Dance competition, pandemic style!
Tap was "Are You Ready for a Miracle", a "Sister Act" theme.
They started on pews in choir robes, then took off their choir robes to reveal their sparkly dresses.
Ballet, Sarah's absolute favorite, was "I Can Only Imagine"
Jazz was "Fashionista"
Sarah and her friend and teammate Addy compared heights. Sarah has grown a LOT and is VERY tall (99.8 percentile right now). This is Sarah bending down a bit and Addy on her tiptoes!
Lyrical was "Rainbow"
My Sarah is in red.
(Her teammates are mostly 1-2 years older than her, but she towers over them!)
Production this year was "Gotta Get to Camp" but they only performed it at 1 competition and recital and I didn't get good pics.
Banquet was outdoors this year.
What was left of Sarah's team by then.
Sarah got "Best Performance in Lyrical" for her award this year.
Recital was in the end of July.
Here are Daddy and Sarah in their "Harry Potter" costumes for the Daddy Daughter Dance.
Each family got 3 tickets, so Nanny was able to come see Sarah dance.
Proud of our dancer!
So here's how this year went...
Of course, everything was messed up this year due to the COVID pandemic. However, some organizations and people handled it better than others. The dance studio did not handle it well. When everything shut down with the state stay at home order, the studio closed as well. However, the owner and staff complained incessantly online on social media and did whatever they could to open the studio whether it was safe to do so or not. We were asked early on whether our dancer would participate in the local competitions (that had been moved back and changed at least 4 times), nationals (hell no!), and the recital. We figured that if the competitions ended up being held, it would only be if a gathering of that many people had been approved by the state guidelines, so we agreed to local competitions. However, we then come to find out that the venue for the first competition is going to be Mystic Lake, which is part of the Sioux tribe, so they are sovereign and don't have to follow any of the state guidelines. Tricky! Then even the tribe would not allow the competition to be held, so our studio decided to host it at our studio! Ridiculous, if you ask me. We had already agreed to let her participate in local competitions, not knowing this is what we would be dealing with. We got through the competition at the studio in the end of June. Then there was Nationals, which we did not agree to participate in. We are glad we declined, because one of the families with a dancer on our team and another team got COVID and were contagious while we would have been with them at Nationals. Of course, the studio didn't notify anyone about it. Nor did they notify anyone when there was a case at the banquet. They did send out an e-mail saying they wouldn't notify anyone of a case unless MDH made them. Ugh!We had another competition locally in July, then the recital at the end of July. Between all these events, they had the studio open for the dancers to come indoors in the studio and practice their dances, redo formations, etc. without masks. At the time, this was not matching the state's recommendations for group sizes, distancing, etc. (In contrast, the soccer teams were only allowed to have 10 people total on a big field outdoors, so we had to split Austin's team into 2 groups to practice.) They had many more dancers indoors near each other dancing. I, and many other parents, were not comfortable with how the studio was handling the pandemic. As a pediatrician, many people came to me asking to say something to the studio to express these concerns. I drafted an e-mail to the studio saying that there were many people, myself included, concerned about it. In response, I got an angry phone call from the studio owner 10 minutes later telling me basically that it is about his money. He told me they basically got a loophole in the guidelines by classifying dance under the "student education" category instead of youth sports (since dancing is just like sitting in desks and not like sports, right?). I was regaled with stories of how they got lawyers to petition the state to let them open, bitching about how the candy store in Jordan got to open before them, etc. I heard absolutely zero concern for the health and safety of the dancers (or staff, for that matter). That was the straw that broke the camel's back. I was also not the only person who got "yelled at" by them. I heard many people that called with concerns were met with angry responses.
We had some issues earlier in the year with being told that Sarah will likely not advance in ballet due to her turnout, where it was more important for the team to win competitions than to foster my daughter's LOVE of ballet. We have also felt over the years that Sarah and her team are not given much opportunity to develop or advance and there is SO much favoritism with the teacher's and owner's kids/grandkids that we didn't feel that Sarah was ever going to really grow as a dancer there. Add that to the dumpster fire that was their management of the pandemic and we were ready to look elsewhere for a better option. We checked out studios in the area and found that one had the Progressing Ballet Technique class that Sarah's dance PT had recommended for her to work on her turnout. I talked with one of their directors and every question I asked had exactly the answer I wanted to hear! It seems like such a better fit for Sarah. She auditioned in July and had been chosen for a competition team at the new studio before she even had finished the (prolonged) season at her previous studio. She was also able to start taking some summer classes at the new studio and LOVED it! The instructors were SO encouraging to her and she would come home every day talking about the compliments she received on her ballet technique, her beautiful lines, her attention to detail, etc. They are encouraging her to pursue her love of ballet and exposing her to new styles as well (contemporary, McGovern method, PBT, etc.). In the end, after the previous studio had their auditions, we saw that 26 dancers had left! 1 dancer that made the switch last year and 2 that changed this year with Sarah are on her team, and at least 2 others are on other teams at the new studio. It is so fun that Sarah not only is in a place that seems like a wonderful fit for her, but she got to bring some friends along with her! We are VERY excited for a fresh start as a "Preteen Performer" at Premiere Dance Academy!
Here is her new team!
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