Finally on stage

The little one, had figured out that doing any extracurricular activity like music, dance etc. is a lot of hard work and the rewards for going on stage are not proportional to the work. She could throw a tantrum for not being tall enough to get on the Harry Potter ride and get a game console. Compare that to working for a whole year and getting on some annual day program for which you get a new pencil or eraser.. it was no contest!

She pretty much said "No" without a second thought to any classes that invovled the word "practice". 

Recently though, her close friends were all roped in to do a school performance for the International festival. A fun looking Dandiya dance.. so we convinced her to go. In spite of missing many sessions with her flu, she made up for it by doing a nice job of dancing on stage. More than that, we now know the girl has moves. We did not know she could shake her hips like that or have such expressions.. 

Here is a picture taken by her teacher. We are truly blessed to live in a place where an International festival is organized where kids show culture and dancing from across the globe to their classmates. There were Kung fu demos by little kids that were simply amazing, Gangnam style dancing, Japanese dancing, Chinese dance, Persian songs, Bengali poetry.. it was refreshing to see this!

Now that she has been on stage, we told her "You are going to dance class" and before we finished the sentence the answer was "NO!".

Bharatanatyam

Jr. went on stage for the first time today. She did a great job and did not show stagefright. We were all very happy with her performance.

Another summer day spent driving around in the hot sun and the adults health is going for a six. After watching the performance, the little one is trying out some freelance moves which reminded me of the old days where my brother and me would try karate moves after coming out of a Jackie Chan movie. Some of the little one's self concocted moves are really amazing. Hope to sneak up and catch it on video one of these days. She cannot wait to be six so she can also learn dancing..

On another note, the kids have picked up some slokams from daddy over the recent weeks. Finally managed to slip in a Sri Rudram CD into the van and displace Slumdog Millionaire from the top slot. At first there was the usual stubborn refusal to change the CD.

Now that they hear daddy sing along with the CD and they find it so amazing that daddy can recite minute after minute of what seems to be an endless tongue twister, they asked me "how do you remember all that? Can you teach me how to sing it?" Have patiently broken down the first Ganesha slokam and they so excited that they can sing along too!

Do not know if they will continue on, or this will be it. If anything learning slokams will improve their ability to memorize things, which always comes in handy in any education system. So far so good....

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