School Dance Festival

My dad and I went to the school dance festival today.  A lot of the elementary schools around here do it.  And everyone acts like you should know what the dance festival is.  So this was my first experience.  Maybe its a Utah thing.  My mom said her school had a dance festival like this when she was a kid growing up in Salt Lake.  No explanation was given as to what it was.  The kids told me their grade had been preparing a dance and someone mentioned off hand to me that you should bring a lawn chair.  Hmm.  So basically it was a school wide dance performance where each grade does one song that they have prepared a big dance to.  They perform outside.  So you need to bring a lawn chair.  Now I know...

So here are John and I on our lawn chairs.  Some people had come several hours early (with their lawn chairs) to reserve seats.  We came about 10 minutes before show time and sat a few rows back.  No biggie.

Here we are waiting for the big show to start.

Grant (or the preschoolers) performed first.  They did an activity song medley with the Chicken Dance as the main theme.  Grant did a good job remembering the moves.  I think he was dressed as a dog or a bear here.

The kids perform in a big rectangle on the blacktop and parents sit on all four sides.  So you have to know where your kids class is going to face to get the best seat.  All three of my kids ended up facing different directions so we had to walk around to the different sides of the big rectangle to see them.  A lot of other parents were doing the same thing.

Anna's grade danced to the Katy Perry song Firework.  So they all dressed in red, white and blue and did a cute firework inspired dance.  Here is Anna dancing by her friend and classmate.

There was a little cordoned off walkway for the students to get into the big rectangle to perform.  Here is Matthew with the rest of the third grade walking onto the stage.

Matthew's grade did a version of Old MacDonald that broke into What Does the Fox Say? part way through the song.  They did a great job too.  I was impressed that they all remembered the moves so well.  They all had drawn on fox noses and whiskers.  I did my best to draw his on before school.

John was kind of done by the end of the show.  He was tired from walking all around to watch people.  He's not asleep here.  Just conscientiously objecting to standing up.  He also removed his shoes and didn't want to wear them again.  We got to go in to Grant's preschool classroom after that and have snacks so John liked that.  So now I know what a dance festival is.  We've lived in lots of military communities where the schools have high turnover each year and there are lots of new people.  In this community there is not a lot of turnover and everyone kind of assumes you know how things are done.  The school staff and families here are as nice as they can be but there is never any explanation of what anything is to the parents...'cause, you know, its just like how we did it last year!  

But the dance festival was cute and the kids all did a great job.  The kindergarteners danced to ABC by the Jackson Five which seemed apropos and one of the older grades dressed as zombies and did a dance to Thriller which was fun.  So now I've had the "dance festival" experience.  :)  And I know to bring a lawn chair!!