Hip Hop Hooray!

Our summer was (for us, at least) surprisingly busy. I usually prefer to stay at home and do nothing, and let the kids figure out how to amuse themselves. Also, I am a cheapskate, so I don't often pay for extra summer activities. This summer, however, I decided to splurge a bit, and our days and weeks got more crowded. Besides our UT family reunion, we paid for the girls' swimming lessons, and then finally in late July...a week-long hip-hop dance class!

My friend Cindy, who is a member of our LDS ward, was holding a series of hip-hop classes throughout the summer. Our ward is blessed with a lot of talent...including a lot of really good dancers! Cindy is really energetic, funny, and fun to be around; I thought the girls might enjoy doing some hip-hop dancing as a change of pace.

Lorelai is a little more tuned-in to popular music than her sisters (and myself, for that matter!), and she loves to dance around to that music at home. I wasn't worried about her loving the class. Celeste, however, is our precious little girly ballerina princess baby, so she was a little more wary of the whoel "hip-hop" thing. She got especially disappointed that she had to wear tennis shoes(!) for hip-hop dancing, and no skirts(!!!). She went into the first lesson with eyes downcast. Luckily, she got caught up in the energy of everything, and by the end of the first day, she was saying, "I LOVE hip-hop Mom! It is even more fun than ballet!!"

The class was filled with five- to eight-year-old girls, plus two older girls who acted as Cindy's "assistants." The class was held Monday through Friday, July 15th through the 19th, for an hour each day. The class learned a new "mini-dance" the first four days, and then on Friday they did a quick review and performed all the dances for the parents.

Here's the class, in "normal" mode...

...and doing their "cool" poses :)

Here are each of the four dances, in all their glory (well, as much glory as I could muster sitting on the ground and trying to photograph the girls while holding Aurora). The girls are in the rear of the formation on the first two dances, but in the last two dances, the kids were all shuffled around and they're closer to the front. I also got about half of Cindy in the frame, but I don't think she'll mind!

I thought all their dances were so fun and so adorable! I'm also glad they had such a good time. Lorelai in particular really seemed to take to this style of dancing, which was a revelation since she wasn't as interested in ballet-style dancing. Cindy even told me that Lorelai has "got some moves"! Maybe this will be something she is interested in doing in the future. For Celeste, it was a fun diversion, but she is looking forward to ballet in the fall anyway. Maybe next summer she'll feel like shaking her stuff again!