Ballet Terms

I am learning so much about ballet thanks to Penny. We checked out two Angelina Ballerina books from the library when we went last week, including the original book of the series in which Angelina can't stop dancing all the time and everywhere so her parents finally put her in ballet lessons. This is more or less the situation in our house. Penny wants to dance all the time and everywhere, and asks us twenty or thirty thousand times a day to come and dance with her. At first, she would want me to dance and show her what to do, but now she makes up her own "dances" and shows me what to do - ha! This usually involves, "put your foot here, Mommy. Now jump like this, and..." The dances nearly always end with, "and now, fall down!" In Angelina Ballerina, Angelina knocks over her a pitcher of milk and some pies by doing a "beautiful arabesque" in the kitchen. Penny loves to tell me how she is now doing an "alabesque." And at the playground on Friday afternoon she was climbing around the big rope netting stuff putting one foot in the neighboring rope square and saying, "Step," and then putting the other foot in the square and saying, "Pah-zay." I think she means "passe" which is actually where you put your foot on your opposite leg just below the knee. That was part of the dance they were doing for their recital (which we didn't participate in). Anyway, it's funny to hear her running around saying all the ballet terms. It's going to be a long summer until dance classes start up again in the fall...