Maxine and Mojo had their first ballet class yesterday.
What is it about little girls and ballet? Its so hard to remember the frightened little orphan we met at the luxus hotel on Shamian Island just a little over two years ago when watching the gleeful preschooler in her new ballet dress prancing and twirling, or listening to her croon her favorite phrase "It's SO beautiful!" at everything from her new dress to the cats to a cheap plastic bracelet.
Oh, and about that new ballet dress.
Mojo took Friday night off, and I took the littelies to dinner and the Nickel Arcade and to the big Goodwill down on Grand, where we found the pink ballet dress. Missy fell in love instantly, we hooked it into the cart and carried it off, and I recall she went to bed wearing it that night.
She had to wear it to her first class, and so she and her mom were headed out to Bob the Subaru when little girl saw some wonderful rarity ("It's SO beautiful!!") on the ground. She bent down to look...
...and her groin started to sing.
OK, not sing, but play; play an instrumental piece of music, part of the
pas de deux from Swan Lake, I think. Missy loved...I mean
adored...this unexpected treat. She has been playing her little dress-music-box ever since, and demanding it when we remove it from the dress for things like sleeping and washing. Generally speaking we have been entranced by her enchantment. Although because I am who I am I wonder from time to time about the dress designer who found nothing bizarre in placing the music box so that it made it seem as though the wearer's little prepubescent genitalia were picking up and retransmitting the local classical station in the fashion of orthodontic braces in urban legend.
Anyway, please enjoy the little girl's first encounter with the classical art of dance.
So while I don't get the princessy part what I do get is the dancer as athlete. Which is why I wanted to repost this photograph of the dancer Naiomi Goldberg's battered feet.
