One of Those Moments

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Saturday I attended Shyanne's Dance Recital. The one they have been preparing for all year. She takes Tap, Jazz and ballet. She enjoys them all. This meant that she was going to appear in three acts during the show. Plus the finale. So, considering she was in 4 acts, my thoughts were that it would be a good show for me and fairly quick.

The shows we went to in Maine were always long and drawn out. They crowded people into the school auditorium, there was barely room for everyone to sit, and the shows just dragged and dragged. The shows I saw in Maine were the ones you dread. the ones that you had to sit and watch so many other acts you weren't interested in just to see your own child for a few quick moments on the stage.

This one on the Cape was going to be different. "How did I know this?" you ask. Well, for one, the dance school had divided up the recital into 3 different shows! There was one show on Friday night, one show on Saturday at 1:00pm and the last show (the one my daughter would be in) at 5:00pm on Saturday. It was also in a much larger school auditorium. Taking all that into account, I know this would be a quick moving, relatively short show in which I would see my daughter on stage for three different dances and the finale.

I was actually looking forward to this dance recital.

DW had offered to help back stage with the kids. That was fine with me. I had no problem with that. She did have to show up an hour early though. Of course Shy had to show up 45 minutes early, and they opened the doors to the auditorium 30 minutes before the show, so it just made sense for all of us to go together. I didn't mind getting there a little early. This was going to be an easy early and quick show anyway.

So around 3:55 we all showed up at the auditorium. DW and Shy went to the back stage area and I waited for the doors to the auditorium to open up. There was one other person who had come early to see her granddaughter perform. I had the opportunity to purchase a rose for Shyanne while I was waiting, so I went ahead and did that. I was talking with the other woman about things in general. Where we lived, who we were there to see and just made small talk for a while. Then she asked me if I had a program. I said that I hadn't seen one yet and she pointed me to a gentleman who had programs for this show.

I went and got one and started looking at it. They had one program for all three shows and they listed the acts for the shows separately so it was quite a thick program. It was about the size of the PLAYBILL programs you see for theater shows and I went through looking for the Saturday 5:00pm show.

I couldn't believe my eyes. The first thing I saw was that the show had an intermission. AN INTERMISSION!!! How long was this show that it needed an intermission? Oh my! There were 49 acts in this show!! My daughter was only in 3 plus the finale. She appeared in one act before the intermission. What was going on here. Surely there was a mistake. They must have combined all the shows together and only certain acts were int his show? Maybe? please?

No, that wasn't the case. The show my daughter was in was 49 acts long. There was an intermission after the 22nd act. I would sit through those first 22 acts and see her perform only once. I was wondering what I had done to deserve such a fate.

So, at 4:30 they opened up the doors to the auditorium and I found a seat in the second row on the aisle. I got my camera ready and started testing out different modes to see what might work best. They wouldn't allow flash photography, so I needed to see if any setting was any better than any other. as it turns out, it all depended on the light provided by the auditorium as to whether or not the pictures came out any good. I guess if I was a professional photographer, it might make a difference.

At shortly after 5:00 pm the show started. Some of the girls danced very well. Some did not dance quite so well, but that was OK. For the most part they seemed to be having a good time doing their thing on the stage with everyone watching them perform. Most of them had smiles on their faces. There were no real small ones, so there was no one just standing there and not dancing. They were all doing the dances. The younger ones were not quite in sync as well as the older ones, but that is what you would expect. There were a couple of girls who performed solo and they obviously were the better dancers in the group.

Not being any more than an occasionally viewer of SYTYCD (So You Think You Can Dance) I really don't have any skills to identify what is a good dancer and what isn't. So I just watched and waited.....and waited......and waited for Shyanne to get out on stage for the first time. It was about 6:00 when she finally hit the stage for her ballet number. I had waited over 2 hours for this. The outfit was absolutely adorable and they danced to "Let's Go Fly A Kite" from "Mary Poppins". It was very cute and all the girls (and one boy) looked adorable. It lasted about 2 1/2 minutes and was over. My pictures came out just OK.

Intermission came and DW brought a sandwich to the lobby for me to eat while I awaited the second part of the show.

While it is already too late to make a long story short, I will shorten it up a bit here The second half of the show was more of the same except that I got to watch Shyanne perform her tap and her jazz dance during this portion as well as participate in the finale. (It wasn't really much, just everyone coming out and taking a bow.)

It was the second act that Shyanne was in that made it all worthwhile. This was the tap dancing act. It started around 6:30. They were all dressed in these adorable looking "rain jacket" type costumes with little dainty umbrellas and tap danced to "Singing in the Rain". It was really cute. Do you remember the old commercials with Bo Jackson where they went "Bo knows Baseball" or Bo knows football" or "Bo knows (put in whatever you are advertising here). Well, "Shyanne knows cute!" And she does it very well.

Anyway, they are tapping around in a circle spinning their umbrellas and having a grand old time when Shyanne notices me sitting there in the second row. She looks at me, gives me a big smile and then waves to me! She was the only one in the whole show that waved. Or at least the only one I noticed. I smiled and waved back.

The show lasted until 8:15. I was at that school for almost 4 1/2 hours. If you had told me before hand that it was going to be almost 8:30 before I got home, I would have been looking for ways to minimize the pain of attending the show. I may have offered to do just about anything to get out of attending the show. I am glad I didn't.

I would have sat through a thousand acts for that one moment when she waved to me. It made it all worthwhile. It also reminds me that you have to pay attention to what is going on. Especially with your children. You never know when one of those "moments" is going to occur and if you aren't paying attention, you may miss it. I'm glad I didn't miss it. 3 seconds made the whole 4 1/2 hours an absolute pleasure. I can't wait to get the video in the mail. I hope it shows her waving. Even if it doesn't, I will always remember it.


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