Day Seventy

Dance is officially over for the 2019/2020 season. Usually that proclamation comes with a whole lot of confetti and even more glee, but meh. It's just not as exciting when I haven't had to drive there for the past two months. It also feels crazy unfinished, which ruins some of the joy. The studio the girls attend is working on some sort of proxy for a recital, which will likely be streamed online instead of having a huge audience, so we'll see what that looks like and if it makes me want to rip my toenails out with a toothpick like normal recitals do. Without that torture, though, the end just doesn't feel real.

Though, Mila seems to be under the impression that it is. I haven't told her that there will likely be some sort of recital later because I need her to not ask me about it every day for the rest of my life. Instead, I let it stand that her last class was The Thing. Everybody wore their recital costumes for their last week of Zoom class, which did NOTHING to make me feel better about the money I wasted on costumes this year (you guys, Alexis' costumes were over $700 - she wore them all once), but I guess it made Mila happy? We'll go with that. Besides wearing their costumes, the kids were all told to grab their parents for the last ten minutes of class for a "performance."

Mila rocked it. Of course.

And she was CRAZY excited that both Alexis and I watched her dance, both of us took video, and basically Mila thought she was a superstar because she did the exact same dance she's been doing for months in the playroom, where she always does it, but in her costume. If I had known that was all it takes to get her excited, I would have let her wear her costume far more often.

See? So proud of herself.

Alexis, though, didn't play along. She didn't bother getting a second wear out of any of her costumes and there was no "performance" at the end of each of her classes. A couple of her classes have HUGE numbers of dancers in them, so I super doubt there will be any sort of attempt at a "recital" performance later. Zoom was probably the only chance? Maybe? I guess we'll see what happens, but I don't see 80+ dancers on a stage together as a thing that might happen this year. I don't even see her hip hop dance happening, and that only has 30 kids in it.

I'm ... a little disappointed. Normal recitals are a bucket of annoying, and yet I'm over here wishing I could see a few of the dances again. 

And that, my friends, is what a global pandemic will do to you. It will make you wish for things that you know are a form of torture.