My granddaughter was sitting on a bench in the lobby of New York’s City Center, swinging her legs and patiently waiting for me to finish my conversation with the lobby manager. When I came to sit down with her, she asked me some questions and I answered them and we sat together to wait for something to change our plans. We were at Manhattan’s “first performing arts center … for theater, music and dance” because we had come to see some dancers.
I had come to New York via New Jersey, where I was going to spend Christmas with six-year-old Imani, her ten-year-old brother Xavion, and their parents, one of whom is my eldest daughter. My first bride, who lives in Manhattan, managed to wrangle tickets for December 20th, for the two of us and our two grandpups to see different things at different venues.
Her mother told me that our daughter had expressed some concern about “breaking up” the two children. Imani, when at home, is attached so firmly to her brother’s side that they can sometimes be mistaken for one malformed human. But my grandson likes music — he is second chair trombonist for his schools’ orchestra — and his sister likes dance and gymnastics. Bride one has some “connections” at Jazz at Lincoln Center, the offshoot of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts that, in the early 80s, was developed in an attempt to appeal to a younger and more diverse audience. Cathy and Xavion were going to Jazz at Lincoln Center to see and meet the musicians, while Imani and I were to travel a short distance away to the City Center, for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. The grandparents believed that the six-year-old would be sufficiently captivated by the muscular and vibrant dancers to sit through and enjoy a night at the dance. But Imani and I were on a bench in the lobby because our tickets were purchased for the wrong day.
Imani and I had remained in the cab after Cathy and Xavion had exited at 150 West 65th St., where Lincoln Center is located. The driver then proceeded to 130 West 56th St., to drop off the dancer and her grandfather. We jumped from the cab and presented our tickets to the person on the door, who examined them and told me that the tickets were for a future performance. My first thought was to turn from the door and bark, “Taxi” but the doorman suggested that I speak to the lobby manager. “Maybe there can be some accommodation,” he said, glancing at the child attached to my lowered left hand.
Accommodations were made, and the child who cannot sit still, who dances with the air and twists, squirms and balances on the edge of furniture, sat enthralled as the Alvin Ailey dancers performed on the stage below us. She listened intently to the words of Odetta, the folk singer and activist whose music has been called “the soundtrack of the Civil Rights movement,” as dancers illustrated the feelings with their movements. Imani leaned forward in her chair to better see the craft of the dancers as they performed an energetic “Uprising,” and swayed in time with the movements of the two dancers who performed “After The Rain (Pas de deux).”
When we reunited with her grandmother and brother, Imani’s excited description of the dances she saw were ample reward to me for having spent the evening at the theater with her, seeing her interaction with the performance and imagining how she processed what she saw, through her unique dancer’s view.