Clara the Ballerina

Last fall Clara asked to do ballet.  We hadn't necessarily planned to put anyone in ballet, but she seemed really interested in it, so we started her in it.  Unlike most of the other activities we've done, this isn't a six or eight or ten week class, but instead goes through the whole school year.  We did a trial class with her, and she liked it, so we enrolled her.  It's on Thursday nights at 6pm, so usually I take her while Meghan cooks dinner, and then we all have a later dinner at home when Clara and I get back.  Normally parents aren't allowed in the studio, though we can watch on a monitor, but tonight was a special session that let parents sit in chairs in the studio to see the kids in person, so I was actually able to take some pictures for once.  Here the girls are in their warm-ups.

They do a lot of graceful, ballet-like things, such as moving around with these scarves.

They also sit as a group for some sort of verbal lesson and do other ballet-like things along the wall.  My ballet knowledge is somewhat limited, as I normally can't hear what they go over, so pretty much all I know is what I remember Julie practicing when she took ballet as a little girl when we were in Alaska, I think.  Maybe something about pliés and pirouettes.  And also what I've watched in the Nutcracker.  But that's it.

It was nice to be inside the studio today.  This is the normal waiting area, which consists of a narrow hallway with a couple hard church pews as seats, and one actual soft chair.  There are no windows into the studio, so the only way to see what's going on inside is the small monitor mounted on the wall.  So it's not the best experience, but for 45 minutes I can deal with it.  We've been doing this for a few months, and Clara is enjoying it quite a bit now (after being really shy and unsure the first couple weeks).  It's sort of funny to me, because the teachers are so refined, and many of the girls are too, and although Clara will do the activities, she bounces and spins all over the place, bursting with energy and a level of fun that you see on a playground but not normally in a ballet class.  But they seem okay with it at this age, so she's able to have a lot of fun while learning the basics of ballet.