Stahlke Adoption

Dancing Days

This past weekend featured two important dance events for our boys. On Saturday evening, Adam served as escort for a school friend at her Quinceañera. This event marks a young woman’s fifteenth birthday, and serves as a “coming out” ceremony. For more information, see the article on Quinceañera in Wikipedia. The section on Mexico has many of the events we experienced on Saturday night.

Adam had attended weekly dance rehearsals since September to learn the steps for the court’s dance. The evening also included a religious ceremony marking the girl’s transition to adulthood, a delicious banquet, lots of professional photos, a slide show from her babyhood to the present, and her own toasts to the fifteen most meaningful people in her life. The evening ended with hours of dancing:



On Sunday afternoon , our entire family and some good friends attended the recital of the Ukrainian Dance School. David and Kola’s first performances went very well, and they especially loved their costumes. The school does a great job of planning. The premise of the entire performance involved two girls waiting for St. Nicholas to arrive with gifts on his name day, which landed this year on Dec. 19, the very day of the recital (in the Julian calendar). A group of young devils played mischief with the calendar, turning it back to other months of the year, thus delaying St. Nicholas’ arrival.

David’s dance, the first in the recital, featured skaters playing on the ice. The girls made graceful turns and spins, while the boys “chased” them with hockey sticks. The dance ended with two of the girls checking the calendar and expressing joy that St. Nicholas Day was fast approaching. The girls fell asleep as they waited for him. Kola’s group performed when the devils turned the calendar back to May. Four or five young boys started the dance with mushroom hats, and the rest of the dancers (including Kola) jumped and leaped as grasshoppers.

At the end of the recital, St. Nicholas himself entered the hall , dressed in golden robes appropriate to his rank as a bishop. He distributed a gift to each child in the room, which took a very long time, but made them quite happy.

posted by Stahlkes @ 5:48 PM