Six year old POD has had a busy week what with her school sports day followed by her first Stagecoach performance outside of Early Stages a few days later. She didn’t win anything at her sports day mainly because she had so much fun. It was hilarious to watch. From looking in the opposite direction when the first race started to stopping to have her photograph taken and dancing at one end of the field when she should have been at the other.
And then there was the sack race relay. She’d been worrying about this a few days earlier as she kept falling over. While I’m no expert, and it’s a long time since I was at school, I always found jumping with your feet together helped. POD generally has great balance so it seemed like a logical solution. And it worked, she managed to stay upright. In fact she was so pleased with her efforts she wanted to have a chat about it while a poor teacher attempted to prize POD from the sack so her’s relay partner could finish the race!
It was like something out of a comedy watching her perform, she has such a great character. While smiling at her antics on the field, it’s easy to see why she loves Stagecoach performing arts so much. She did a two week trial back in January last year and has continued going to Early Stages ever since. She recently moved up to the main school and we weren’t exactly sure what it was going to be like. While POD is with children her own age, main school caters for kids aged 6-18 and the weekly session is longer than it was before. Stagecoach is now three hours of singing, dancing and acting – double what she was doing previously although we miss a little as she has a gymnastics class beforehand.
Every term there’s a show and while this one was more of a presentation, it took different elements from the theatre. There was even a ballerina who was just mesmerising. POD played a soldier and did brilliantly with her singing and dancing, especially considering this performance was combined with the older classes. Next term will be a huge change as the kids will be performing Annie at an actual theatre (rather than in a school). This weekend the more experienced children will get to audition for the part of Annie. POD hadn’t seen Annie before so we watched it the other day. She’s spent much of the week singing songs from it although she only knows a few lines. She even joked she could play the part of Annie and train my mother in law’s dog to be on stage with her! Saying that, she’s one of the youngest so she’ll have a small part but you can’t dampen her enthusiasm and what an amazing experience for her.
