Our Fairy

David's voice:

When the girls asked for princess music I decided rather than put it straight on, I would challenge and extend their ideas around it a bit first.

The first piece I played them was and Irish reel. "That's not princess music they told me."

Not put off and despite a gouty foot, I managed to demonstrate a fair reel, but they still weren't happy so I pulled up the next piece I'd selected as potential princess music. Billy Idol's 'white wedding.'

Another demonstration, but sure enough "That's not princess music, that's rock music."

So I moved on to some Strauss 'Leichtes Blut- Light as a feather' a toss dance. This they had to think about, it was obviously nearly princess music, but not quite. "That's not princess music either."

Annalise was finally forced by my obstinate ignorance to rethink her question and draw on her experiences to rephrase her request. "Barbie music is princess music."

"Oh I said."

I tried them on Khatschaturian's 'sabre dance.' "Is this Barbie music."

I could see them think again.

"No swan lake."

Oh I said you want some Tschaikowsky, he wrote swan lake."

"No swan lake is from Barbie."

"Well I'll try this Tschaikowsky 'Swan lake' and we'll see if it's the same."

Oh my it was!

"Yes that's it."

"Oh so Tschaikowsky must have written the music for Barbie's swan lake."

I then challenged them further, by dancing with them.

"You can't dance you're a boy, boys can't be princesses."

"Yes I can I'm a beautiful boy princess see I've got my princess dress on." It didn't fit on my head or tummy so I stuck one on each leg.

We had a lot of fun leaping and dancing together in the waltz parts I picked them up and twirled them around, till they quite wore me out with "me next". We went on to 'Sleeping beauty' and 'The nutcracker', and then I asked Elise if she wanted me to play "For Elise."

She did and Annalise recognised it from 'Young Einsteins' "That's from the t.v. with the rocket."

Later at mat I reinforced our discovery that the Barbie music was by Tschaikowsky, several times and then put some on to dance too. We all sat in a circle and who ever wanted to dance could. Then I let those who'd been dancing go off to wash their hands or stay dancing if they wanted. With this license to dance soon nearly everybody was up, by the time of last snippet of music, only two children still felt too shy to dance. And once more the boys demonstrated they were the some of the best dancers, Caleb W and Connor especially (They'd also demonstrated this the other day doing their take on what highland dancing would look like a mix a crumping and breakdancing apparently. :) ) I was glad of this as earlier I'd noticed at least three boys wanting to dance but not confident enough to give it a go with all the girls dominating the dance floor, now they got their chance.

Amazing what can happen when you decide to be ignorant ;).