All that Jazz

Madison was dancing today, doing dress rehearsals for her jazz and ballet performances tomorrow.  This is the perfect time to take pictures of your dancing children, where you can sit anywhere in the audience and snap photos.  First, let's talk about the costuming:  Madison and the children love these dresses, to the point that they are all actually somewhat occasionally distracted by the shimmering material.

But the performance went well.  Madison and her team went over the routine a few times on stage at Pearce Auditorium, which is rapidly becoming our home away from home.  How many performances have we seen in this theater? 

Here the girls are in the seats, awaiting their chance to dance.  They're a good group of girls, and then enjoy hanging around each other.  This is good to see, good to see friendships developing.  And they all love dancing of course.

Here's Madison doing her shoulder thing.  The girls have all these new movies that are clearly not ballet, and in some cases it isn't quite the natural movement that they are accustomed to.  But it's a joy nevertheless.  Madison practices some of these moves at home, and it's fun to watch.

So this year of jazz is coming to a close, and it's been an extra hour or so each Monday for Madison and her friends.  She hasn't had an opportunity to do anything in a recital, so tomorrow should be a big deal for them.  It's all new, but she really likes it a lot.

The make-up and hair are a big deal, especially because right after this she has to do the ballet dance, which requires her hair up completely.  All the dancers have this back-and-forth thing they have to do, and it's pretty crazy.  But they've been practicing for quite some time, so the choreography at least is settled.

Obviously, today was a new stage for them to do the jazz.  They've been practicing in a smaller area all this time, so the idea of having all this space on stage was new.  Within about three attempts, the girls seem to have it all together.  I think they're ready for tomorrow.  Madison said it herself that she was ready too - it's nothing as complicated as the piano recital!

The song was "We Got the Beat" by the Go-Go's, and yes, that song is now stuck in all of our heads.  This might be a good album to get for Madison some time soon - the Go-Go's Greatest Hits or something like that.  

They spent a good time today waiting for their next performance, watching the other dancers perform or run through drills.  

But when it was showtime, the girls marched up on stage, and were ready to go-go!  It was a pretty long session though, as ballet followed soon after, which required all the girls to become quick-change artists, getting their hair up and getting into those tutus.

We'll post those pictures tomorrow, but for today, things were busy at Brenau.  Daddy took to the balcony to shoot some photos from up there, sharing them with other parents as well.  And soon enough, we were off and running for the rest of our day.  Madison looks ready for the big recital tomorrow.

Although it's bittersweet, of course.  She's saying goodbye to friends for a season.  But at the same time, she is ready for a bit of rest.  With all these recitals and science projects going on, the pace has been dizzying lately.  For Daddy, it's just building up to Summer Xtreme again, so our estimation is that by the end of that first week of Summer Xtreme, we'll finally catch a breather of sorts.  Until then, it's a busy season.  To prove this point, we spent a really big part of the rest of today working on Madison's science project.  It's coming along nicely, although there are some details that need to be finished up tomorrow.  

The big news today is the return of Nana and Ba-Ba to North Georgia, bringing with them strangely enough cooler and wetter weather.  Yes, it's true:  the last time they came, we had a cold snap and rain.  And here we go again this week, with yet another unusually cooler forecast.  We need the rain, of course.  The drive up for them was miserable.  They didn't go the Athens route, and after today I think they've sworn off I-75 through the Atlanta area, just as we have.  You may have good fortune getting through that area quickly, but the odds are usually against you.  It's just too much.

Anyway, we all got a good night's rest tonight, especially Madison.  She's got her recital tomorrow, and of course there's KidPak.  So good night from everyone here, because sleep should come easy tonight.