The beginning of a month...

Richmond Theatre hold a Primary dance gala every year for all primary school children in and around the area. I held a free ticket to see it as I nanny for a little girl who attends St. John the Baptist school in Hampton Wick. Her parents don't seem to take much interest in her extra curricular activities; I also had the only free ticket to see her production at Christmas which she played an American. The primary schools Christmas shows seem to have changed a lot since I was in them 10 years ago (I sound so old!). They don't have traditional nativities now and the teachers have to make sure they are multi-cultural, hence she was an American. I understand we are a multi-cultural society which has been a big step from previous years, and it is important to learn about other world religions if we are going to be an accepting society, but has too much been taken away from the birth of Christ? I am aware schools can't call it the 'Christmas Holidays' now and they have to call it the 'Winter Break'. We are predominantly a Christian society so how has it come to this?

However, that was not my point of this blog so I shall now return to my story...

So, I was her support for today. I entered the auditorium and find her frantically waving in the crowd of excited children at the front and I am suddenly swamped with this sense of pride. There she is smiling and shouting my name. However, this didn't last long and she returned to her seat as she became too cool for waving to her nanny.

Dramatic Edge (who I later find out provided funding towards last year's Drama in the Community project) organised this event with 8 different primary schools who all came from different year groups. I must say I was very impressed with the standard from all the dancers and the dances were of a very high standard, considering that the majority of them were choreographed by their year teacher.

I must however say that I felt rather strange being in a room full of mums and dads watching their children dance. I did feel proud when I saw her up on stage and I was smiling, but there was something missing that I felt the other parents had, and it wasn't just because I wasn't watching my own child. I cannot describe it well enough.

When it had finished I stayed to say goodbye to her as she was going back to school, as she again felt rather embarrassed, as so did I. I hope that when I become a parent that I am not one that embarrasses their children like that, like Cathy my Mother does on a regular basis!

I think that this was a good event to go to from two perspectives. One because it was run by Dramatic Edge who we can now get in contact with and explain our project to them and maybe recieve some funding for, and two because this is definately something we can approach the schools with and ask if they would like to perform something similar at our performance.

Thank you for reading

Zx