Hannah's Bad: hamming it up at the spring dance recital

Hannah's spring dance recital was the same day as HonFest so after a little rest, I slicked her hair into a bun, packed her costume, shoes, and snack into her backpack, and let Grammy walk her to the church around the corner where her school holds their performances. Eric followed shortly after, and Amy and I were right behind him after a trip to the grocery store to grab some last minute flowers.

The theme was light and dark so each class did two dances, one to something very saccharine and one to something with a little more edge (in some cases, a little too much edge...). Hannah's class danced ballet to Twinkle, Twinkle wearing the tutu she's pictured in below, and then in the second act they traded their tutus for jazz pants and their ballet slippers for tap shoes and danced to Michael Jackson's Bad. It. Was. Awesome. Hands down one of the most entertaining performances I have ever seen, and yeah, yeah, I know, I'm partial, but seriously, it was so cute. I can't wait for the video so I can try to clip out her scene and upload it everywhere.

The best part was at the very end when each class comes out one at a time to take a bow. Hannah aced this part. She bowed by tucking her chin to her chest and rolling her spine down a little rather than by folding at the hips, and she did it over and over and over again. She kept bowing and smiling this huge smile long after the rest of her class had stopped, and she kept it up even as the next class was filing out in front of her class. Then she poked her head between the shoulders of the girls who ended up in front of her and continued to bow! We were cracking up laughing. How did she get to be such a ham??

There's no flash allowed during the performance and although the stage is very well lit, all the pictures that Eric took during the performance are blurry. We hung around after the show and managed to talk Hannah into putting on her tutu again and posing on the stage for a few shots. She wasn't thrilled about it as you can tell from the forced smile, but she humored us.

Since Eric was manning the camera, I took advantage of the opportunity to be in a picture--the first picture of me and both kids! 

Eric declined his chance to be in a pic, so did my mom, and Amy tried to as well, but I managed to talk her into it.

We're taking the summer off but my guess is that she'll want to start dancing again in the fall, and I'm in favor of it because in addition to the obvious reason of wanting her to be happy and do the things she enjoys, I think that getting comfortable in front of a crowd at such a young age is a great experience and a huge confidence booster. Anyway we just inherited some leotards and tights so that'll cut down on our initial costs! All we'll have to do is stalk the consignment shops for new tap shoes and ballet slippers.....

Hannah's first dance recital

I didn't bother bringing my camera to Hannah's dance recital last weekend because of the no-flash rule. I figured that in a dark setting like that, no flash would yield blurry, un-postable pics. It wasn't as dark as I'd anticipated though, and fortunately, Sondra brought her iPad, which, even without a flash, managed to take some halfway decent shots. I'm not a big fan of Apple ever since owning one of their laptops in the years after college and fighting with it the entire time, but one thing I covet about those products is their cameras....

The Holiday Diversion program included dances to The Nutcracker, Christmas songs like Rudolph and Frosty, and some other random songs with ballet, tap, and modern dance routines. Hannah's class played the part of the mice in The Nutcracker and had a tap dance-off with another class who played soldiers. The kids were beyond adorable. Most of them had no clue what they were doing, and it was the cutest thing ever. Hannah came out and spent more time trying to pick us out of the audience than dancing. I felt bad because in spite of the fact that we were front and center, she didn't see us until she came out at the end for her bow. I spent the rest of the performance wrought with anxiety over the possibility of her thinking that we weren't there watching.

As far as I could tell, she didn't have any stage fright. Below is a pic of when they first came out and found their tape. They stared at each other for a while until their teacher stood up and helped guide them through their tap moves.

Hannah is front and center in this one so you should be able to pick her out. I think they were supposed to scurry through the soldiers...

She was in a better position for photographing when she came out for her bow. Look how cute they are in their little mouse costumes! Their teacher is a one-woman show. She makes all the costumes, runs the studio, teaches all the classes, choreographs all the dance moves, organizes the whole performance, etc.....

This next pic was taken shortly after she spotted us in the audience. She's mouthing the words "mom," "dad," and "grammy" and waving. (She hadn't yet discovered my dad and Sondra sitting on the other side of me.)

Shannon made this perfect little bouquet for me to give to Hannah after the show. She added blue thistle both for texture and because it's Hannah's favorite color.

After the performance the whole audience hovered around waiting for the dancers to get out of their costumes and come out. I'm not thrilled with how that whole scene went down. Fortunately my mom was standing up near the backstage door and caught Hannah as she came out. I was standing back a bit, trying not to crowd the door. I figured I'd see her backstage mom and would beeline to the front then, but her and a few other girls came out without their backstage mom, and they're so short that they just stood there all bewildered by the crowd of strange faces. I felt guilty about not being closer for days and vow to handle that differently should there be a next time. In the meantime, grammy saved the day and scooped her up.

I gave her a big hug and her bouquet, and Sondra snapped some more pictures.

Then we walked back to the house (the recital was right around the corner), and Hannah hung out with pappy and grandma Sondra for a few minutes while I whipped up some dinner and then hurried her off to bed.

We ordered a DVD so if anyone is interested in seeing her brief little mouse dance, stop by in about 6 weeks.