“Have yourself a merry little Christmas, let your heart be light”
As I write this blog, I am sitting in front of my Christmas tree full of random but personal baubles, a cosy fire decorated with red berries, candles and nutcrackers, a glass of fizz and Christmas music playing in the background.
Today was my last teaching day of 2022 and what a wonderful way to finish the year. The Christmas tree lights were glowing and my dancers ran in full of joy and excitement for the festivities to begin.
As a teacher, I love self assessment, dancers having the opportunity to express what they feel confident in and which areas they feel they require extra support. On that note, we began our evening sitting around the tree and I set my first challenge, coming up with one word to describe how they felt about the performance of Le Petit Nutcracker.
The words that were used, blew me away, words to describe the show included:
Inspired
Pro Dancer
Excited
WOW!
A-Ma-ZING!
Glamorous
Emotional
Of course, I couldn’t just leave it there, I had to dig deeper, going around the circle again I asked for more context to their single words:
Inspired: Both younger dancers will be inspired to dance at our level but I was also inspired to continue working hard and dancing like the older dancers.
Pro Dancer: I felt like such a professional dancer
Excited: I felt excited from start to finish and couldn’t get to sleep after because I was full of excitement!
WOW: Just a big mixture of WOW, WHAT and OMG! I just did that!
A-Ma-ZING: Just all of it was amazing, I loved it!
Glamorous: I loved all the costumes
Emotional: One minute I was excited, then I was nervous, then I was happy, then I was excited. I felt just full of different emotions.
It felt like such a great way to finish the year on such a positive note!
In the madness of Christmas, it’s nice to stop, reflect and chat.
Tomorrow will be day 17 of working straight through and the one thing I am looking forward to (apart from switching the alarm clock off) will be spending time with my family and friends, chatting, laughing, dancing, eating and of course being merry!
I will take time to reflect before jumping into 2023!
On that note, Merry Christmas to all our wonderful families but most importantly I hope our dancers have a magical time and the next 2 weeks are full of inspiration, dancing, excitement, glamour, emotion, wowness and truly A-ma-ZING!
Merry Christmas to all and to all good night!