SYTYCD

... only if you are a dance and TV lover will you know what the above initials stand for.

"So You Think You Can Dance" is a TV series that I reluctantly have to tuck under the "reality TV" banner - most of which I class as car-crash television full of truly awful wannabe's that should not be given the time of day, let alone a whole series of airtime. I think SYTYCD airs in the US, Canada and Australia and Malaysia so far. The UK would love this show.

Disclaimer on really poor quality of photos - explanation / excuse coming right up ...

Simply put, thousands of dancers across the land audition for a spot in the Top 20. The ten chosen males and ten chosen females then pair up each week, learn a routine or three and then are judged on their performance. Each week one guy and one girl are eliminated from the show, until you have a winner. Simple, eh? The prize now stands at $100,000 and a new car!

My children are now addicted. Literally. Daughter Number One especially. She is 11 years old and does three dance classes of her own and assists to teach at two others. She just assumes the TV series will still be running in 7 years time when she will be old enough to audition! Daughter Number Two is 9 and although she does not know it, has great skill and poise at ballet, but prefers Jazz.

The TV franchise has recently concluded it's second Canadian series - and the Top 10 are currently on tour.

So guess who took a three hour drive south to Lethbridge on Sunday night to go and watch these dancers girate for an evening. Yep - yours truly.

Two mums and three hyper excited young girls in a car - ooh what fun. And it was. The show was good, albeit too short - and at $70 a ticket, it needed to be worth the journey. (And if you already know that the tour are coming to Calgary tomorrow night - yes, I knew that too and it would have been soooo much easier - but we'll be on board a flight to Heathrow by show-time, so that wasn't going to work unfortunately.)

The girl who won the last series, Tara-Jean, was actually a Lethbridge native anyway so you can imagine how loud and chuffed the audience were to see her. Several standing ovations and deservedly so.

Photos for you taken on the point-and-press camera that was snuck into my bag. The tickets categorically said "no cameras or recording devices" so I assumed we would get a good rub down and be searched on the way in. Nope. So after hiding my disappointment that some fit doorman didn't need to pat me down, and taking our seats, and then watching every other attendee take out large cameras from bags and pockets, my friend though "sod this" and walked back to the car to get our little cameras... If I'd known I was going to be such a rebel and buck the camera laws so wildly, I'd have brought the decent Pansonic with me!

Modern dance can be dirty these days. I mean reeaaallll dirty. I mean getting down and filthy. Not something the eyes of the 9 and 11 year olds in the audience need to see really, nor understand thankfully. Costumes are strappy, stringy and raunchy, movements are very sexy, sequins are flying and hips are doing things mine could never do in a million years.

I am my mother - I have morphed, unseen, into the "middle years" where I swing wildly from being a mum who wants to cover her daughter's eyes - to tilting my head sideways to get a better look, thinking "Cor, I wish I could wear that, and I wish I could do that - with him".

Of course, I know other people that just hate musicals and dance. Why, in the middle of a perfectly good film, does someone have to burst into song. That's just stupid.

Ahhh, that's my bliss.

We're seeing "Wicked" in the London West End next week... Yay!