Miles's blog

As everyone knows, I am extremely proud of my daughter Megan.  She has been working hard to make it as a professional dancer in New York, and now we have something to celebrate.  Meg has been selected to be a member of the Trisha Brown Dance Company.  This is a major achievement.  Trisha Brown is one of the most acclaimed modern dance choreographers in the world.  Her company tours the world and performs at some of dance’s greatest venues.

To get an idea of the caliber of this company, check out the art auction they are having for their annual fund raiser.  The tickets to attend start at $500.  (No, I will not be going, but Meg will attend as a member of the company.)  Artists include the world-famous Robert Rauschenberg and Roy Lichtenstein, and pieces are valued at thousands of dollars.  

Meg leaves next month to perform in Phoenix and Tucson.  A nice jaunt for the middle of February.  Looking at the calendar, they are scheduled to perform in the first half of 2012 in Chile, Scotland, and Ireland.  Wow.  Good thing Meg likes to travel, having spent an extensive amount of time in Europe.  What great experiences she has to look forward to.  

Hopefully there will be a performance in New York City at some point so I can see her.  Watching the videos of this company it looks like the kind of dancing I enjoy.  That has not always been true of the work Meg has been in, so I am really glad she has been accepted into this company.   

I can’t help but reflect on Meg’s journey to this place.  How she decided at age 12 that she wanted to take dance lessons, an age when most people who become professional dancers have already been through years of lessons and dozens of shows.  Only a short time later she auditioned for the Denver School for the Arts, and I was convinced she had insufficient experience.  The dance teacher saw something more.  At first she was put in the back while more experienced dancers got bigger parts, but by her senior year Meg was the best dancer there.  

Still, I wondered about her future.  I was not sure if dance was a good choice for a major in college.  Meg is smart and could have majored in lots of subjects.  But she told us she wanted to be a dance major and set her sights on New York University.  We went to visit NYU when Meg was a junior and the performance we saw was terrific.  The dancers were so good, and the dancing was so fast compared to what Meg was doing in high school, I doubted whether she had the talent to be accepted into such a program.  I will never forget running into the DSA dance teacher in the bathroom after we returned from New York, and asking him whether he thought Meg was good enough to be accepted to NYU.  “Yeah,” he said, “I think she is.”  That was the first time it dawned on me that Meg was really talented.

Still, the audition process was stressful.  Meg and I went to Florida State together where she auditioned with dozens of others in one of a series of auditions.  She was not asked to perform a solo, which was problematic.  They said solos were not asked of those who either were not being considered or who were so good such an additional performance was deemed unnecessary.  The questions were answered two weeks later when Florida State accepted Meg before their audition process was even finished.  But NYU remained.

Meg auditioned for other schools, but NYU was always her first choice.  From our visit the year before Meg felt comfortable in the building and with the people.  Her mother was with her for the audition.  She called me from the bathroom to tell me Meg had gotten a callback, for NYU a required step to acceptance.  Meg said she felt good about her audition.  The letter of acceptance triggered a celebration.

NYU was no picnic.  Meg worked hard, but so did most everyone there.  Watching her on stage I was always impressed with her skill, but I was with everyone else, too.  Obviously, the old man has no eye for dance talent.  Meg had spent a summer at a dance program in Austria as an exchange student, and opted to spend a year there post-graduate.  It was not a degree program, and she does not have a master’s, but the year in Austria really helped Meg a lot.  She worked hard on her dancing, and had a chance to travel around Europe.  She made connections with people from all over the world, and she gained a lot of confidence.

When she returned she entered the life of a professional dancer.  Classes, odd jobs, dance work where she could find it, often for little or no pay.  But she continued to work hard, and try to improve.  

The audition for Trisha Brown was a grueling, three-week process, starting with about 100 women (the men audition sepately), and going through a series of cut-downs, each stage cause for trepidation.  But Meg stayed strong and confident.  She concentrated on being in the moment, enjoying the movement, and having a good time.  Fortunately Meg knows some members of the company so she could see familiar faces, which helped calm her down.  

When Meg called to tell me she was offered the full time position (there were two apprenticeships also available) we were overjoyed.  Meg will be doing movement she loves all over the world with people she really enjoys.  And really, who could ask for a better job than that?