December 2020 Part 3: Rachel Dance Showcases

A good chunk of our media files in December centered around Rachel and her dance studio. Believe it or not, I've actually trimmed these photos down quite a bit, and I didn't include any videos (and there were a lot of them!) So, here's the abbreviated snapshot. 

Rachel got her team jacket (required for her upcoming competitions), and she was excited to show it off for us. 

December gave us another lesson on how life had changed due to the pandemic. Rachel's dance studio would have normally done a benefit concert, but instead they had to do smaller scale mini recitals, and only Brian and I were allowed to attend. First, we got to see the dances their team dances, the two they'd been working on for their competitions. 

We got to watch these two other teams as well, and I confess that Brian and I were a bit worried about our decision to put her in this studio. We weren't super impressed with the older girls dances, but it was so fun to see Rachel light up the stage. (Don't worry, we were REALLY impressed at the end of the year company showcase and are feeling much better about this whole thing). 

We've loved Rachel's coach, Miss Sarah. She's been so great holding our hand through navigating this new studio, dance teams, and everything else! 

I wanted a picture of Rachel in her dance outfit, but Gabe wanted to be in it too. Notice how he dressed up for her recital, even though he had to stay home and watch the extremely bad zoom broadcast?

The last week of dance, Brian and I headed back to the studio to watch her class demonstrations. In addition/as part of being on a company team, she takes hip hop, jazz, tap, ballet, and acro dance classes.  We got to see all her progess in these classes over the course of two days. Here's tap: 

Hip hop

Ballet

And Jazz. 

It was clear she'd been doing jazz and ballet longer, but I'm excited that she gets to learn these other genres as well (even though I started looking for other studios after these December demos). We love our tiny dancer and how much she's grown in her dancing over the past few years.