Christmas Recital

Madelyn is on the far right waiting for the music to begin.



Allie (on the left) and Paige on the stage before the recital.

The youngest three girls had their Christmas dance recital last night. The dancers were supposed to arrive at 5:00 pm; the dance began at 7:00 pm. A large majority of the students are 4-7 years old. Am I the only one who recognizes the problem with this schedule? My 6:30m, the youngest children were hungry and very bored. There were several other organizations participating in the recital. One group was a local community choir with about 100 participants. Another group was from a local elementary school that had approximately 40 participants. The recital venue had seating available for 250 people.

The venue coordinator wanted all the dancers to sit at the back of the facility and walk down a hall to enter from another door on the side. There were no adults sitting with the dancers. After a brief run through, the dancers were told to stretch their legs and return to their seats 15 minutes before the performances were scheduled to begin.

As the facility began to fill with audience members, it became noticeable that there were NO where near the number of seats needed. Many people took the seats that were "reserved" for the dancers. When I took my two youngest girls to relocate their seats, we realized that the dancers were sitting 2-3 to a chair. The aisles were blocked with standing audience members. The stage entry was blocked by audience members. I ended up taking my girls back to where our family was sitting and had the girls sit on our laps. Well over 500 people wanted to see the recital.

Paige got nervous as the auditorium filled and the noise level increased. People were pressing on us from all sides. For a short period of time, I didn't think that she would participate in the recital. Thankfully, the choir members and their parents left after their portion of the show was completed. Eventually everyone was able to get a seat. The recital progressed and eventually ended at 9:30 pm.

The dance studio's normal Christmas recital takes less than an hour, so we had promised to walk through the downtown light display after the program. Paige and Allie didn't want to go get dinner, until they had seen the lights. We made a compromise and walked through a very small portion and promised to do the full display Sunday evening.

The kids began a game of tag in a nearby playground, so the whole family chased each other around the park and up the slides. It was so much fun! Mike took a spill in the snow when Joe tagged him, but that was the only casulity. We returned home around 10:30 and had a "healthy" dinner of scrambled eggs, sausage, bananas, waffles, bagels, and donuts.