dancing concert - tick

It feels great to get things done early.  I am one of those people who never asked for an assignment extension, and mostly always have materials prepared a good week before they are due.  Some would say I am a girly swot.

So when our dancing teacher decided to have the dancing concert this year 6 months earlier than normal - it appealed greatly to my sense of organisation.  She decided to do this so as to not conflict with the ballet exams at the end of the year.  Hence a ballet concert in June!

We were at a new venue - Gateway Baptist - and it was great.  Lighting and everything!  The girls looked beautiful and danced wonderfully.  Many proud mummy moments.  Even when I could tell Gab was a bit nervous she pushed through and remembered her steps.  And Annika lights up like a spotlight on stage.  She loves it.  Each year they get better and better.  It is wonderful to watch them blossom and grow into who they are.

My little baboushka doll

when baboushka dolls go gangster

check out that bun! curls hairsprayed down

Gab is third from the left

'I'm a bird I can fly!' - she loved this simple costume

Gab on stage in the middle

she's so shy....

play the game of capture the sister

hmmmm...what are my steps

dancing in the middle somewhere

they really did not like this tap costume

we did it!

tap shoes ready?

on stage with tap dance - they are both in there somewhere

dancing concert

Well.  It's done.

Dancing concert 2010.  My fourth one in a row.

All things considered, it went very well.  There were minor costume dramas (somehow my oldest daughter lost half of her costume between the dress rehearsal and the performance - from a sealed bag!!!), parts where the youngest dancing class made everyone laugh out loud, lovely dancing from everyone, and very proud mummy moments as my two girls remembered all their steps and looked amazing and smiled.

5 things I like about our dance school
1. I don't have to sew costumes for the concert - we just hire them each year for $15 and they get reconfigured into different dances
2.  I have not met any pushy dancing mums - every other mum is happy to lend a hand with my dancing mum inadequacies - forgetting pins, lipstick, hairspray, where the children are supposed to be
3. All of the girls in the concert look beautiful, not tarty.  Even the big hip hop teenagers.
4. Our dancing teacher is calm and nothing ever seems to phase her.  I have never heard her shout - even when she had a baby in between the ballet exams and the concert last year.  She understands we have lives other than her dancing school.
5. My girls seem to have learnt to dance!

Some pictures...

dancing hair

My two girls do dancing.  Ballet and tap for one, jazz and tap for the other.  Mostly it is good - drop them off with their stuff, pick them up later - hopefully with more grace, poise and co-ordination.  If the constant performances in my loungeroom are anything to go by, I think they are learning something.

But it is concert month.  And I have to transform this hair

into this hair

It is not a task for the faint hearted.

But I do it.  My mum did it for me.  There was one particularly embarassing day when I was in grade three and I had a ballet concert that night, and I had to go to school with curlers in my hair and wear mum's scarf over the top of them.  And that was the day we met our pen pals from another school.  My pen pal took one look at his weirdly scarfed pen pal, and took off.  I don't blame him. He never wrote again.

Anyway, I do my girl's hair.  And probably say exactly the same phrases my mum used on me.  'You'll be right.' 'Pain is temporary'. 'Sit still and stop wriggling'.  'I've shaving it off' - actually only I probably just say that last one.

Concert practice week this week.  I need to be ready to mop up the meltdowns of the artistes!