16 July 2010 The Teddy Bears’ Picnic

Here is Sam in her costume, hair all slicked up, waiting in the changing room before going on stage to perform in “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic.” The girls’ performance was, in a word, adorable. And I have to admit that I teared up to see my shy little girl– the same one who was afraid to set foot in the dance studio in the first place–skip out onto the stage. The best part is that she really enjoyed herself, and after seeing “the big girls” dance, she is keen to continue ballet.

The worst part is that most of my pictures are rubbish, and I captured only about half of the performance on video. I deserve to wear a huge “TECHNOLOGY LOSER” dunce cap for taking a million photos in the changing room and filling up the memory card on the camera. Nevertheless, I’ll post a portion of the million photos and the video clip soon.

The most bizarre part? This time to get up to the Roedean Theatre from the nearest bus stop we not only had to climb up the windy hill, but we also had to crawl under a fence, as the entrance to the school was gated. I guess I deserve another dunce cap for that one too, because there were hundreds of people at this show and they had to enter the school grounds somehow. But at least I can share the cap because on our way out (there was a button we could push to let ourselves out the pedestrian entrance) a man approached us on a bicycle. “How did you get in?!” He was trying to get to the show. I showed him the exact spot where we crawled under the fence. He said, “Ta,” (which means thanks) and hoisted his bicycle over it.

And that’s the story of Sam’s first appearance on stage: windy hills, fence-crawling, pinks pajamas, and lots of hair gel. The things we do for art.