Jenna's Southwest Dance Concert

We went to Jenna's dance concert the past couple of nights. It was held at the Hafen Theater at Tuacahn. The concert was beautiful! I really liked the story too. Jaiden and I went on Thursday night. Friday night I went with Rick and Jase and Ellen while Jaiden babysat the boys at our house. Others who came to support Jenna were: Ethan, Anna and Evie Ence, and Grace and her mom, Julie. 

Jenna looked so pretty and graceful -- I love watching her dance!! I have lots of pictures of her in her pink dress, but not her red outfit, darn it! I will include the videos though!! (The background goes kind of wonky in the videos. We will get a professional video of the whole concert later.) 

     

 

Southwest Dance Concert!!

Jaiden and Jenna had their dance concert this weekend! There were five Senior girls this year who were showcased throughout the concert (This is Jaiden in the top left corner of the poster). It was a beautiful show! (The whole program is scanned and put in Dropbox if anyone is interested). We will also be getting a DVD of the whole show. I am excited to watch it again when we receive it! Grandma and Grandpa Westra came down for the weekend to watch the concert with us and both girls had several friends who came and watched them also! 

Here is a little "write-up" from Jaiden... 

Here are some of Jaiden's pictures from the show! 

Here are some of Jenna's pictures. She was in a dance called "Mirrored Illusions." She was also in the "The Bridge" song. She had a cool costume which un-snapped from the top to transform into a completely different dress! 

Rella's Dance Concert

Janelle, Jaiden, Jenna and I headed up North this morning and went straight to Janika and Brandon's townhouse to stay (they were in Bear Lake at Brandon's family's cabin). We were really sad to miss them! But we enjoyed staying at their place! We then headed to Provo to watch Rella's dance concert. She was in lots of dance numbers and did a great job! It was fun watching her and I enjoyed all of the different styles of dancing! 

 After the concert we headed to Shane and Alicia's house for a yummy pizza dinner! Jaiden and Janelle took a nap in their hammock. 

Southwest Dance Concert: Jenna and Jaiden

The Southwest Dance Concert this year was called "Memories: A Tale of Legacy, Learning, & Love." Each year the artistic director (who is also my girls' dance teacher) writes an original dance play. This one was inspired by The Keeping Quilt by Patricia Polacco. Each year the dance play is written to showcase all of the dancers, but especially the Senior girls who just graduated from high school. The Senior girls are basically "the stars of the show."

This year there were three Senior girls (Jaiden will be one of the Seniors next year) and so the story was about three girls, from three different countries, who meet on a ship on their way to America and become good friends. (The director did a lot of research and based the girls' stories on actual historical events from their family heritage). I wish that they had announced this fact at the beginning of the concert instead of the end, because it makes it more meaningful. So, the first two dances are "The Voyage," (Jaiden's class) and "Friendship Kindled."

The story follows the three girls in their various location and lives. They continually write letters to each other and plan to meet up again someday. As they continue their journey each one of them keeps a quilt that they add memories to and each memory is a dance: (An English Spring, Hustle and Bustle of the City, Weaving the Nets and Fishing, Tornadoes, Desert Landscape, Mystery and Magic (Jaiden's class), Kite Flying in the Park, Night Games and Catching Fireflies, Harvest (Jaiden's class), Wildflowers, Running Free, Colors of the Sky, Leaves of Fall, The Blizzard (Jenna's class), Ice-Skating, Reflections, Passing On.) The memories are of their individual lives and locations as they marry and have children. 

In the end the quilts are finished and they look back on all of their precious memories. They pass along the quilt to their children and when they pass away they are finally reunited as friends in the next life. (The girls come out in white dresses and embrace). The ending totally made me cry! It was a beautiful show and the girls did a great job!

Someone sent Jaiden this picture they took of her. I love it! 

Since Jenna's class dance was "The Blizzard," the girls all wanted to go to Dairy Queen for Blizzards after the concert! 

Southwest Dance Concert: Social Distancing Style

Jenna and Jaiden just finished their dance concert! We weren't sure what was going to happen with the concert when dance classes were cancelled for six weeks during the quarantine. The teachers continued to sent youtube videos of the dances so that the girls could continue practicing at home -- but it is not the same as meeting in person. Concert is always held in the huge auditorium at Desert Hills High School, but since the school was closed down due to the quarantine the studio was no longer allowed to have it there. Luckily they were able to make arrangements with Tuacahn to have it at their indoor Hafen theater.

Jaiden said that the stage was different -- the width of the stage was smaller, but the depth of the stage was longer, so it was a bit of an adjustment. The auditorium is also quite small -- plus to comply with social distancing requirements they were limited on how many people could be in the auditorium at one time. They had every other row taped off and then had groups of four seats with two empty seats in between each group of seats. The concert was not open to the public and families could only purchase four tickets total. So we were only able to go to one performance. They added a third performance (a matinee) to accommodate all of the families.

I got tickets for me, Rick, Janelle, and Jared. Josh was grateful that he got invited to a soccer scrimmage with his former soccer team that morning so that he had an excuse not to go, ha ha! It was a beautiful concert and very professionally done! Of course Rick and Jared both fell asleep during parts of it though...must be a guy thing. Jenna and Jaiden both did a great job. Jenna was in one dance and Jaiden was in three dances. Concert is always done in such as way as to showcase the Senior girls. This year there were five Senior girls and they were the five muses in the show.

Our family went to see the show during the matinee. I was originally planning on an evening performance but there were not any good seats left and so I opted for the matinee instead and we got front row seats! I thought I would get some awesome pictures and videos, but then they announced "no photography or video" right before the concert started. So I was disappointed about that! They will get a professional digital download of the whole concert, so that is good, but I like having separate videos of just my girls and their numbers without having to go through the whole show! I also like being able to get close ups of them dancing. Oh well!

Saturday night I picked up the girls and we took some pictures out by the waterfall at Tuacahn. At first the girls didn't want to since they had been crying (I guess that is a thing on the final night) and they didn't want pictures with red puffy eyes. But I didn't think we would get around to doing pictures on another night. Jaiden actually has three different costumes, so I guess we will need to do another photo shoot later to show her other costumes, but at least we got some cute ones for now! After taking pictures I took the girls to Iceberg for ice-cream. We had planned to meet up with Amy and her girls. There were protesters lining up and down St. George Boulevard. Click HERE for the news article. I haven't been keeping up with the news or social media lately and so I had no idea why there were there or what was going on, but Amy filled me in and since then I have noticed stuff about this topic everywhere I look... It is really sad!!

These first two pictures were taken after the matinee. The rest were taken after the final performance.