Never Smile at a Crocodile

Well last night was the ballet show. Tilly's ballet experience has always been a fairly half-hearted one. She doesn't dislike going but then she never mentions it from one week until the next and certainly doesn't pirouette around the dining room. I asked her to show me her routine yesterday and she did three steps then segued into reciting her lines for an upcoming assembly about telling the time and the days of the week. I'm not sure she's 100% committed to becoming a prima ballerina.

I have to say the world that is ballet and tap is a new one on me. I am not now, nor have I ever been, able to dance. I bought a ballroom dancing DVD once in anticipation of the wedding first dance but that didn't make it out of the box. Oh and I was once in a singing sketch in the Gang Show that initially had tap dancing in it, but the choreographer soon gave up on that idea and we just sang while wandering about instead.

So I'm not someone who loved ballet and wanted my daughters to love it too. To be honest I simply thought she would look quite sweet in a tutu when she was two and a half and it would give her something different to do. Oh boy it's a whole lot more than that.

For the record the show was stunning and even breathtaking in part. Plus it was a feat of organisation. I have never seen so many dancers in one room. There were routines that included gold lame suits, cowboy hats and at one point tin buckets (not all in the same section I hasten to add although that would have been a spectacle.) So to sum up there were hundreds of excellent dancers and two hours worth of excellent dancing. And there was five whole minutes of crocodile costume wearing five year olds.

Don't get me wrong the crocodiles were great. It did take a considerable amount of time for them to form three straight lines. Each time when the head of the queue was stopped and put into the right position the rest of the line kept moving, bunched up, bumped into each other and had a domino effect on the children who had been in the right place in the first place sending them off in different directions. After that I only had eyes for Tilly and she carefully watched the bigger girls and copied the moves. I cried as anyone who knows me would expect. Then they went off in a comical non directional bumbling sort of way.

I don't regret going. It was logistically tricky but a very sweet and aweinspiring experience both for Tilly and for me.

I tell you what though the whole thing has damaged my pocket rather.

Actual Cost

Crocodile Costume £25

New socks £2.50

Adult ticket so I could watch £12

Ticket so Tilly could watch the second half when she should have been in bed £9

Number of times I stabbed myself while trying to attach green ribbon to tap shoes 13

Additional cost narrowly avoided

Programme not containing picture or any mention of Tilly £5 (thankfully I was warned early and didn't buy it)

Blue eye shadow and blusher (guessing as I don't own this kind of makeup and borrwed from a lovely friend) est £7

New pair of tap shoes that actually fit (I hope her feet didn't hurt too much but I'm sure we can make it to the summer holidays without buying more) £16

Car parking fee (lovely husband braved driving and dropped us off)£3

Taxi home (lovely friend picked us up) £7

Extra tickets and babysitter would have added more on top, eek £27

I should of course say that seeing her dance in a crocodile costume was priceless. In honesty seeing her lark about in it around the living room seems to suit her and me a bit better.

The children in the show were amazing and I'm sure loved it. I wish them, the teachers and the ballet school well and every success for the future. As for Tilly, she has already expressed a desire to go to cooking club after school...and maybe French, and computers...