21 May 2010: Jacques D'Amboise 
May 20 materialized former New York City Ballet star Jacques D'Amboise's latest forway into lands most people shun: the inner-city ghettoes--Trenton, NJ, my birthplace, in this instance.
Into those places permeated by low incomes, unemployment, drug addiction, drug sellers, prostitution, hopelessness, he brings music, dance, fifteen minutes of fame for each child, and hope.
That is my impression, anyway. And that seemed to have been the reality each other time I attended these events.
Public schools were bereft of the culture we had enjoyed: music and art in addition to the usual humanities and sciences. The tanking economy, which always afflicts the poor first, had cut off these windows into creativity and joy.
How they deserved this "day in the sun."
I know that the African American culture is rife with lively music--Sunday church services rock with joy and an enviable depth of faith. So the children I saw on the stage in years past were not quite the strangers to the marvelous escape into rhythm and artforms I supposed.
Is this a review or speculation?
This year's performance was so different, so outstanding. Everything from costuming to sets to music to skill level and choreography was stunning. Even the kids in the back rows of dancers were coordinated.
I found out that auditions were now required--that not all the kids were allowed onto the stage anymore, which I knew was the point of Jacques D'Amboise's projects that have illuminated deprived lives for decades.
Stacks of Capezio shoe boxes lined the walls bac
kstage--something I hadn't seen before.
Was this all masking a fund raiser? I was told that next year's annual event would not be so lavish.
But the other kids, the ones like me who couldn't dance and always lurked in the shadows were it not for Jacques D'Amboise--where were they? The uncoordinated ones?
The ones who made me cry in years past? The ones who would grow up to sweep floors and collect trash and pump gas and be grateful for even that given our present economy. Where were they? The ones in need of memories the kids who did perform last night might soon take for granted?
