his first full week was over, he couldn’t lift his arms and he could hardly walk up the subway steps. His shoulders were sore to the touch!

The, second mistake, Julian didn’t drink enough water today. The studios are extremely hot, he says, and after lunch he began to feel nautious. He didn’t tell me this, however, and came home to eat some things he shouldn’t have eaten. And then he ate his salad at dinner but nothing else — which didn’t really help, even though it was healthy. Needless to say, not long afterwards he began throwing up. I hope it is a simple case of heat stroke and he’ll feel better in the morning and won’t have to miss classes.

I guess we won’t be doing any dancing this weekend…I think we’ll take it easy and go see some dance instead.

We didn’t get tickets to the ABT performance last weekend, because it conflicted with a trip to see his grandmother, who lives an hour outside of Manhattan. He failed to get the student tickets for Swan Lake, which opened this week, but I might just buy some.

We did go see In The Heights last Friday. It was awesome if you like hip hop and rap music. The dancing was really tremendous. The best of the dancers, a really classic hip hopper, told Julian it was great he was attending ABT. He said, “I went to Ailey and it changed my life.”

We met one of the young Simba’s from The Lion King while at Broadway Dance Center last week. He was sweet and polite and humble. He thought Julian’s tapping was awesome; he had just finished taking a beginner tap class. We saw Kiril Kulish leaving the theater after a performance, although we haven’t yet seen Billy Elliott. And Julian met David Alvarez at ABT, where he is taking some of the summer intensive classes but not all. Julian refrained from talking to him about Billy Elliott, since everyone else was doing so.

All in all, with the exception of the hurt foot and the upset tummy, it’s been a pretty good almost-two-weeks for Julian. He loves the ABT program. He’s made some friends with the guys both in blue and green levels as well as in yellow. He enjoys all his classes. He loves the partnering class and the boys class. He enjoys the teachers. He’s enormously glad he came, and he’s learned a ton in less than two weeks.

It’s been pretty good for me too (as long as I leave out some some details, like stopped up sinks, no TV reception which prevents us from watching So You Think You Can Dance, and me falling down the stairs to the apartment and twisting my knee and ankle).

Next time: How Julian feels about his level, info on his classes, his relationship with the boys, and what exactly is wrong with his foot!

Tap, Tap, Cough, Cough

Someone at Nuvo convention had some wicked virus or bronchitis, and, of course, Julian picked got it. Fever, coughing…whole shebang. We’ve gone to the doctor, gotten antibiotics, and gotten a bit of relief.

However, he had to miss the first of four days of tap choreography for the upcoming spring concert. He was bummed. He slept 18 hours one day and 16 the next. Then off he went to tap for four hours. The next day he tapped for eight hours. He was tired and his feet hurt, but no fever. He was still coughing, but that’s to be expected with bronchitis. Then…day four…he  became tired after a few hours, and when he got home after five hours of hoofing he had a fever again.

No school for Julian today or dance, for that matter. He stayed home coughing rather than tapping. The doctor says she isn’t convinced it’s bronchitis at this point. Lots of people are complaining their antibiotics aren’t working…us included.

I called our herbalist. She says its viral. Poor Julian is back on a regiment of about 20 herb pills every few hours. Something should kick in soon, at least we hope so.

He hates missing dance. He thinks he missed partnering class. I thought it ended two weeks ago…I could be wrong. We’ll see how he feels tomorrow. I think another day off would be a good thing.

More choreography next weekend. Unfortunately, it starts on Friday night. Julian was invited to a Sadie Hawkins dance at a neighboring school. He can’t go, because he would get there after they close the doors. He’s bummed.

The things boys give up for dance.

Back to Dancin’ – and Writin’ – Once Again

After a long hiatus, I’m back…and so is my son – to dancing that is.  I admit I got waylaid from writing this blog (I write another blog at www.purespiritcreations.com), and then my son got sick. Yes, first injured, then sick. He went off to camp, something he loves as much as dance, and six days later came down with a fever. Well, to make a really long story shorter, the fever kept coming back along with red eyes, and he had pain, first, in his hip and later behind his knees. The hip pain put us in the hospital over night and almost caused him to have hip surgery for what they thought was an infection in the joint, which could have been eating away at the joint. (OMG! Were we scared or what?!) The pain behind his knees and recurrent fever, which lasted for a month, along with the still-red eyes and peeling hands and feet put him back in the hospital for a weekend stay and tons of tests. They thought briefly that he had Kawasaki Disease, and treated him for that with an IVIG, and said he might not dance for a while (if ever) because of heart issues (not to mention the inflammation in his body and the pain behind his knees that made it impossible for him to stand for even a minute at a time. He could walk….)

