camp chronicles : one direction

Each summer when we are up north there are fourteen different camps going on over the course of the week. I teach the leadership camp, and the camp that is physically situated closest to us is Dance Camp. As we carry on with the fun that our camp includes, I constantly find myself grooving to the tunes that are emanating from dance camp...usually a broad range of songs from hip hop to disco.

This year, Lady M was a little bit intrigued by the music, and we ventured over to visit dance camp on a couple of occasions. She particularly enjoyed the disco rehearsal, and though the coaches were more than happy to have her join in, she stuck closely to me and quietly observed. As the week progressed, she kept wanting to go into the Rec Hall to have a look at what they were doing, but always stayed near to me for a measure of comfort.

Every summer, thanks to the fabulous dance coaches, the remainder of the coaching staff end up learning a choreographed dance routine that we then perform on skit night in front of the whole camp. This year, our fine instructors chose the One Direction song "What Makes You Beautiful". Trust me, if you don't know the song by name, you've certainly heard it. For three consecutive nights, after the camp was asleep, we coaches took to the Coaches Lounge to practice our dance. Coaches representing Badminton, Tennis, Baseball, Leadership and more pretend that we have the best moves on camp as the very patient dance coaches teach us what they have in store.

One day after lunch we had our last rehearsal before the big performance so Lady M joined us for the fun. Well, she was smitten from that point forward. She learned to do a side-to-side step clap, and also learned to shake her hips like a champ! (My future Zumba girl, naturally). The night of the performance, she was front and centre cheering us on, and at Closing Ceremonies the next day, she was practicing her new moves. When one of the dance coaches asked her if she would be doing dance camp next summer, she emphatically replied "Oh yesssss!"

About a week after camp we were driving along when a song started playing faintly in the background. "Mummy! It's your song", she announced from the backseat. You guessed it - it was One Direction, the boy band du jour. As visions of my childhood love affair with New Kids on the Block danced in my head, I indulged her and turned up the song. (Confession: I quite like the song too). From that point forward, she kept asking to hear it; she couldn't get enough!

Finally, last night, Cal downloaded it and (somewhat begrudgingly) addd it to his iPhone. We then headed to have dinner with my family where Lady M requested the song over and over from our house to theirs (about a 25 minute drive). She forgot about it for a little while upon arrival, but at the end of the night, she requested the sweet sounds of One Direction to be shared with everyone so she could dance.

Thanks to the magic of AppleTV, the song began playing, and Lady M mimicked just about every dance move from our coaches dance, adding in her own little hair flip for extra flair! Little Lady A boogied right alongside her sister and I and we had quite the little dance party in my parents family room.

As I mentioned in an earlier post today, we're looking to put Lady M in dance classes this fall. So long as they play One Direction, I suspect my little girl will be hooked!