[ATTENDED May 18, 2012] One Hot Summer
My five-year old daughter T. was in her second recital last night. Last year she performed in one routine and this year she moved up to two–a ballet routine and a tap routine.
And my little girl got to lead the group out on stage!
She performed in two routines, “Ice Cream Ballet” (to the tune of Frank Mills’ “Music Box Dancer”) and “Hot Dog!” (the closing theme from the Mickey Mouse Show).
As with last year, I have no intention of critiquing any performances on the stage tonight. Every girl and boy tried his or her best and they all did better than I could do. However, I want to make some general observations about the performance.
This year’s theme was all about summer, so imagine my surprise when the first act was a dance routine set to “School’s Out” by Alice Cooper! I feel like one of the big things that the dancers need to learn is to really exaggerate your excitement on stage–really get into it. I know it is very hard to let loose in this way (although I noticed some of the boys really got into it), but if you just think about the sentiment of “Schools Out” you’d expect these kids to be wildly excited–exaggeratedly so.
And that seems true for most of the performers. I know it’s not easy to remember the whole routine and to be overly exaggerated while doing so, but the boys and girls who pushed it really stood out on stage.
Some of the blame surely falls on the routines themselves. The routines I assume are all original, but there seems to be very little variety in them. I understand that most of these routines are designed to show off the skills that the students learned in class, but this is a recital–give them something to show off and be proud of! There’s an adult tap class and I could feel that a couple of those students really wanted to show off their chops, rather than the simple motions that their routine consisted of. And again, in the “Schools Out” routine and all the other fun summer songs (the theme from Phineas and Ferb!–the full version by Bowling for Soup), let the kids really show off what they can do. The whole class doesn’t have to do the same thing–if you’ve got a student who is better than the others, let her show off a bit.
None of this is directed at the littlest kids, who I know can barely do a few moves without looking offstage (so cute). But let the older kids do more than leap around the stage, let them wow us (as one or two students were able to).
But minor criticisms aside, this was a wonderful show–it’s so awesome to see kids embracing the arts and actually getting up and performing on stage. My daughter seems fearless up there and I hope she can continue that and remain fearless for years to come. Hot diggity dog!
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