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Four-year-old Cash Contreras vibrates with childish energy -- hunkered beneath a set of ballet barres at Van Metre School of Dance on Broadway Avenue in downtown Maryville, he shifts his focus from the spurs jutting off of his pint-sized cowboy boots to the leather wallet stamped with pictures of horses and filled with loose change to the Glo Stick hanging on a lanyard around his neck.

His whole body seems to hum, as if at any moment he'll explode into tornadic fury like the animated Tasmanian Devil, whirling around the room in a dervish of mischief and laughter and wide-eyed exuberance. Across the room, his mother pauses as the dancers choreographed by Appalachian Ballet Company Director Amy Morton take their places on the rehearsal floor.

His mother inhales, lungs full of air warmed by the movement of lithe bodies and creative energy. She begins to sing. And time seems to stop.

Cash watches and listens. No doubt, he's seen his mother -- Robin Ella Contreras Bailey, otherwise known as Robinella -- sing dozens of times, perhaps hundreds, but with a voice like hers, his attention is pulled into focus, along with that of everyone else in the room. The dancers go through their routines ... Morton watches closely, ready with correction and suggestion ... and everyone else sits and listens, entranced.

Mothers in the lobby ... students lining the wall ... all eyes are on the young woman with the heavenly soprano and the grace and beauty of both her voice and the dancers inspired by it. Thursday, Robinella will provide music for the company's annual "Bluejeans and Ballet" production, and no doubt, members of the public who attend will be just as enthralled.

But perhaps no one will be as enthralled as Robinella herself. This year marks the second "Bluejeans" production she's performed with the Appalachian Ballet Company, and while her music has always inspired dancers to take the floor, providing the backdrop for a fine arts production like ballet has been a new experience -- one of many such experiences the Blount County native has had over the past year.

She has a new husband. By the end of the year (fingers crossed), she'll have released a new album. Ditto for a new house she's renovating in downtown Maryville. In retrospect, it's pretty much a new life for the girl who grew up in Lanier, landed a major label record deal and still has a loyal fanbase around the country.

But don't let that change your opinion of her. Because she's also discovering that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

"I don't like for people to think I'm anything more than just Maryville Robin," she told The Daily Times this week. "Anything else makes me a little uncomfortable. I think at another time, I would have been so thrilled to be in the spotlight; I would have eaten it all up. But something's changed, and now I don't want people to think too much of me. Maybe it's because I don't want to let them down, but I'd like for people to think of me as just plain old Robin."

For many folks around these parts, that's how they've always thought of her. From her childhood in the Lanier community -- the daughter of Jerry and Nell Tipton -- to her time at the University of Tennessee ... from her stints with the String Beans and Robinella and the CCstringband -- from her debut with Sony Records to her sophomore album with Dualtone ... from the dissolution of her public marriage to former bandmate Cruz Contreras to her new marriage to Webster Bailey ... she's always been just Robin to many Blount Countians. Her life and career may have been public since she first started winning reader polls and packing in audiences at Barley's Taproom in Knoxville's Old City, but she's also been a Blount County sweetheart -- a hometown girl who's a focal point of pride and talent.

"I do all of these local things now -- I don't like to go anywhere too far away unless I'm making money, because I don't like to be away from home and away from Cash," she said. "I'm going to go to Nova Scotia for a standing show, and at the beginning of October, I'm going back out for a couple of days. I've got a couple of shows in November up in Massachusetts. But I stay pretty busy locally, playing private parties and my regular show on Sundays."

Motherhood and music keep her plenty busy -- so much that her painting has taken a backseat of late, although she plans on returning to it soon -- to finish up a commissioned piece and to do the artwork for her new album, which she intends to have out by the end of the year. She's kicking around some tentative titles, but right now, she's leaning toward "Black, White and Gold." It's a visual title and a metaphorical one as well, the central theme of which is love lost, love lived and love gained, she said.

"I wrote a couple of songs that came out of the divorce, and I've got some songs about life and one or two about love," she said. "It's really personal. I think I would write things that were even more personal, but for fear of embarrassing myself. I like to make things real personal, but some ideas I have to keep to myself sometimes, too."

She's on friendly terms with her ex-husband, who's since moved to Knoxville and is focusing on his own musical career, and making the new record without him has been a challenge, she added.

"It's weird -- over the last year, doing interviews, I was so used to just looking over at Cruz and seeing what he thought," she said. "I was so used to him advising me and seeing what he had to say. It's been hard to look inward and find the answers for myself. But once you have a little practice at it, it comes a little easier. This record is going to be all me, and I'm excited about that, too. It'll be my fifth record, and it's really the best thing for (an artist) like me to do."

She'll perform one new song on Thursday -- "Left, Right, Back Together," originally written for the Knoxville Swing Dance Association and set to ballet through Morton's choreography. The bulk of Thursday's program, however, will be old favorites familiar to anyone who's listened to the radio or sang in a church over the past 50 years.

"I thought our audiences together would love to have some songs that they recognize," she said. "Last year, the show was all my songs, and everyone wasn't familiar with them so much. Amy is really good at illustrating the songs with her dance moves, but I think she can be a little more playful this year."

John Denver's "Leaving on a Jet Plane" ... "The Sounds of Silence," by Simon and Garfunkel ... Kenny Rogers' "Ruby" ... a gospel medley of "I'll Fly Away," "Old Time Religion," "I Saw the Light" and "His Eyes on the Sparrow" ... all are part of the program, as are three Dolly Parton songs -- including the hit "9 to 5," in which the dancers will perform with briefcases.

"It's entertainment for me just watching the girls dance," she said. "I didn't know I liked ballet until I watched it last year. I've spent so much time playing with guys and working with guy players that it's really meant something to do this. It feels like we're women working together to achieve something really beautiful.

"And plus, we're trying to think of ideas to grab people's attention and make them more comfortable with ballet. I think a lot of people think ballet is sophisticated, and it is, but it can be a Maryville art, too. We can definitely pull this off here in Maryville."

A lot can be "pulled off" here in Maryville, she's discovering -- a life outside of country music stardom that's just as adventurous, just as fulfilling, just as satisfying as anything she might have dreamed of when she first took the stage.

"I am content -- real content," she said. "I feel like things are a little easier than they used to be. I feel like I've just been running and working and trying to get to this place and never getting there. I still haven't gotten there, but where I'm at is good. It's always felt like I've been grabbing in the dark for this certain thing, but I didn't know what it was or what it felt like, and I just got tired.

"Now, I don't have to keep grabbing. I don't have to get anywhere. I don't have to get anything, because I've got it all -- materially, emotionally, spiritually. I've got all of the things I need."