SISTER Theo is all excited about the Irish concert. She stomped into the rec with a big smile on her face today, and told us we are the last ones on the program. It’s the best place to be. The concert is in two days to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, at St. Mark’s School in town. We started practising in September and now it’s almost here. After that will be the music festival. Dancers, singers and choirs from all over the district will come and compete for top marks.
This year my group has learned how to do the Fairy Reel, an Irish dance with fancy foot work. We do square, line and star patterns as we are dancing. We have to keep straight backs and lift our legs high to do it well. And smile, of course. We wear green kilts with big silver pins, white satin shirts, black sequined boleros, black dance slippers and green hats.
Other dances we younger kids do are the Sailor’s Hornpipe, the Highland Fling and the Dutch Tulip Dance. The older girls do a Ukrainian dance, a garland dance, the tarantella which is an Italian dance, a Mexican dance, a Danish dance, a Spanish dance and other Irish dances.
The concert we put on is like a variety show. We sing, dance, do choral speaking and some dialogue, which is talking. There are forty of us girls picked out by Sister Theo and Sister Superior. Some dress up like boys, but we all wear make-up like rouge for our cheeks, eyebrow pencil, mascara, blue eye shadow and bright red lipstick.
We sing a lot of Irish songs in the concert. We harmonize in alto, tenor and soprano. We practise so much on Sunday afternoons that I sometimes almost fall asleep on my feet, and my whole body aches. If somebody sings off-key, Sister Superior keeps us singing until she finds out who it is. Then she makes them practise over and over alone until they get it on key. She makes us sing warm-ups and octaves over and over at the beginning. Do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do. Do, ti, la, so, fa, me, re, do. She hits the piano key hard to make sure we have it right. When Sister Superior says good, you know she means it.
I like singing. Sometimes at home my dad asks us girls to sing a song. We usually sing something like Ho Ro My Nut Brown Maiden or Bless This House that Sister Superior taught us, in harmony. Other times when we’re tired walking back from the river we hold hands and march in time to cadet songs Jimmy sings, like Rocky Mountain Rangers. The best is the one I call the tree song. When I’m in the hills alone on Baldy I sing a song with no words. It sounds like a bird call, a little like a laugh that goes into the trees and comes back in an echo. It’s like the trees are answering me. That’s why I call it the tree song.