Aack! I totally forgot about Sarah's ballet performance. Probably since it occurred in the middle of all the Thanksgiving hustle and bustle. Her teacher wanted to organize a little recital so that the students could show off their skills, and the doting parents and grandparents could "ooh" and "aah" as much as their little hearts desired. It wasn't a big production, no fancy costumes or anything. Although there were some cute skirts she had the girls put on over their regular leotards, and if they wanted to put on a little makeup they could. Also, their hair was supposed to be styled a certain way, depending on which dance they were in.
Sarah's ballet teacher combined it with a piano recital from her friend's music students. In fact, some of the numbers had the ballet students dancing to music the piano students were playing. That was very nice. Because of the larger group, the recital was held at a school a few towns over that had a nice stage and good sized auditorium. Unfortunately, there were more fans than at first supposed, and it ended up turning into standing room only accomadations.
We got there early because Sarah needed to come 45 minutes before the recital started to practice and get into costume. Chris was coming straight from work and meeting us there. The kids and I picked out awesome seats and everyone was behaving very admirably. To fill the waiting time, I asked each child what they wanted for Christmas and wrote it down on my special list. It was actually kind of fun. Chris arrived about 10 minutes before the scheduled start time and everyone was happy to see him, of course. We thought it was a bit strange that there were so few people in the audience, the Swiss are known for being super punctual, and it was cutting it pretty close. We didn't get too concerned when the dancing didn't start right on time, everything Sarah's ballet teacher does seems to start late. But we couldn't figure out why this one couple was still setting out more and more chairs, when it was obvious not that many people were there to watch the performance.
The dancers, Sarah included, finally came streaming in to the auditorium, stepped up on to the stage and did their cute little Hungarian folk dance. We thought it was so sad, that not many people had come to see it. When they were finished we all clapped extra loud to make up for the strange silence from the other parents and the general emptiness of the room. Then the kids all filed out and we waited for the older dancers to come in… and waited…and waited. The kids were starting to get a bit antsy at this point, so I finally leaned forward to look at a piece of paper lying on a chair that had the start time written on. Yeah, the performance actually started an hour LATER than what we originally thought. What we had just clapped our hearts out for was the dress rehearsal. And people weren't late, we were just super, super early.
The kids all groaned when I informed them it would be another 45 minutes before the actual show started. They had had enough, had already seen Sarah dance, had even clapped for her, and wanted nothing more than to go home, have dinner and go to bed. After a few whispered parental conferences, we decided we would all go home, and I would come back to watch the REAL dancing and bring Sarah home. Sophie decided she wanted to come with me to support her sister. After grabbing a snack at home for her, we drove back to the school. Only now there was no parking, no empty chairs and we ended up standing in the very back for the entire thing.
Still, Sarah was adorable, we got to see an older girl from our ward also dance, and it gave Sarah a taste of how amazing it will be when she can do some of the fancier moves. At the end of the whole thing, Sima (the ballet teacher) and the music teacher passed out roses to all their students and the audience clapped for each child individually.
Took forever, but the kids ate it up. She is a little blurry, but you can see how Sarah made sure to always look and smile right at the audience as she went around the circle! 🙂
