Check out these moves

This Sunday, after a wet morning on Pulau Ubin, one of Bella's friends from school had a "Rhythm In Me" party at some outfit at the mall. Turns out it was more or less a dancing party, with a really enthusiastic party organizer lady who danced around with the kids and led them in all kinds of wriggling-about type shenanigans. Anyway, this was the highlight, when she handed out glo-sticks and cut the lights, and all of a sudden I was transported back to my glory days shaking my booty all night long with my friend Gabi at Sturecompagniet. Come to think of it, Bella's dancing here is totally Gabi-style. As in, funny and kind of stylish in a way, and yet bordering on COMPLETELY LUNATIC BECAUSE NORMAL PEOPLE DO NOT DO THIS.

Grace Kids Singapore - kid party hell... uh, I mean heaven. Actually, they do a good job. And I'll take a music/dancing party over Barbie and Princesses any day.

Yet another little kid singing 'Single Ladies'

Cleaning out space on the Flip Mino in anticipation of this evening's Wave House adventure (more, clearly, on that later), and found this video from Januaryish:

You could say that nothing sends me OVER THE EDGE more than little girls singing and doing Beyonce/Britney/Madonna type dance moves... to me, it's just so viscerally wrong. BUT: as long as it stays in the shower, I guess I can live with it.

Trial lesson gone awry

Photo taken during the last five minutes of a trial ballet class in Singapore. We had arrived 5 minutes late (because she had uncharacteristically fallen asleep mid-afternoon and I had agonized for 10 minutes too long about whether to wake her or not), and she was dressed in her yellow leotard when all the other girls were wearing these pink outfits; neither of which probably would've made much difference, except that when she ran into the class and did a typical Bella-esque pirouette with her usual fanfare, all of the mommies and staff laughed (though in a nice way) in a way that noticeably took her aback.

The upshot: girl clinging to my legs, sitting out the next 30 minutes of a dance class, when you could tell that she was dying to join in and SHOW THESE GIRLS HOW IT'S DONE.

Busted!

I am really resisting the urge to have this turn into "cute things my kid said today," but at ballet class, there's something they do where the teacher asks the girls their favorite thing to eat, and then they do these pantomime motions. Apparently, when Bella's turn came today, after all the other kids had picked brownies, cupcakes, and ice cream as their favorite things to eat, Bella came up with, "Rice and ketchup." Doh. Yep, that's what I feed my kid.

Anyway: video from her first dance class, joining a group that started end of May. She doesn't really get the skipping, but still. I had originally hesitated a tiny bit to put her in a ballet class, just because I thought her natural dance instincts were actually so much cooler, but she seems to just KNOW what she's doing.

And in case you have your sound on, the woman chuckling on the video isn't me, it was someone else's grandma who was too cuted out for words. And if you listen closely, you can actually hear Bella squealing in pure glee, or going on and on with self-affirmations like, "I'm a beautiful ballet dancer!" and variations thereof.

Tutu Number Two

Hot hot HOT day in Virginia today, so we made another tutu. I'm normally not a huge fan of the pale-yellow-old-rose-off-white color scheme, but the last roll of tulle on the shelf at Michael's was cream, so the decision was made for me. For a minute, I envisioned a stricken bride flying in, realizing that she had ended up short one roll of tulle for her wedding, only to find that I had it in my basket for yet another tutu for this 3-year old.

Actually, she had been asking me about her "dancing skirt" for a few days already, and when I started working on it, she announced that rather than handing me strips of tulle or ribbon, she would help me out by cheering for me. That's the half-made tutu on the back of her chair.

One hour (because I'm getting faster at it), 50 yards of tulle, a silk flower and some ribbon later:

Let's see when she'll take this one off.

For Merce

Never had a dance lesson. But she likes Bartok, so it's all good.

ps. for the non-dance fans, Merce Cunningham died on the 26th

I know a good spot by the subway entrance

"Mama, we gonna go downstairs and I gonna play guitar and Yaya Cely going to dance! See ya!"