I love dance! I love to dance. I love to watch dance. I love to teach dance. I have been waiting for an opportunity to take Thing 1 and Thing 2 to a dance piece but finding anything suitable for babies or toddlers is quite hard so when I saw Touch in The Egg brochure I booked straight away.
The Things were happy when we arrived at The Egg and headed straight for the play area. Luckily I had some helping hands in the shape of Nana, as when it was time to get ready for the performance Thing 1 decided to have a meltdown. I sent Thing 2 on ahead with Nana and just managed to calm Thing 1 down and take a seat as the piece began.
Things 1 and 2 were captivated as soon as they saw the first person move. I managed to relax, take part and enjoy the whole experience. Perfect.
Although Thing 1 and Thing 2 are non-identical twins they look very alike and people who don’t know them often expect them to be alike but their personalities are different. They could not have reacted more differently to dance but both loved it in their own way.
After Thing 1’s meltdown he wanted to be close to me so was sat on my lap to begin with. This didn’t last long. He was intrigued by a baby who had crawled on to the dance space and eventually went over to say hello to the baby. We had been told in advance that it was fine for the babies to be in the dance space and the dancers were improvising around them so I felt relaxed. It wasn’t long before the dancers were making eye contact with the babies in their space and Thing 1 was very happy to go along with this. As the title of the piece suggests there were moments were the dancers shared touch with each other and offered a hand to the babies and Thing 1 was happy to join in with this.
As the piece progressed were all invited to dance and while Thing 2 wanted to stay by my side, Thing 1 was off dancing with one of the performers. I was watching out of the corner of my eye and couldn’t help but smile at his pure enjoyment. Towards the end of the piece of music we were encourage to sit down and Thing 1 was back with us.
During the next section of the dance the performers were taking themselves out of the dance area and then dancing back in. It was wonderful to watch as Thing 1 copied this, walking out of the space and then dancing back in. He even stopped for a moment and felt the lights on his face. As the dance was drawing to an end Thing 1 was dancing around in the space exploring movement and mimicking some of the performers. It was joyful to watch him express himself like this and enjoy the moment so much.
Thing 2 enjoyed the performance in his own way. Once Thing 1 was gone from my lap, Thing 2 crawled on and was entertained by the dance from the comfort of Mummy’s lap. He was completely enthralled with what was going on but happy to sit and take it all in. He enjoyed the moments were the performers engaged with us and danced with me when we were invited to join in. He was swaying and moving and watching every little movement in the dance space. Both Thing 1 and Thing 2 were saying “more, more” as each section came to an end.
Touch was a lovely experience for all of us. The Things enjoyed it, Nana enjoyed it and I loved being able to watch a piece of dance, enjoy it and see my children learn to love it too. I hope this is the start of us being able to enjoy dance together more often. I have said in my blogs in the past that I have found it hard to engage with arts activities like I used to but after this performance I feel like I have found something that has been missing from my life for a while and it is lovely to have it back.
The Greatest Showmum 