Young Dancer's Workshop

We heard about the FSU School of Dance's Young Dancer's Workshop through Mrs S (Emily's Ballet Teacher)...she is apparently on the board and helped organize the YDW.  The YDW was a 2 day all day set of workshops teaching ballet, jazz, and modern dance.  The classes were taught by FSU dance faculty and the guest Instructor was the world renown, Suzanne Farrel.  We googled her and all I can say is WOW!  She has in her career danced all over the world and was the protege for the famous Balenchine (probably spelled wrong) ballet instructor and choreographer....There is tons of information on her online. She has been apart of the NYCballet and all over Europe....so we were super excited.  NeeNaw and Pop Pop paid for the workshop as part of Emily's Birthday present.  Emily was positive she wanted to go, even though she didn't know anyone that would be there, she still wanted to go...this is so unlike her mommy!  I was proud and scared all at the same time!  It was very very hard to leave her!  I sat there for forever and made sure she was in the right spot and o.k....she didn't know a single person but when we walked in, Mrs. S was the first person we saw...I took pictures through a glass window.  Emily danced for 5 hours the first day and for 4 hours the second day.  She was sore, tired, and hungry!  But so excited!  She came home and said, "Mom, I need to work on my flexibility!"  Mrs. S said she was excited for Emily and that maybe it would give her a focus for what she really wanted to work on in ballet....and encourage her to work even harder.  I gave her an extra cell phone to take and she would call me at each break...it was so good to hear her voice.  They worked constantly, there wasn't much goof off time or talk time...ballerina's don't talk while dancing!

One of the coolest things was that during the classes they had live piano music....in upper level college dance classes, live music is preferred which never ocurred to me...they had a pianist in each class. Emily thought this was neat!

We weren't allowed to take a picture of Suzanne Farrell but if you look closely...she is walking in the middle of all the girls in the picture above :)

Suzanne Farrell did autograph Emily's shirt!