Tuesday, November 06, 2007

Well today we started our Composer Study for the next 6 weeks, The Ballet! Now this was not a foreign concept to my children. The Orchestra was more so. They have been indoctrinated from the beginning, ballet is... life. You see long before I was their Mama, I was a dancer. I breathed dancing, I danced when I was not dancing! So this is great to share with my kids!

~

My kids know what the Nutcracker is, I first saw it when my mom took me when I was 5, and that is when I started collecting nutcrackers. But this year I will share it with them. This is the CD we have, it is the COMPLETE Nutcracker, not the "best of" that is most available. I would rather they make their very own best of!


But before we started listening to it this morning I introduced them to ballet the dance by showing them a dancer EVERY little boy should see, Mikhail Baryshnikov! There are no other words to add, all you have to say is Baryshnikov... that is it! I highly suggest going to youtube and watching any of the Baryshnikov clips you can! I could spend hours doing this and still want more.
Then I thought it would be great for them to have an object to hold to better understand, so I pulled out my old toe shoes from my days on pointe. They were so excited and interested, and by the end they had talked me into them, literally! They were impressed I was taller than Daddy when up on toe! :) And Jake has spent the rest of the day asking me to put them back on and dance for him. Maybe I will have my own little Baryshnikov!
Don't look too closely, I did not tie them correctly, and my feet are not as pretty as they were before years of dancing! :) And my back foot is not turned out! But it was a great object lesson and I hope they enjoy it as much as they enjoyed Peter and the Wolf!

Now if you will please excuse me as I Pirouette my way to bed!

2 comments:

Cherish said...

So fun! What a multi-talented mommy!

Danna said...

In my past life. :)