Anna's disco dance recital

For the past many months Anna and her best friend Sara have been taking disco dance lessons. Anna loves it! I watched one of her classes a few months ago and although it was very cute, I would describe it more as flailing and hoping than dancing.

Last week I went again and was super impressed to see how much they have improved. Especially Anna - she knows the whole dance by heart now and while most of the girls would fire of their moves a second or two after the instructors, Anna was right in sync with the them (and often an enthusiastic step or two ahead).

Yesterday was their big dance recital. Its a pretty impressive event, a four hour deal, with over 50 dance groups, in an arena that seats 5,000 people. Friday night, Mathilde took Anna to the dress rehearsal. Her friend Sara couldn't go so Anna was alone. When Mathilde walked into this huge arena with Anna, Anna basically melted in tears. She took one look around and started bawling, "I don't want to do this!" Mathilde talked to her for a while, and Anna sat and watched some of the other groups practice, and then she found her courage and announced, "Okay, I'll do it."

A few minutes later she spotted some kids she knew and then she was off running around having a ball. The first thing she said when she got off the scene after her rehearsal was, "I wanna do that again!" Mathilde told her she could go home and practice more and Anna said, "No its not the same. At home, they're aren't all these people!"

So, by show-time Saturday, Anna was psyched to go again. It was a great show (the arena was nearly full) and Mathilde and I were very proud of little Anna. Below are a few pictures and a video. Unfortunately, we didn't empty our camera so our memory card was full and we missed the end of the dance. In the very end all the girls scream and charge Tarzan in the middle. I think quite a few of them had a crush on Tarzan, because it was a pretty enthusiastic charge :-)

This is Anna at the dress rehearsal (we washed the red bell pepper stains off of her cheek for the real show).



Below are pictures of Anna and Sara before going on stage.





The dance started with Tarzan walking on his hands, I think that's what sealed the crush for most of the girls.



Youtube video below, high quality video for grandparents here.