Saturday, June 10, 2006
Back in September, Sophie started taking ballet/tap/tumbling lessons at the low, low cost of $78 every 10 weeks plus registration fees and tiny shoes that cost more than a tank of gasoline. She fell a lot in the beginning, but liked it well enough to stick with it all year and perform in the end of year recital. (Only $145 for the "performance revue package"!) Sophie's group of two and three-year-olds danced to the song "Me and My Teddy Bear" - complete with teddy bear props - in the Friday night and Sunday afternoon recitals last weekend.
Admittedly, I had been dreading the recitals all year. Sophie loves to dance, and she's actually pretty good at it when she's shaking her boo-tay to Shakira songs. However, correctly executing a prescripted dance sequence is a different thing entirely. Throw in stage lights, an audience full of strangers, and a delicately lovely ballerina costume that is ABSOLUTELY NOT WACHINE WASHABLE SO DO YOU NEED TO USE THE BATHROOM NOW? HOW ABOUT NOW?, and you've got a nice setup for Potentially Bad Outcomes.
I wasn't able to attend the rehearsals for the recitals because of my work schedule, but according to Sean and my mother, sixteen little girls attempting a choreographed dance looks a lot like a goat rodeo. On top of that, our little goat distinguished herself as the kid most easily distracted by shiny objects:
1. At the first rehearsal, fifteen other little girls in her class sat down on cue during the finale. Sophie stood gazing into the stage lights until one of the teachers crawled out onto the stage and formally invited her to take a seat.
2. At the second rehearsal, Sophie faced the back of the stage instead of the audience.
3. At the dress rehearsal, while fifteen other little girls danced (more or less), Sophie put her teddy bear on her head. Later she explained to us that her bear wanted a piggyback ride. Sean told her that she needed to listen to what the teachers told her to do, not what the bear told her to do. (I made a mental note to explore the whole hearing-voices-from-inanimate-objects thing at a later date.)
On Friday, the day of the first recital, I called my mother at lunchtime and asked her to give Sophie a little pep talk about doing the dance that her teachers had taught her. "I tried," my mom said, "But she told me Nah, I'm just gonna make up my own dance." Sophie just wasn't grasping the concept of the choreographed dance. It appeared that the countdown to disaster was already well underway.
On Friday night, kids were to arrive in costume and stay backstage with a handful of designated chaperones until time for their class to perform. Read: parents were required to fork over their little sweetpeas at the door and quietly go join the audience cattle call. Sophie's group was scheduled to go on in the middle of the second act, so we had to sit through about an hour and a half of other performances. This did absolutely nothing to help my anxiety, especially since the people in back of us were snickering loudly throughout much of the show. Not so much at the skill (or lack thereof) involved, but at the unfortunate pairing of revealing costumes and jiggly waistlines. They damn near suffered brain aneurisms when a solo performer the approximate size and shape of The Grimace shook her groove thang to a song that included the lyric "...I'm your tiny dancer." By the time Sophie's group was ready to go onstage, I was shaking.
People, my girl came out on stage and danced her little heart out! Did the routine she was SUPPOSED to do, too! I could tell that at one point she was ready to bust out some Shakira moves, but she kept it together right up until the very end. Not that the kid didn't have a trick up her sleeve, though: when her group was leaving the stage, Sophie decided to do a little improvisation to the end of the song. She was the last little girl off the stage, exiting with dramatic flourish. There were "Awwwww!"s all around us and I heard the people in back of us say, "SO cute!" We were thrilled, Sophie's grandparents were delighted, and even her teacher was highly complimentary of her performance.
Sophie herself was so pleased with how things went on Friday night that during Sunday's performance, she entered AND exited with leaps and twirls. It definitely got the audience's attention, and as we should have known, that's pretty much Sophie's whole deal.
By the way, that horrible, nervewracking dress rehearsal? You can watch the video here. Sophie is the one who alternately sings along to the music, puts her teddy bear on her head, and stands around doing not much of anything at all. At the end of it, you can also see the seed of the idea for her little ad-lib performance starting to form...and be encouraged by her teacher!
# posted by Amanda at 5:49 PM |
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