Dance Recital 2011!

I didn't know if I would, but somehow we made it through 3 fun-filled days of dance recital!! Ha! When you have only 1 girl, dance recital isn't such a big deal. Then, you add another, and it's a little more hectic, but still manageable. But this year, both girls were in dance and performance team, which meant between the two of them, they had 12 dances in the recital! I wasn't sure how we were going to get them ready and on stage for each dance, but we did it!

The first night of recital was rehearsals, Thursday. For that one, they didn't have to wear their costumes, so it wasn't hard. It was from 5-9 though and I knew the next day with costumes added in was going to be hard!

These pics are from Friday, dress rehearsal night. This rehearsal runs exactly like the real thing, with full makeup and all costumes, again from 5-9. They rent out the gym too, for a dressing area. Well, I learned really quickly that this was not going to work for us because I was literally running from the dressing room, to the stage to get them in line for their dance, back to the auditorium to video/watch their dances, then back to get them, then back to change in the gym and I was exhausted!

They had this room backstage called the "quick change" room and we had to use it for Kaylee's ballet dance because there was physically no way we'd be able to change her fast enough without it. After seeing how much easier that was, I decided that the day of the real recital, we would just change for all of their dances in the quick change room. And it made things SO much easier! No more running for this pregnant Momma!
I love this close-up of Kaylee :)
For Madison's jazz dance, it was called "Let's Go to the Movies" and they used these flashlights during the dance.

We are only allowed to video and take pics on dress rehearsal night, so this was them practicing getting their performance team trophies. Don't you love the backdrop they had this year? The theme was "The Daily News" and each of the dances fell under a category you'd find in the newspaper.
These next few pics were taken on Saturday, the real recital. It started at 1pm, but we had to be there by noon and it wasn't over until 4:15. There are SO many kids at their dance center, that it took 3 hours, with only a 10 minute intermission, to perform all of the dances! By this day, we were all tired because this was the 3rd time to do this, but being in the quick change room was so much easier! Morgan, Lily, and his Mom all had seats in the auditorium to watch and I just decided to make things easier on myself, I would watch all their dances from behind the curtain, backstage. It was actually kind of neat to be right there on stage with them, watching.
The real recital day is all about GLITTER!!!!!!!!!! Lots and lots of glitter. Y'all should have seen what we had to take to make this all possible! I took my giant suitcase that I bought recently, because it has rolling wheels, and we filled that with accessories, makeup, props, shoes, etc. Then, I bought a rolling clothes rack and we put all of their costumes on that so we could hang them up. It made it much easier to change, having everything hanging up, since they had 12 costumes.
They did so great dancing and we all had fun. Even Lily sat there the whole time and watched all the dances without whining or anything! I was so proud of her. I didn't even see Morgan or Lily or his Mom until almost the end of the recital! Morgan's Mom brought the girls flowers and I got them a little present. Can you tell they were absolutely exhausted by this time?!
It was so much fun though and they are already sad that it's over. Here is them with their trophies :) I wasn't able to film every dance on rehearsal night, because of the timing. I didn't get to film the dance they did in that dance competition, which was the opening dance of recital, or their pom routines. But, I did get to film all of their other dances and I will share them on here soon. That lyrical dance that Madison's class did to "Hope Now", for cancer awareness was so beautiful! And Kaylee was so cute in this one "Speedracer" dance.......she was really getting into it! Ha!
They did such a great job and I'm so proud of them!! And, I ordered a professional DVD of the recital, so I'm happy that I'll have that too.

Now, Summer for us is finally here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!