Gem State Ballroom Competition

As many of you know, our children have been taking ballroom dance lessons with a little homeschool group here in town.  They were somewhat unsure about it when they first started, but they have since learned to look forward to dance as one of the brightest highlights of their week.  Last weekend, three of our children participated in the Gem State Ballroom Competition for the first time.  It was quite an experience! 

Friday was team competitions all day.  Lida and her team competed in the PeeWee Swing event where they took 3rd place.  This accomplishment would be more exciting if there had been more than three teams competing...I must say, though, that Lida was wonderful!  She has a lot of spunk and great stage presence.  She also has a sense of rhythm which, unfortunately, her other team members lack.  She has developed the habit of leading her partner because he doesn't really have any idea what he is doing.  They are all very young, however, and no doubt will improve as they get older.  I tried to upload videos of the various team dances, but the files were too large and BlogSpot won't accept them! 

Lida and her partner, DJ after winning 3rd in their team event.

 On Saturday, Lida and her partner took 1st place in the PeeWee Swing Syllabus event.  This was much more of an accomplishment as there were 7 couples competing. 

Andrew and Katherine dance on a small team with a total of 7 couples.  They competed two team events on Friday and did very well indeed.  Their team took 3rd place in the Junior division with their cha-cha routine and 1st place with their waltz routine.  They were SUPER excited!  The team director was practically in tears. 

Here they are with part of their team waiting for the results from the judges.  They were very nervous.

Aren't they adorable?  They were so excited to win 3rd place. 

 

Here you can see their exuberance overflowing.  I never would have thought that any children of mine could be such hams.

The whole team after their thrilling victory in the waltz.

 On the team members don't always dance with the same partner.  In fact, their coach tries hard not to put the same people together all the time.  So, they each had different partners for cha-cha and waltz as well as the different syllabus events on Saturday.

Andrew and his waltz partner, Dana. 

 

Katherine and her cha-cha partner, Lawson.