Of dancing, prancing and big black eyes.

The ballet concert.

Love it, hate it, fear it, if you have daughters or sons who love to dance, around this time of year you will either have just been to yours, be about to attend one, or in the final weeks of preparation.

Our concert was earlier than usual, due to the school at which it is held, having the gall to want to use it themselves on the first weekend in November, which is the traditional date.  We dutifully prepared hair pins, hair nets, hair spray, frilly socks and didn't wash our daughter's hair so the bun would stick.

In an act of genius the organisers of the dance school which Issy attends, do not force us all to sit through 3 hours of every age and style of dance at the annual concert. Instead the kids up to year 2 at school perform in an early afternoon concert and those older perform later.  You only have to go to both if you have kids in both age groups, or if you child is in a performance group or a soloist.

Backstage was unbelievable.  I find it hard to speak of the madness.  The tulle, the fishnet, the hairpins and the screeching.  Trying to find your child in a purple tutu among 12 of them was nearly impossible.  I got out of there as fast as I could.

Our concert, heavy as it was on the tiny tots, included lots of special performances by Eistedfford groups to break things up.   They were very good and allowed us to regain our composure after chortling at the little ones (shedding a tear at the same time).

Not only am I proud of the bun but I'm very keen on those red shoes my friend S is wearing in the background

Our girls were the 6th act in.  They were devastatingly cute.  Issy performed with her black eye, received on Wednesday when she fell and bumped her face on the sinks at preschool, giving herself a shiner of epic proportions.

Check out the shiner.

A few acts after our purple people were a group of blue tutus (the 3-4 years olds) and further on in the program was a group of pink ones (the other 4-5 year old group).   The idea was that a solo act with a curtain hiding 2/3 of the stage went before each tiny tots act, allowing them to assemble in their line and be ready for the curtain to go up.

This was a great idea except for one little girl in the blue group, who, when the curtain went up and she realised the audience was full of...well...people, completely lost it and ran screaming to the edge of the stage.

The closest parent to her jumped up and tried to stop her from falling off the stage.  This caused her to scream even louder.  Her mum came running down the side of the audience and tried to take her away, but little blue girl refused to go quietly, instead, she tried to pull her mum on the stage, to hold her hand while she continued to dance.

The show must go on, and all that. As you would expect, her Mum strongly resisted getting down with the blue tutu's to 'Funky the Monkey".

Finally little blue tut accepted that her Mum would sit just off stage, while she joined the end of the line and joined in for the last 20 seconds of the dance.  Most of her classmates had watched the action instead of dancing, as had possibly the entire audience except for the parents of the rest of the blue tutus who were probably feeling a bit gypped by this stage (I would have).

At the end, each little girl had a chance to blow a kiss to the audience and skip off stage.  Little blue tutu got the biggest clap ever.  And at the end when they all danced off stage left, she turned and ran across into her mums arms at stage right.  We all wiped tears of laughter and sympathy from our eyes.

Before the concert, Issy was giving up dancing.  Now she is dedicated to a continued dancing career so she can wear a costume as cool as the big sisters she saw in the dressing room.

Looks like it's 51 weeks til the next one.