FEATURE: Li’l elephant takes to the dance floor

PRINCESS Ella is not the most graceful of dancers.

In fact, she inherited her dad’s flat feet, which means she struggles to grasp the concept of “dancing on toes’’ – she’s more like Babar the Elephant than Angelina Ballerina.

However, she reached the stage where she knew all the moves on every dance-related DVD she had, so we decided it was time to start dance lessons.

Many regular readers will have already seen the bloke in The Shed’s account of gearing up to take Ella to her very first dance lesson in The Beginning of the End.

So what happened?

Well, there’s always that fear that maybe she’ll just stand there, too shy to participate.

The instructor obviously knew this to be the case for many so offered for mums to take part in the class too. Fat chance. The last time I danced in public was under the influence of a bottle of wine and Lionel Ritchie. Hmmm.

Thankfully, my dancing wasn’t required. Ella took to the class like Victoria Beckham to dieting. It may have helped that she had a li’l friend along with her, which gave them both the confidence to stand right up the front.  She likes the spotlight (check out her diva moment in the video from two years ago).

These are some of the golden moments from her first lesson:

• When asked to twinkle her fingers in the air, she responded loudly with: “Look, my mummy painted my fingernails with nail polish. See?’’ The dancing had to be halted while everyone looked at her fingernails.

• Each dancer had to choose an imaginary horse. Ella’s friend decided to bring her horse over to her mummy to “show’’ her. When the dance instructor later queried Ella’s friend as to whether she’d already chosen her horse, she replied: “yes, I left it over there near mum’s chair’’.

• Ella’s eyes lit up when she was asked to “jump like a kangaroo’’. Earlier that morning we’d discovered a frog in the house (not something we’ve ever encountered before), to which Ella responded with “look dad, he’s jumping like a kangaroo’’. Needless to say, she was proud to show off her kangaroo skills for the second time that day.

• Accidentally chest bumping another dancer footy style and then pretending like nothing happened. Ella barely moved; the other girl bounced and hit the floor.

• Half the class being named Sienna and hearing an echo of:.“that’s my name, too’’.

So, how did your little one adapt to their first dance lesson (or footy match)? What moments made you laugh?