I felt revered...like a rising star that everyone wanted to emulate. The eyes of all these madams, these women so carefully dressed–a gold chain matching with a hanging belt, jeans embroidered with a lace edge–were fixed on me. If I grabbed my foot to stretch out my thigh, the woman with the Egyptian elongated eyes grabbed hers. When I bent over to touch the floor, another cooed: "Ooo, how flexible you are." The others nodded their heads in unison as if in the chorus of a musical. I wanted to stay staring at my feet, but I was also flattered. As my high school stage director Mr. Heitkamp once expressed in exasperated tones: "You want to be on stage, yet you don't want to be seen! I don't get it." I don't get it quite myself, Mr. Heitkamp, even after living for almost 50 years and being part of a good amount of productions. This feeling later increased when the main teacher told me to demonstrate the dance (The Shim Sham) in front of the class so he coul...