DANCING NAPKINS

Penn View alumni Brooks Inciardi in his memorable role as Lumiere
for Dock's performance of Beauty and the Beast in 2011

Relishing the enthusiastic and delightfully unruly antics of the candlestick Lumiére has for years been my favorite part of the musical Beauty and the Beast.  

Calvin Derstein as Penn View's beloved candlestick

But last month I gained new appreciation for a portion of the performance I had never before paused to consider.  The process behind napkins who know how to DANCE.

Penn View’s Drama Department prepared a wonderful presentation of Beauty and the Beast, Jr for enthralled crowds at the beginning of March.  One month earlier, our Family and Consumer Science instructor Melanie Baker took on the challenge of creating thirty skirts which would enchantingly transform thirty ordinary (albeit brave and rhythmically gifted) middle school students into thirty fabulous dancing napkins.

Having not an ounce of ability in the area of sewing, Mel's task is something I could never have accomplished in my wildest dreams.  Which is part of the reason I was intrigued to the point of volunteering my assistance when I heard she was looking for helpers! I had to see it for myself.

Not feigning skills I lack, I was forthright with my lack of sewing competency.  I advertised myself as unskilled labor and told her I was willing to learn or accomplish whatever mundane task she wanted to assign.  Still, she gave me the benefit of the doubt and when I arrived she remained in hopeful optimism that I would in some way touch a sewing machine.  

There were instruction sheets, handcrafted patterns, and foreign objects like bobbins….  
There was expectancy on her face.  But, nope. 

It didn’t take long before I was wisely steered away from the sewing machines and put to work on the far side of the room.  My task was to pin a long rectangular pattern to white cotton and cut out long strips of fabric. Some loser in Ancient Egypt did the same trivial thing for countless mummified remains.

The long fabric tails would become waistbands for skirts once placed into the hands of people who actually know how to thread a needle on a machine.  People like the three talented Middle School students who volunteered their time to help and had more awareness about making a garment than the school nurse who has had more than half a century to glean that knowledge.  

Mackenzie Smith, Ruth Michel and Olivia Yetter created skirts with admirable confidence while I was applying Bandaids (yes, plural) to the pinholes I had inadvertently poked into the tips of my fingers. Of course the skirt fabric had to be white….

Student Mackenzie Smith and PE teacher Cheryl Ryder turning fabric into twirling masterpieces 

Administrative Assistant Bonnie Miller
pressing a skirt

While several of my coworkers were displaying the skills of a seamstress, their machines humming complicated quartets about the superiority of their needlework skills…I was sweating (I kid you not) and trying desperately not to make a mistake while I cut out my long simple strips. I'm not to proud to say I was eyeing the clock... just like I watched it when I was 15 years old and trying to complete a two hour shift of babysitting for the world's angriest toddler.  But that's a story for another day.

Band Director Shelley Berg along with Ruth and Olivia
(two of our magnificent student seamstresses). 

Science teacher and resident choreographer Lisa Reichley worked with the napkins until they were dancing like The Rockettes.  

PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE! 

The show was marvelous. Earned or not, I felt satisfaction knowing that the waistbands holding up those skirts were cut with my very own quaking hand.  

DRESS REHEARSAL FOR THE DANCING NAPKINS

So I guess one could say Penn View’s sewing project had a true Disney finish.  Mrs. Baker was a heroine. The dancing napkins were truly spectacular.  Even my fingertips lived happily ever after.