But about three weeks later – after the pain behind his knees was gone and the fever had dissipated – one lone test result came back positive that seemed to indicate that he was bitten by a mouse tick. No, not a deer tick. (No Lyme Disease.) A mouse tick that cause him to get something called Relapsing Fever. The only problem was that we couldn’t retest him, because he had been given the IVIG, so we have no way to be certain that’s what he had. That’s what we think he had.  We go to the cardiologist this week, however, for one last set of tests – blood work, echo cardiogram, spleen ultrasound – and hopefully he will then be given a clean bill of health. The rhumatologist already cleared him. The cardiologist has to check his heart to make sure there is no sign of Kawasaki Disease having caused any problems, which is the only real way we know that he had that particular illness. (He does have lines on his fingernails that could indicate Kawasaki, but it could just be from the prolonged fever as well.) Hopefully his heart will be fine, and we can stick with the Relapsing Fever diagnosis and move on.

And, in the meantime, move on Julian has. Actually, we had a long summer of waiting this illness out. We finally went to a Chinese doctor who helped tremendously with teas and acupuncture. The latter was the best medicine, not surprisingly. We saw that even at the Olympics this year acupuncture was being offered to the athletes. I’m not sure if the antibiotics Julian took worked or the illness just ran its course and he got better; I’m positive, however, that the acupuncture made it possible for him to take a week-long intensive at and audition for Teen Dance Company just two weeks after his fever broke. (And I think the treatments brought the fever to an end.) So, he is now dancing up a storm at TDC, which is where Katee Shean, the final female contestant on So You Think You Can Dance got much of her dance training. And he’s also rehearsing for the San Jose Dance Theater’s production of The Nutcracker, in which he will be Fritz and perform the Russian dance with a former TDC member.

Oh, I might mention that one of the ways we got Julian back on track to dance after his illness was with huge doses of herbs. I took him to our herbalist (not the Chinese doctor, who is a herbalist – but we were afraid that his herbs were causing Julian to have allergic reactions) who tested him for a variety of things and then put him on specific herbs to boost his immune system and his adrenal glands primarily. She also was concerned with helping his lymphatic system and his liver cleans themselves. Anyway, he’s still taking herbs (large numbers of pills), and that really helped get him through and continues to keep his system boosted nicely. (We use herbs by Nature’s Sunshine, by the way.)

In addition, I put him back on his vitamins and supplements, a great brand called Usana that are now being taken by numerous Olympic athletes and were independently tested and shown to have the highest absorption level over any other supplements on the market. Julian used to get sick with some sort of infection – sinus, upper respiratory, pneumonia, etc. – at least six times a year and end up on an antibiotic. Since putting him on the Usana supplements, he gets sick maybe once a year – if that. They are amazing! (If anyone is interested in purchasing or selling Usana vitamins, please contact me directly at Namir@purespiritcreations.com. I would love to tell you more or help you or your dancing son get started taking these awesome supplements. My whole family takes them and stays so healthy! Actually, if you are interested, I’ll put you in contact with a former Olympic athlete and medical doctor who is involved in Usana as well and who can answer any of your questions and tell you how awesome these supplements are for athletes in general. By the way, I bought Julian a Usana business center; he plans on one day making some extra money with it himself by selling these products that keep him so healthy to other dancers!)

In the meantime, I’ve written several articles on dance. You can find an article about Jason Samuels Smith’s “Charlie’s Angels” in the September issue of Dance Spirit, an article on how to keep a dancer’s feet healthy in the September issue of Dance Teacher (Sorry…they don’t make their available on line), and a profile on how Denise Wall (mother of Travis Wall and Danny Tidwell of SYTYCD fame) turns out such fabulous dancers in the current (October) issue of Dance Teacher. I’m still working on the dance book, but I’ve had to slow down a bit – obviously. I’ll get back to it soon.

I’ll try to share some of what I learned from Denise Wall here. There was way too much to include in the article, and I’ll share a few tid bits from my interviews with other male dancers as well.

In the meantime, now that I’ve caught you up to date, suffice it to say, we are on a hectice dance and rehearsal schedule – back to dancing pretty much 6-7 days a week. We’re not sure we are in the right studio, but it will do for now. It’s turning out great dancers – two boys went to Juliard two years ago, and they only take 12 boys from across the nation per year. But it’s not perfect. Is any studio perfect? Maybe that’s what I’ll mull over next time.

Until then, keep those dancin’ boys dancin!