As long as I can remember, my daughter has had a love affair with music and dance that me and her dad have cheerfully fostered. Though, for whatever reason she has an INTENSE love affair (in that way that only few things are at four. Most being fleeting infatuations.) with ballet. Not just the steps, or the costumes, but, most telling I think, the stories and the music. Whenever a song from "The Nutcracker" or "Swan Lake" is playing in a store or as the background to Bugs Bunny she squeals with joy and immediately starts prancing and leaping. When I made the mistake of nicknaming the princess(?) from Swan Lake, "Odie" I was fiercely corrected ("No! Mommy! Her name's ODETTE. Geez!") I thought it would pass. I didn't want it to, but I was sure it would... But nope. The other day I let her sit with me while I looked up YouTube clips for her of ballets, and she sat enthralled watching dance after dance. Image from here.
So today we drove 45 minutes across town to her uncle's record store to pick up "My First Ballets", a collection of the world's most famous scenes. Yeah. Do I need to remind you that she's four? Or that she rules? And what does it say about me that for every "weird" thing she does, I love her even more? Honestly, I think it's just that I feel I can relate much more easily to the "weirdness" in her. And I'm not sure that's a bad thing. Needless to say, I guess I'll be on the lookout for a good ballet school come next year!
