dancing. you should be doing it.
. . .
A few weeks ago, movita superfan, Sonya, sent me this photo:
That’s Sonya. In 1974. I’ve looked at it 4.5 million times. Because it makes me happy.
So, as we head into the weekend, I thought I’d ask you to send in a dancing photo of your own. Maybe it’s old. Maybe it’s from yesterday. I hope you’re wearing something with sequins.
Have a good picture? Want to share it with complete strangers on the interweb? Send it to me! And then I’ll post it on this here blog. I just high-fived myself.
Send yer photos to: movita@live.ca by Tuesday at midnight. (In your time zone.) That should give you enough time to find something. Or, perhaps snap off a few shots this weekend. Don’t hurt yourselves.
Maybe you don’t have photo. Because your parents didn’t love you and only photographed your pet canary. But I bet you’ve got a way cool dancing story. You could always share that below.
Have a great weekend!
I took one dance class for two weeks when I was 14 or 15. There were two other people in the class and they were old. I don’t remember it at all, it must have been that traumatizing. But I was big on theatre then, and playing a catch-up game to increase my singin’ and dancin’ skills.
I also took one ballet class when I was 4 or 5, but I didn’t continue on with those lessons. I have a feeling I hated it big time, although there was one instance where they gave me dinosaur stickers. That was a bonus.
On occasion, I give stickers out in class. They are most popular with my university aged students. Go figure.
What fun! Hope you’re off for great weekend Movita!
When I moved to Australia my photo albums got put into storage and it caught on fire. But I do remember getting all dressed up for my first recital and wearing POUNDS of makeup before my mother saw me and made me start all over. I love that photo above.
This is terribly sad. Maybe we should draw some pictures. You know, recreate the memories…
Sorry to say that I have no dance pictures or dance stories but I can’t wait to see what everyone else has 🙂
oh gosh… I wanted ballet lessons so badly as a kid but I got piano instead (which I’m grateful for NOW but hated at the time). I went so far as to get one of the other little neighbourhood girls to try and teach me from her lessons to convince my mom that I would be a fabulous dancer (no dice) and to this day I still remember the five positions (all my little friend was able to teach me). But that was the end of my dancing career. That and the fact that I never had a cute sailor dress are about the only issues I have with my mum. She is, in fact, pretty awesome (but I still bring up the sailor dress a lot)
Oh man. Now I want a sailor dress…
I have some real gaudy ones around here somewhere. I’m going to dig it up. Oh, there’s sequins. Lots of sequins. Maybe even some pink flowers and frilly lace. Ooo, I’m getting excited.
I am going to have to harrass my mother for photos now. I started ballet lessons when I was about four but didn’t understand how to skip (which was basically all we did in those lessons at that age) so I would hop and this really annoyed the teacher to the point where I got kicked out for messing around even though I wasn’t messing around, I just didn’t know how to skip. It was highly traumatic and I didn’t dance from then until I was ten when the Spice Girls were at their zenith and myself and some friends put together a Spice Girls tribute act for a a talent contest and, for some unfathomable reason, I was sporty spice and so ‘dancing’ just involved a lot of not-so-high high kicks.
I’ve never really been a dancer. I think my mother hoped I would be because she had been such a crap dancer as well and, as for my dad, well, anyone notorious for their ‘rooster techno’ definitely got it wrong somewhere along the line.
Do you know that skips can’t be taught? Nope. Silly ballet teachers try all the time – and make kids feel like crud as a result. Skipping is a motor skill that kids just wake up with when they are ready. It’s a developmental thing. So trying to teach skipping is redonkulous and a waste of time. It’s like walking – you do it when you’re ready. Not because your grandmother demanded you do it whilst holding a video camera. Plus, kids who do that one-legged-skipping-thing tend to be the cooler kids in the class.
I hope this makes you feel better.
Come to think of it, I was pretty damn cool. I have skipopping to thank!
[…] movita beaucoup, is a ballet instructor and a baker and a hilarious writer. She’s collecting pictures of people dancing this weekend, so this is our contribution. (You can make one […]
since we’re on vacation together, i asked my mother if we had any photos of me dancing. to which she promptly and without hesitation replied “NO.”
we have photos of EVERYTHING. i suspect every millisecond of my childhood is documented in one form or another – slides, photographs, whatever – but oddly, mom was sure there were no photos of me dancing. i can’t decide if this is because i a) have the coordination of a drunk chimpanzee, so dancing was just not something we did enough to take photos of, or b) because she burned the evidence.
i’m sending you a photo, because after going through them, i feel like we have photos taken as i was striking a pose TO dance. and you will be graced with one of my favorites of those.
I have a super strong memory of taking ballet….and it has nothing to do with the class itself, or the recital itself. But it is in the moments that the recital was over that all hell broke loose!
First, I remember fondly that as we were exiting the stage, each of us was given a glass bottle of Coke and a dixie cup of ice cream with a little wooden spoon. Loved that!
BUT…then, I somehow got lost backstage and started wandering everywhere, asking every adult I could find, “Where’s My Mommy?!???” I was in near hysterics…and so were my parents…by the time I was finally located. I had been lost for DAYS, I tell you!! (Ok, it was probably less than 5 minutes.)
Years later, I found some photos of the event. My mom had sewn the white sequined tutus for the class. You’d have thought that my outfit, out of all the others, would have fit perfectly. But no, there I am in the photo, with my arms above my head…and I’m the only one with my NIPPLES showing!!! Mommmmm!!!!!!! (Fortunately, I was like 5 or 6 years old at the time. But still!)
And that was the end of my ballet career.
(And sadly, I have no idea where those photos are now or I would gladly send them to you!)
First off, I think giving kids coke and ice cream is one of the weirdest/most awesome things ever. But… seriously insane. I’m thinking about the 300 kids I’m trapped with on recital day… and now I’m thinking about what they’d be like with coke and ice cream in their systems. Yikes!
I do wish you had photographic evidence of that costume. It. Sounds. AWESOME.
I had to tap dance in a parade. But they made these huge clog things to go over the shoes. They fell off and I freaked out and ran all the way home crying. Luckily there are no photos. xx
I forgot to tell you that this comment made me happy. But then sad. But then really happy again. Because it IS funny…
I took tap for two years and ballet for one: mainly because I had to Land Quietly in Ballet. And I was NOT a Quiet Child. Tap was way Funner. For one recital, I was a Wee Mouse. For another, I was a strawberry with a short skirt of green fringe. And we also learned a dance called the Teaberry Shuffle, wherein we all had to hold posters of packs of Teaberry gum. Seriously, dance teacher people, didn’t you guys have Some Sort of Theme in Mind?!
Here is Teaberry Gum, just in case: http://www.candy.org/?p=183
My mother may have some pix somewhere…
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