Fridays are Broadway show tunes day in our spätzle production kitchen. Marty and I both love Broadway show tunes, and listening to them at the end of the week pushes us through production quickly and with tons of fun, lots of singing and dancing on my part too!
We all know the oldie but goodies musicals, but we tend to listen to the more modern ones. Of course, our favorite musical is Hamilton, which took the place of Jesus Christ Superstar after decades of being our # 1 pick.
We also love to belt out tunes to Rent, Six, In the Heights, Dear Evan Hansen, The Book of Mormons, Mean Girls, and The Greatest Showman, which technically isn’t a Broadway musical but was a movie. This is the shortlist because there are so many wonderful musicals to listen to.
My love of singing and dancing started when I was two years old. I took ballet, toe or point, and tap dance private lessons for about 8 or 9 years. I took classes at Miss Joyce’s School of Dance in Elizabeth, NJ. I loved dancing and went twice a week. I was good at ballet, but at tap dancing, I could keep up with my teacher Miss Joyce from the time I was 5 on.
I looked for more of my dance photos this morning, but there is a box of photos somewhere in our house that I can’t find. So many photos I want to share with you are in that box. It may be a wintertime project to find those photos.
After we moved from Elizabeth, NJ to Iselin, it became an ass ache for my parents to bring me to dance classes. At some point, they made me choose between cheerleading and dance. Since all my friends were on cheerleading, I chose that one. I am sure my parents let out a big sigh of relief. I remember thinking since I was a “tween,” if I wanted to take dance seriously, I would have to take classes in NYC, and that wasn’t going to be an option. My parents hated New York. I loved and still love it.
All my life, I’ve been some type of performer and quite a bit of a ham. Even as an adult, I love being a performer. When I started belly dancing, they asked me if I was interested in performing. You bet your ass I was! Three months later, I started my belly dancing career as a performer, teacher, and always a student.
When my sister Jennifer found me through Ancestory, I started to learn things about the paternal side of my family. It seems that many of my family members were performers; they sang and danced…some professionally. Many grew up and lived in NYC; they also loved to cook and were pretty good at bartending. Sounds familiar, right? So weird that things like that are in my genes.
When I was growing up with my adopted parents, my love of music came from my dad. My father always had music on no matter where he was. I remember being in the back seat of his car singing also to 50s music with Cousin Brucie. We also listened to ethnic music in our kitchen on Sunday mornings. I knew every Dean Martin and the Rat Pack songs by heart.
I have music on all the time; while cooking, cleaning, working, driving, etc. Listening to music in the production kitchen helps keep me focused, even though I know some people may think music is distracting. Music helps me focus when measuring ingredients because I am not thinking or, deep in my head, losing track of what I am doing. The few mistakes I’ve made over the last 4 years happened when we didn’t have music playing.
Until 2 years ago, I attributed my love of music to nurturing. Now I found out that it also came from nature. Nurture vs. nature is pretty interesting stuff. I count myself lucky to have had both shape me into the music-loving performer I am today.
Loved all of your pictures. You were such a beautiful little girl and I can just see you up on the stage dancing all around. So nice that you have continued dancing and now you are a beautiful lady.
Wonderful photos and great stories!