On Sunday we took the kids to see Sesame Street Live: Elmo Makes Music at the Fox Theater in Detroit. Mike and I had been downtown just the night before for my birthday date night (dinner at London Chop House and the Oscar nominated short films at the DIA's Detroit Film Theater--ideal).
My midwinter break once again feels like a vacation in the D, but that works for me.
Both kids got a view of the pre-show entertainment (Zoe then Bert and Ernie) from Mike's shoulders in the lobby.
The Fox is a great place to play eye spy. Sophie pointed out gold butterflies on the walls, Michael found monkeys, but it took them both a while to spot my favorite detail waaaaay up high. I had to take a picture with my phone, show it to them there, and then they could spot the elephant in real life.
The show did not disappoint, all set around the premise of finding instruments in everyday objects to help a new neighbor/music teacher whose moving van hadn't arrived. But story/schmory, it's all about the characters, and even I was a little star-struck by Abby Cadabby.
There were a couple of throw-back numbers in the show including a disco bit complete with Bert in a white leisure suit doing "The Hustle," an ensemble performance of the song "Sing," and The Count singing about the number eight in a "Fame" parody ("Eight! I'm going to count forever...the number, the number, the number"). If the Sesame Street business thinks that kind of thing will get a generation of parents all sappy thinking about life coming full circle since listening to Sesame Street Fever on 8-track, getting all metaphysical with the nowness of their parenthood, relishing how entangled their hearts are with giddy ones on their laps...and will therefore shell out for another round when the show's back in town...well, they're probably onto something.
I debated and debated, as I tend to do, about what seats would be best, having never taken little ones to a big theater like this. We chose two pairs of seats on the side aisle, one pair in front of the other. That way both kids could have an aisle seat looking toward the stage without too many heads in the way, or they could both sit on our laps in the two closer seats. It really worked out great. We started out all in the closer row, but when the seats right in front of us filled in, we moved to the two aisle seats with the kids in our laps. We swapped kiddos half-way through. Couldn't have been better. Maybe next time we'll go for the cheaper seats, but I'm glad Michael and Sophie got a fairly up-close experience the first time around.
Michael was pretty serious in this new environment, but when I whispered in his ears ("Look how silly Grover's dancing!"), he would giggle and point things out to me as well. Sophie was more visably into it. She's singing the ABC's in the picture above. Both will now recount the experience in an enthusiastic, collaborative run-on sentence about Big Bird and cookie jars and strings (streamers) and lots of stairs and popcorn.
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