spring recitals.... a retrospective :-)

A friend of mine had a suggestion for a blog post the other day.... a collection of Clara's spring recital photos over the years. So, after getting lost in old photos for several days, I finally focused, located her recital photos and narrowed the collection down to a few to post.

First up....

3 year old Clara.... May '05
She was in a pre-ballet/tap combo class in Texas. They did one number... a tap dance to Patty Cake, Patty Cake. They sang AND danced.... but as you can see from the photo below....
.... Clara was a little more interested in belting out the song at times!

Clara with her roses....



4 years old.... May '06

Still in Texas but at a new studio due to the previous one relocating further away from our house.

She was again in a pre-ballet/tap combo class... but this time they did two dances in the program. If you couldn't tell from the big yellow dress, their theme was Beauty and the Beast.

They did their tap dance to Be Our Guest...
and ballet to Tale as Old as Time...

5 years old.... May '07

We made the move to Chicago mid-year so we rushed to find her a dance studio so she would be able to be in a spring recital (this was big because her studio in Texas was already ordering costumes and she was really sad about moving and missing the recital with her friends).


This time the pre-ballet class was not a combo.... just ballet...


6 years old.... May '08

Yet another dance studio. This time we made the move because this one was within walking distance from our house. She was in four pieces.... two ballet, one character and one jazz. I only took photos of two costumes.

Character...


and one of the ballet...
I didn't take any stage photos. The whole thing was a MESS!! The other two costumes where frightening.

7 years old... May '09

New dance school again. This move prompted by the chaos of the last place. It had been a mess all year but the recital was probably the final straw. It really is sad when I (who LOVES to take photos) couldn't even bring myself to take photos at the recital.

So, we made a change, trying out two new dance schools in the fall of '08... she dearly loves them both and she's still dancing at both places. One place does not have recitals, so her recital photos are just from one school.




I didn't add this year's photos to this post just because they're in the post right below. We love both places she dances at right now... we have no plans to change again... however, at some point she will probably have to choose just one of them. Until that day.... she'll continue to do both!