Spring Extravaganza

I may have mentioned this before – but I love my students!  lol – no groaning for those of you who have read this line each and every time that I have written it!  But they continue to amaze and delight me.  And when I get tickled I just gotta share it!

The Spring Extravaganza for our school was last night.  Now we’ve never had a Spring Extravaganza before, so who knew what to expect?  For me, the words Spring Extravaganza bring up images of flowers blooming and bunny rabbits with pink twitchy noses.  Apparently for my students the phrase Spring Extravaganza means something all together different.  For them it means a fashion show, a dance, a step team performance, and a flamenco performance.  Who’d a-thunk it?

So of course my students made cookies.  Hundsreds of cookies.  Thousands of cookies.  Millions and Trillions and Billions of cookies!  And we used the leftover chicken from last weekend (don’t worry – we froze it in the meantime.  There ARE some people I don’t care much for, but I wouldn’t poison them.  Well, I MIGHT if I were sure it would only make them sick…but I haven’t perfected that yet and I might accidentally kill someone….but I digress) to make chicken salad.  Then we used the chicken salad to make little finger sandwiches.  We made mini cuban sandwiches (see link for more info if you don’t know about cuban sandwiches). http://whatscookingamerica.net/Sandwich/CubanSandwich.htm  We had chips and served punch.  It was very well done.

But we were just backgrund window dressing for the real show.  “Warm Ups” were provided by our AWARD WINNING Flamenco dancers.

 Honestly – how many middle schools do you know about that have FLAMENCO dance teams?  They are so beautiful, and graceful and self-assured when they dance.  It really belies their age.  But in a GOOD way, for once.  Not in a oh-my-god-how-do-they-know-about-that-cause-they’re-too-young kind of way.  Know what I mean?  There’s maturity and then there’s….. street wise and scary.

Another warm-up was the STEP team from a nearby high school.  If you are not familiar with Step Dancing – I am NOT talking about Irish “Lord of the Dance” type dancing. This is very earthy, tribal and powerful.  It is a lot of stomping and clapping in unison and rhythm but not exclusively that.  There is a lot of interpretation involved – and personalization.  There was a performance by the girls and a separate one by the boys.  I cannot do it justice with mere words.  It was polished, yet raw.  Does that make sense?  If you have never seen a really good step team perform – please do if you ever get the chance.  Even if it turns out not to be your favorite style of dance, it will make a powerful impression.  And trust me – when you talk about warming up…..those boys and girls were SWEATING by the time their routines were winding up.  They were good – and they worked hard at being good!

Now that warm-ups were over, it was time for the Main Event – the fashion show!  But this was no ordinary fashion show.  Not here at this school!  They had chosen songs and choreographed routines to go with the words to the songs that also showed off the clothes.  So….The boys danced around the stage to “Let’s Hear it for the Boy”.  The girls stalked each other to “Girl Fight”.  They promenaded together to a few different hip-hop tunes.  Each song was different clothes and different moves.  The finale was My Boo….and the boys came down off stage to give their girls a single rose. 

Girl Fight………

Let’s Hear It For The Boy(s)

I know – not the best pictures….but you can sure see that they’re having fun, can’t you?!  I was having such a good time watching them that I kept forgetting to take pictures!  They were so good – a near professional performance!  The students watching were a great crowd.  You couldn’t ask for better, if you are a performer.  They screamed and applauded and ooh-ed and aaah-ed at each new outfit, each new appearance of the models.  I know they all felt like SUPER models!

Afterwards, there was a dance – a popular local radio station sent by two DJs and they did the tunes.  The kids danced and the principal freaked out over inappropriate dancing.  All in a days work!  lol  I went home and crashed.

My tangerine toenails?  Well today I discovered I have a shirt AND a pair of undies that match that tangerine.  Too much information?  heh.  So now – if I follow ArtImp’s line of reasoning that tangerine toenails gives me super powers – I must REALLY have super powers today – cause all the important parts of my body are covered in tangerine!  Er…..except for my brain.  Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm…………..