We decided to let Leilani take ballet to try and improve her grace and form in gymnastics. It seems to have worked. Her scores have improved in gymnastics, and she has rapidly moved up in ballet. She has moved through three ballet classes since September, and is talking about moving on to pointe. Her ballet teacher is excited about how strong she is, and her gymnastics coach is excited about the improvement in form, so I guess it is a win win for everybody except my pocketbook! :)
Emily is taking ballet because she quit gymnastics a couple of years ago and decided to focus on dance and music instead. She quickly moved out of the beginning ballet class, and now I have all three girls in different classes...which is not as fun for me...but they like it better!
Elisabeth is taking ballet because she has begged to do it since she was three, and she looks pretty cute twirling around! She is still in gymnastics too, but she isn't on team or anywhere near it at this point. So, she has a lot more time to experiment with different activities than Leilani does.
Emily and Elisabeth participated in the ballet Coppelia this year. It was put on by the Pacific Classical Ballet, but they used younger students from Ballet Northwest Academy too. Leilani couldn't do it because it was in the middle of her gymnastic competition season, but I don't think she really wanted to do it anyway.
The girls were villagers during Act 1 and Act 3. These pictures were taken during dress rehearsal, so they don't have their hair and make up done, but I couldn't get any at the actual performance...I wasn't allowed back stage.
During Act 2, the girls are Chinese dolls. They really liked their costumes for that dance!
They were a little harder to dance in than the villager dresses, though.
I was able to take pictures of the dress rehearsal, because they didn't allow any photography of the performance itself. I videoed it too, but it is way too big a file to upload here.
It was a cute ballet. They all did a good job, and they were very excited to perform on stage at the Hult Center. I guess we will see if they try out again next year.
