Dance!

So we survived another recital. For all the complaining I do about the money and time and semi-dictator-type rules I am quickly realizing why we come back year after year.

Not only does Baby Girl love to dance, I love to WATCH her dance.

Probably a part of me fondly remembering my own dance recital days...I loved the performing and costumes and make-up and getting flowers.

Through the whole week of rehearsals that went until 8:30 at night and recitals that lasted 3 hours and spending most of that recital time "back stage" in the high school cafeteria, Baby Girl never complained. Never said she didn't want to do it. Most of the time was spent prancing around and admiring herself and having a good time.

When she steps on that stage you can see the joy in her face. She smiles from ear to ear. She is never nervous. It makes me happy just to see her do something she so obviously likes to do.

I sometimes get to know the other mothers during the year while we sit in the lobby of the studio. Many of them won't be back next year. They list all the reasons I have already complained about (money, costumes, crazy time commitments) and I don't blame them at all. But most of the time they also admit their daughter just didn't like it. Didn't like the dancing and the practicing and the performing. But I have a daughter who loves all that. So I will bring her back in the fall. I already registered her for Pre-Cecchetti II (do I sound pretentious yet?).

So I continue with my love-hate relationship with the studio. Maybe it's my thing. I complain endlessly about it and then sign her up for another year.

So I can see more of my daughter, happy like this.

All About Costumes

I complain so endlessly about the dance studio that Baby Girl attends you would think that

A. I would no longer be sending her there

and

B. I would just shut up about it and find a new place that is cheaper/closer/not so all about themselves.

You would be wrong.

Because

A. I am too lazy to research another place

and

B. Baby Girl has declared that she would like to be a Toe Dancer and I know this is one of the few studios that will train her how to do that the proper way.

So I suck it up (for the most part) pay my money, drive her to the class every Monday night September through June and go through a never ending rehearsal schedule for their Recital/Showcase (oh, don't even get me started on why they are called two different things).

This is our third year with Baby Girl at this studio and the first two years just about broke me. It wasn't the schedule, or even the money. It was the costume. Parents do not get any input in what the kids wear, so it is always a "surprise" that shows up as a picture on a bulletin board a few months before the show.

For our first show I must have had a very naive idea of what a 4-year-old should be wearing for a performance because I certainly wasn't expecting this:

I was expecting pink frilly tutu and got Go Go Dancer.

I had high hopes for our second show. Baby Girl was 5 and the costume was a lot more expensive. Again, expecting miles of tulle and pastel leotards. Wrong again:

I couldn't stop thinking "Madonna, circa 1985."

I was really thinking that if we can't get a cute costume going for a group of ballet loving 6-year-olds I might have to bite the bullet and find a new studio.

Last week I saw the other Moms hovering around the boards and got that sinking feeling. I approached slowly...and then I saw it:

(sorry for the poor quality, camera phone picture)

I think I scared the woman next to me when I started jumping up and down and clapping my hands and squealing with glee. It was CUTE! It was AGE APPROPRIATE! It didn't involve animal print or studded chokers!

Ok Dance Studio...you win. We'll be back.