Dance recital!

So last week was Olivia & Mary's annual dance recital. I don't even know where to begin, I have so many mixed thoughts about it...

We will start at the beginning. After Olivia auditioned for Annie we did a little homework and found a very hard core dance school to put her in. Since Olivia was starting dance at 8 years old (and not 3) she was a little bit behind. We put Mary and Olivia in together as Mary was also keen to dance.

There is no-nonsense at this dance school, in fact Mary was kicked out of several classes in less than 10 weeks and after this concert, she was officially pulled out from the entire school (they can tell at age 6 if you have enough potential- lol). During the dress rehearsal (all day Saturday) kids were getting kicked out of numbers just a few hours before the performance for not paying attention. The head teacher says if you don't want to dance professionally don't be here!

Because my girls aren't good enough yet, we have not been invited to participate in any competitions with the school. This evening was their first performance and I was a wreck!! The hair and makeup night for the school was hosted in June while I was in the USA for my little brother's wedding. Stan went on behalf of me and when I asked him what he learned he said "not much." 

The week before was spent reading over the 10 pages of things I needed to have and do for each number. Like getting a spray tan... I had never even had a spray tan! It was all starting to feel a bit much! I got almost everything done by the end of the week but I was still confused about the hair and makeup. Like, how to do these ringlet things?!? I woke up the morning of the recital really worried and Stan informed me that he knew how to do them from the makeup night and then we spent the next two hours winding these little pieces of shoe laces into my girls hair. When we got to the dressing rooms we saw the mothers pulling out these beautiful curls from these foam things-

Here is what I was pulling out...O- the horror!

From a distance I don't think it is that bad...but all the other moms went into "help this beauty challenged mom mode" and I immediately had 4-5 moms with curling irons and make up surrounding my kids chairs.

This was good because we finished about 5 minutes before curtain call and we were in the dressing room for 3 hours! I was looking around and I was the only one who didn't have a massive kaboodle suit case with wigs, fake eyelashes, bobby pins, safety pins, hairspray, curling irons (I actually did BUY one that week as I previously didn't own one), make-up...everyone was like where is your foundation...I was like- 'seriously do people still use that stuff?'- I use lotion and powder :-)- OK I WAS A HOPELESS CASE!

Here is Mary for her baby ballet number- not quite the curls of the other girls but an improvement! 

Olivia in a Tangled ballet number 

In between each number the parents could watch the show on a monitor in the dressing room and then the kids would come down and change just in time for the next number. It was chaos!

For this Olivia had to get a microphone, which meant I had to take her back behind the curtain once her costume was on. This was where all the big girls would change as they were in so many numbers they didn't have time to run to a dressing room. There were about three people around each girl helping them change: taping microphone cords on them, clipping hair accessories on them, all while being half naked- it was my first "real" encounter with show-business.

Mary's doggie in the window tap dance. I had to PAINT her shoes white!

There was a jazz number both girls were in but I didn't get a picture as the costume change was too quick! :-(

And the finally curtain call everyone was in their SLD uniforms. 

So my thoughts are...Olivia is a fanatic on stage (earlier that week she had a school dance concert and she was the star of the show- seriously random people for days afterwards were approaching her including someone who runs television programs for kids). She loves it BUT is this what I want for my daughter now that I have seen it in full force??