Tag Archives: Dance

Now & Forever ABCs (Lauren)

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Lauren Felicia Conners

9 January 1996
Lutheran (ELCA)

Lauren is a perfectionist.  She is always striving for excellence in anything she puts her hand to, be it her dancing, her studies, or setting the table.  Often this leaves her with an remarkable lack of confidence — she’s always worried she’ll mess up or fail.

She fell in love with dance at an early age.  By three she had shown such intense desire to dance that her parents had signed her up for lessons, because her wish to learn exceeded her family’s ability to teach her given that none of them knew more than ballroom dancing.  It became her life.  She has studied ballet from that first day — her love of dance having been born upon seeing a ballet, she’d begged to learn ‘the pretty dance’.  From there, however, she branched out and has taken further lessons in ballroom and latin dancing.  She has taken belly dance lessons, and is a long time student of a local modern and jazz dance instructor.  And, of course, ballet — always, she studies ballet.

Eventually she moved from her old ballet school to Mademoiselle Jeanette‘s as it offered a chance to gain greater experience on stage as well as a far more advanced study of technique.  In addition to dancing, Lauren has some interest in general performance so often tries out for school plays and takes drama electives when she gets the chance.

Lauren’s next great love is church.  She has grown up in a very religious family, and has a strong sense of the importance of God and faith.  Between that and having received all of her schooling from Catholic schools she took a strong interest in theology, especially Christian theology.  She has read every English translation of the Bible she could, and thoroughly, as well as making a devoted study of the history of the Abrahamic faiths and the Hebrew people.  She tries to understand her religion and its origins.  This has lead her to frequently excel in her Religious Studies lessons, such her school eventually ran out of options but to skip her ahead in subject, first placing her in Freshman theology in eighth grade, then in Junior’s level in her ninth grade year.  Even placing her in AP level courses has done little to assuage her boredom in these classes.

Her perfectionist and pious nature expresses itself in her relationships with others.  When she dates, she approaches it with the assumption that this person could be who she spends the rest of her life with — she doesn’t date to date or for social status, but to find the one person God has meant for her to be with.  When she makes friends she loves those friends and values those friendships deeply — even a casual friend, or even simply a friendly acquaintance is someone who Lauren cares deeply for and about.  Her capacity for forgiveness and caring even extends to those who are anything but friends — she’s human, she still manages to have angry thoughts and to see horrible things happen to those who upset her, but she simultaneously feels rather guilty about those thoughts and quickly tries to forgive them as much as she can.

This, plus her encyclopaedic knowledge of the Bible have led many to, depending how much they like her, affectionately or derisively refer to her as Saint Lauren and similar.  She’s seen as too sweet to be real, too good, and other things.  Those who know her well know this isn’t true — that she can be catty or mean when provoked, the she can hold the occasional grudge, that she does not always follow the rules, and that — despite being a virgin — she possibly knows as much or more than some who aren’t — she will investigate any curiosity she has in books and internet, including sexuality.

The one naïvety she ever expresses is in the form of aspects of pop culture.  While Lauren’s family has a television, it is used expressly for watching DVDs, Apple TV, and Blu-Rays; they have no cable nor antenna.  She does listen to the radio, both internet and airwaves (primarily satellite, but sometimes FM) and has an impressive collection of music, both physical and iTunes, and she enjoys movies from every era starting with the original silent silver screen flicks to the newest special effects blockbusters.  Still, the latest hit shows, latest popular talk show trivialities, and other goings on in the daily lives of the little people in the magic box are lost on her.  She’s watched the telly before, and it bored her.

Her friends call her a humble Hermione Granger (simply Hermione for short), and Linus — as in the Peanuts character who has such a habit of quoting Bible verse — but thanks to Salencia they’ve taken to simply calling her Pixie; a nickname she’s far more fond and proud of.  It’s also rather apt.  She has forever been a tiny girl, not always shortest in her class, but close to, very much lithe and petite — many of her clothes can still be bought in the children’s section of the department store, what of it she doesn’t make for herself, and combined with a complexion that is all freckles with copper red hair, she agrees with Sally:  the name fits.

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Now & Forever ABCs (Mlle Jeanette)

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Mademoiselle Jeanette Louise Marie Deveraux née Olivier

22 June 1964
Roman Catholic

Mademoiselle Jeanette, as she insists her students call her, is a Parisian ballerina who studied at L’École de Danse de l’Opéra de Paris and performed with various ballet companies including the Opéra National de Paris until after the birth of her second child when she elected to begin teaching instead.

In the late nineties Gabriel, her husband, was offered a promotion that caused the family to locate to Tacoma. Undaunted, Mademoiselle bid adieu to her French students and had an appointment with a real estate agent to look for a location for her new school scheduled the very day after her plane landed in Seattle.

She is a quirky woman who loves to laugh and to see her students laugh. While her English is letter perfect, and if she cares to she can speak with a nearly Oxfordian English accent, she does not make the conscious effort that such a feat requires for her, and has been known to exaggerate her native Parisian accent to various levels just to see the smiles it elicits.

Hers is a repertory school, Jeanette having never lost her love of the stage, and combines her favourite class of students:  children. As a result she accepts experienced students between the ages of eight and eighteen.  Though many of her students give up dance after graduation, a fact that she is quite philosophical about, those who have gone on to careers as dance instructors or performers have been successful, a fact that she is quite proud of.

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Now & Forever ABCs (Aaron)

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Aaron Sean Sala

4 February 1994
Methodist

Aaron is a dancer attending both of the same dance schools as Lauren.  They met shortly after Lauren started her lessons in dance and the two became friends as they have a great deal in common with regards to personalities and tastes.

Aaron is a quiet, gentle tempered boy who loves working with children and who plans to pursue a degree in education and who volunteers heavily with the children’s groups at his church.

He has a flirtatious side and can be outgoing when he wants to be — usually when he feels like tormenting Travis, to whom he is genuinely attracted.  Travis has never had a regular boyfriend, though he has been on a few dates with guys.  Normally his social life is platonic, and involves taking out various friends, male and female alike, for fun and charming evenings.

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