Little Dancing Queen

When thinking about having a daughter, I have always thought about the first time I might take her to dancing lessons. Growing up, my sisters and I took dance classes from the time we were tiny until we hit the junior high years and had to narrow our focus on things we really wanted to pursue. Of course, I dropped my dancing lessons for horses. Partly because I couldn't do both and had to choose, and partly because I had hit a point in dancing where I couldn't really progress any more because (as David says), I'm put together all wrong.

It was always my Grandma Pearlie's dream that one of us would get good enough in ballet to dance in the Nutcracker at Christmas. She took us every single year (still going.) So far, no one has danced in it though.
Tonight, the dancing moves to the next generation of tiny blonde little girls. I was seriously so excited to take little Gracie. I was almost more excited to take her dancing than I was to take her riding for the first time. Riding is just something that we do - like breathing it seems, but the first dancing lesson is almost a rite of passage for little girls.

Last week, we excitedly went shopping for Grace's first leotard, tap shoes, and ballet tights. She is actually wearing ballet shoes that are at least 20 years old - from one of my sisters, or maybe even from me. We shared and passed down the dance shoes so many times, I don't know if they really were mine or not. She proudly wore them tonight even though they weren't as pink and shiny as the new ballet shoes that showed up in class. Her "mo-Debbie" had saved them all these years just for her. Her tap shoes are white in the New England dance tradition. When her teacher told me their dress code included white tap shoes (not black), I was a little mystified. I've never seen white tap shoes before, but the girl at the dance store explained that it's a New England tradition that doesn't seem to translate anywhere else.
So, complete with black leotard, white tights, old pink ballet shoes, and new white tap shoes, we headed over to dance class tonight. Grace even let me put a ballerina bun in her hair (she barely lets me brush it, so this was HUGE!) She was picture perfect, beautiful and cute at the same time. She gladly followed her teacher to her dance room and left me with Hattie in the foyer without looking back. Her class is a half hour of ballet followed by a half hour of tap.Parents aren't allowed to watch except for on special days, but Grace reports that she learned how to warm up her legs, stretch, held onto the barre (correct spelling, right dancers?), and learned how to shuffle with her tap shoes. She says that tap dancing is hard to do and that it makes a lot of noise. She tapped softly, but the other kids tapped loudly.She came out complete with a smile on her face, a pumpkin sticker on her ballet shoe, and a lollypop in her hand. She said she had fun (which is rare for her to say when she has fun - she usually says she had a hard time because she had to leave.) She wants to go next week, so I think it's going to be a good activity for us this winter.

She has one lesson a week for the school year and then will have a recital in June. We'll see if she turns into a little dancer! At the very least, she's learning how to use her body a little bit and making a few friends.