Skip to main content

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!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ben's Feet

Ben went camping with his youth group this weekend. He said it was the best weekend he's had since we've been in Hawaii, and possibly in his entire life. The one negative part was that he stepped on some coral out in the water and cut his feet up pretty good. He swears it was all dead coral - you shouldn't touch live coral, much less walk on it because it damages the coral. No one ever mentions that it also damages your feet. They just tell you not to damage the coral. Also, coral is a living organism . If you step on live coral and a tiny piece breaks off in the cut, it will continue to grow. Did you see the movie Alien ? If some creature incubates in Ben's feet, then breaks out and eats us all one night, I'm going to be quite miffed. (Make sure you read the inscription on his tee shirt in this picture. It's quite appropriate.)
Post a Comment
Read more

Mammogram

I'm having my annual mammogram today. I always hear about how painful they are, but honestly, I've never thought they are that bad. Not the most comfortable, but not painful either. Every time I have a mammogram, I'm reminded of this story. It won the Erma Bombeck Writing Competition and I still get a kick out of it every time I read it. So I'm posting it here today for your reading pleasure: Erma Bombeck Writing Competition 1st place in Humor Category Winner Leigh Anne Jasheway of Eugene, Oregon "The First Time's Always the Worst" The first mammogram is the worst. Especially when the machine catches on fire. That's what happened to me. The technician, Gail, positioned me exactly as she wanted me (think a really complicated game of Twister - right hand on the blue, left shoulder on the yellow, right breast as far away as humanly possible from the rest of your body). Then she clamped the machine down so tight, I think my breast actually turned inside o...
1 comment
Read more

Japanese Fishing Shrine

Here's an interesting little spot we stopped to see. I'd passed this many times before and had never stopped to see what it was. Since GG and Sherry were here, we decided to check it out. There is a shrine of some sort with a statue and a carved rock. There was no information on sight as to what it is that I could find. There were flowers, food and incense left around the base of the shrine. There was a ceramic statue and a rock with a figure carved into it. None of the food was old or rotting (although plenty of it had clearly been pecked by birds) and the flowers were all fresh which made me think it must be cleaned and cared for on a regular basis. After we got home, I did some research and found this article about it from the Hawaii Star Bulletin, our local newspaper (I have edited out some bits, but otherwise the article is unchanged): "Maintenance" of the monument has been assumed by a group of Vietnamese Buddhists - Shingon Shu Hawaii, the Buddhist temple th...
2 comments
Read more