Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Beginnings

My family moved to San Diego when I was five.  We lived in a part of town not too far from the harbor and there were many Portuguese tuna fisher families in the neighborhood.  That was my first exposure to soccer.  I remember kicking the ball around a bit in the street.  And we could also find soccer on the television, but only on the station in Tijuana, Mexico.

When I was eight we moved to the newly built suburbs to the north and soccer had not yet taken root like it has now.  So I really didn't start playing soccer again until high school.  That worked out well for my brother who is nine years younger.  He was able to start playing when he was five.  So he is a much more natural player. 

I didn't start playing soccer regularly until I was in college.  I played all the usual sports but through college my focus was tennis.  However soccer slowly took over.  I've always been fortunate to play on pretty good teams.  One of my teams won ten championships in twelve years.  Last month I started my twenty-third year with one of my teams.

I am part of a soccer family.  I began coaching soccer when I started law school.  I met my wife while coaching her women's team.  Our son plays soccer and is a coach.  My brother is a coach.  Three of his kids play soccer and my sister's son plays soccer.

We've been to the last five World Cups and I'm already making contacts for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.

My connection with ballet is through my sixteen and fourteen year old nieces.  But I think my first exposure to ballet came from the old television show, My Three Sons.  The oldest son Robbie was having trouble in football and the football coach suggested he try ballet to obtain good balance and coordination.  He took a lot of ribbing but then played better.  Or something like that.  Sadly, I was able to watch that as a first run in 1965.

The first ballet I attended was The Nutcracker.  I took my then five year old niece to see it as she had started ballet class a year or two before.  The only thing I knew about it was the first act because when I was in the sixth grade we did a variation as our school's Christmas play back when you could do Christmas plays.  I knew nothing about the ethnic parts in the later acts.  I just remember the look of fascination on my niece's face.

As my niece got older and progressed in ballet I would see some of her performances.  The first one I remember was based on the Wizard of Oz.  She couldn't have been much older than five or six but I could see that she paid attention and had a decent idea of what she was supposed to be doing.

Sadly all the video and photos from those early days were destroyed in a fire than burned hundreds of homes in San Diego in 2007.  Two weeks before the fire I did my first pas class with my niece.  For years I had been warned that when she was old enough for the class that I was expected to be her partner because her father has a bad back.  I had actually been in London that summer to take my niece to the Royal Ballet School's summer outreach program and we attended Sleeping Beauty at the Royal Opera House performed by La Scala Ballet.  We had seats in the fourth or fifth row center and it was amazing. 

Those first classes were memorable because the teacher just kind of expected us to know what to do.  There really wasn't any instruction.  Just watch and do it.  Then after two classes the fire hit and we didn't have any more classes that year.  The following year the class was done by men that were real ballet students.

Last year it was back to the dads, uncles and occasional brother.  But we actually had a male dancer as our teacher who showed us what we were supposed to do.  I found the class to be very difficult, but also rewarding.  It has definitely brought me and my niece closer.  She used to think I didn't like her because personality wise I'm much more like her younger sister and her sister had traveled with me to Germany for the 2006 World Cup so we just had more shared experiences.

My niece is a beautiful dancer.  I think it was three years ago when she had the role of Clara in the Nutcracker and it brought tears to my eyes.

So doing the pas class with my niece has opened my eyes to the world of ballet.  I wish I were better in the class.  I'm old, need both hips replaced, am usually limping from my soccer matches and have had countless soccer injuries over the years which makes me about as flexible as a broomstick, but I love dancing and it is very rewarding to remember a sequence of steps and pull it off without hurting any of the girls.

Monday, November 22, 2010

Inspiration

I have finally bitten the bullet and entered the wonderful world of blogging.

The title is a combination of expressions from two current interests of mine: soccer and ballet.

In soccer, coaches and commentators will talk about a player "getting stuck in" or "not getting stuck in."  I haven't found a real good definition of what that means.  As best as I can explain it, getting stuck in means very physical play.  A hard tackle that makes a statement that you are going to make it difficult for the other team to play.

In ballet, I've learned that saying "merde" to a dancer is like an expression of good luck.  Along the lines of saying "break a leg" to an actor.  For that, I must thank Rebecca King of the Miami City Ballet.

I must also thank Rebecca for opening up the wonderful world of ballet to me and for actually inspiring me to start this blog.  Rebecca blogs at Tendus Under a Palm Tree.  


Rebecca also tweets at bexking.  I've never met her or seen her dance but she has been very giving of her time to answer my questions about ballet.

I currently take one ballet class with my sixteen year old niece.  It is a partnering class and the studio needs guys who are able to lift the girls.  It is hard work.  I have a new found appreciation for the amazing talents of the girls and of how difficult it is for the professional men and women to make it look effortless.

But more about that in the posts that follow.