Ballet

Zoey started ballet a couple of weeks ago. I was a bit apprehensive about the whole thing...I hadn't met the dance teacher before (had only talked to her on the phone) and I didn't know where the studio was located - I had heard nothing but wonderful things though about the teacher and I went ahead and made my decision based on just that. I think sometime before the first class approached I had a touch of annoyance with the whole thing. I had to order a leotard, tights, skirt, shoes (the shoes I had to order twice and had to have the second pair express delivered as the size was wrong), I was thinking about all the extra running around we were going to have to do just for this to happen and I was just a bit annoyed with the whole idea of all that it seemed we had to do just for a little girl to get into a pre-ballet class here in this smallish community. The day of her first class arrived and she had had pre-k that morning, we had lunch and were headed out to find this dance studio that she and I had never seen. I had in my head the idea of a strip mall I think...thinking that this place would be next door to a laundromat or something. We headed out of town, made a turn that went into a heavily wooded area (why should I have been surprised?) and kept going until it was just all trees. At the end of a gravel driveway I found a sign that simply read "Dance Studio" and we turned in to find this:



quite simply it's a small out-building that looks like a barn that has been made into a beautiful dance studio. It was just magical pulling into the drive and discovering such a scene. Surrounded by flowers and trees and with the twinkling lights inside, hearing just the leaves rustle and the birds singing...it was just magical. The first day that they had class it was cooler and there was a fire going in the fireplace that's located in the studio and the little girls all stretched and danced in front of the warm, crackling fire.



The instructor, Ms. Dana is just the sweetest and is so good with the girls. She is so soft-spoken and kind...there is just a sense of peace that you gather from her just by being around her. Yesterday she had the girls dance outdoors in the gardens while she shared with them a story about 7 little princesses (there are 7 little girls in this class). She led them along a wooden log, had them leap over a pink sash that served as a gate, took them amongst the toadstools, tip-toed through the flowers, sat quietly on the stone steps and then led them back to the studio. It almost made me cry and I know that I would have had the other mothers not been there with me! I am so glad that Zoey gets to experience something as sweet and pure and as real as this and that dancing through the garden gate will forever be a memory of her childhood.