Thursday, January 13, 2011

Dancin', Dancin', Dancin'! Loving that my kid love to dance



Years before morphing into a Marin Mama who gets her exercise by hiking and running behind a 15 month old little girl, I studied tap, ballet and jazz dance. In college modern, hip-hop and musical theater was added to the repertoire. Dance was a big part of my daily life for almost 12 years; it was a lot of fun and I worked as an instructor in my time off between class but ultimately I chose not to make my art my career. My legs, or any other part of me for that matter, rarely see a studio these days; I regret this immensely and hope to become more involved if my daughter also exhibits the dancing bug.

I have no intention to push her towards being a dancer, no matter how much I hope to spend weekends surrounded by tutus. I will absolutely sign her up for the first tap or ballet class with other little girls her age. If she loves it, great! If not, well, we'll find something else active that she loves. No, I spent my life cringing at the stage moms, we all know who I'm talking about(every activity has one), and hope I never fall into that category. This being said, it thrills me to no end when my daughter starts moving to a beat and I'm having a hard time imagining her not loving dance classes! Her boogie down moves are some of the cutest, silliest ones I've ever seen and I'm convinced we've got another Fonteyn on our hands. 

Since dancing and music go hand in hand, good tunes have an important presence in my life and it seems to be the same for the wee one. Music beats, one after another, have been playing for her since she was swimming around in my tummy and I've concluded the following thus far: reggae seems to be a favorite, Paul Simon is a must and ANYTHING with drums is good. (Her grandpa will tell you that she loves the Jonas Brothers but I'm going to ignore the fact he let her watch music videos while we were visiting over the holidays) She's been rocking out for months and now that she can stand and walk and bend those knees, her groove is really kicking in. She'll squat two or three times, quick now! One! Two! Three! Her little arm will go out and in while she's pumping. Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Now she's get a foot out there as well as her little one, two, three.

It is an absolute joy to see her get pleasure out of the same things I enjoyed and still enjoy to this day. It would be awesome if her attraction to the shiny patent leather shoes means she'll want to sleep in her tap shoes, as I once insisted upon. Even if I didn't have years of training, her shrieks of laughter and her grooving to the beat would still thrill me because it's just pure joy for both the child and the parent and I'm left wondering how soon we can sign up for that first dance class.

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