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Dance Recital 2011

Ben and Katie were both in a dance recital last week. Katie takes hip-hop and Ben takes ballroom.


The ballroom dance was the Cha-Cha this year. He is dancing with his real life girlfriend, Noelle.

Ben has been taking ballroom for a couple of years now. Katie only just started hip-hop classes about six weeks ago. When she started the class, the other students had already started learning the recital dance and they had quite a head start on Katie. As soon as she learned about the recital, of course, she wanted to be in it. Baby likes a chance to shine. I was opposed to her jumping on the recital bandwagon. "There are only six classes before the recital, I don't know if that's enough time for you to learn the dance." She begged and pleaded, we discussed it with her teacher, and he said as long as she knew the dance, she could be in the recital. Thanks, teach!

Fortunately he had uploaded a video of the dance to you tube and Katie practiced it every day until she had it down pat. I've seen her do that dance every week at class and every day at home. She knew that dance better than most of the girls in class. But when she strolled out on stage, she was decidedly not doing the dance I'd seen so many times. Suddenly, her hips were swaying, her shoulders rolling, and she sashayed around that stage in a manner I had not seen before.


Note how even when the dance is over, she maintains that "I'm so cool" attitude. When the dancers left the stage, Kerry and I looked at each other, closed our mouths, and said, "What was THAT?"

When we found her after the recital, I mentioned that she seemed to be using a lot more hips and shoulders in her dance. "Right before we went out, our teacher said, 'Remember! Dance with attitude!' So I did!"

Thanks again, teach!

On the way home, we praised Katie greatly for the fact that she had learned the dance so quickly and knew it better than most of the girls on stage. We talked about how she had worked so hard and all that hard work had paid off.

Then, out of the corner of his mouth ventriloquist-style, Ben suddenly said, "You did a great job too, Ben!"

Oops! Sorry! You did do a great job Ben!

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