Ballet Recital

A few weeks ago I had a ballet recital at The Civic Arts Plaza.   Ballet started a long time ago in Italy in the late fifteenth-century. However, ballet became popular in France and the first school for ballet started in France by King Louis XIV.  Therefore, all the ballet steps, moves, and jumps are in French. I have learned many of the steps, but not all of them.  In ballet, a female dancer is called a ballerina and a male dancer is called a ballet dancer. In our dance class we had 9 ballerinas and 1 ballet dancer.  Ballerinas usually wear a short tutus, tights, and have there hair neatly pinned up in a bun. 

The dance we did for the recital was to the Fire Ball Polka (Feurfest) by Josef Strauss. To make sure that everyone knew where to go on stage, we had a dress rehearsal before the recital.  During the rehearsal I got my costume.  My costume was blue, with white lace, puffy sleeves and a flower attached to the waist.  My hair piece was a crown with flowers and blue and white ribbons on the side. 

During the recital I had to sit in the dressing room until it was my turn to dance.  In the dressing room there were a lot of yellow lights and mirrors.  There were also many other dancers also waiting their turn to dance, fixing their hair, putting on makeup and getting into their costumes.

Here is some photos from the rehearsal.



Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Do you do Ballet?

Have you been in any recitals?

Sarah Has a Blog!

                                                                                                                        

My sister Sarah has her own blog called Come Somersault with Sarah.  After she saw my blog, she has always wanted one too.  Her blog has many cool gadgets like feeding fish and will also have a voki.  If you check out her blog, you will see many more gadgets and a fantastic post.

Here is the link to Sarah's blog.

Please visit Sarah's blog and drop off a comment.

                                                                                                               

Johann Sebastian Bach

The Baroque period was during the 1600's -1750's.  The music of this time period has counterpoint.   Counterpoint is when there are two or more melodies combined together in a harmonious (pleasing sound) way but you can still hear the individual melodies. In the pieces that my sister and I play, the two unique melodies are played by the right and left hand.  

Johann Sebastian Bach was born on March 21, 1685 (same day as me!).  Bach is the youngest of eight children.  When Bach's parents died,  Bach became an orphan and went to live with his older brother who taught him to play the organ.   Bach married twice and all together he had 20 children but ten died as infants.

  
Bach spent most of his life working as an organist, teacher, and composer and composed 1,100 pieces and all of them were different. When Bach died, his works were soon forgotten.  Only a century later a composer played a piece by him and then people started getting interested in Bach's music. 

I will now play for you a piece by Bach called Badinerie.  This Bach piece is short and quick. My sister Sarah will play two pieces called Gavotte followed by English Suite I: Bourree II.

Did you hear counterpoint?

Which piece did you like best?