Dance Waves: The show

I've just gotten back from a week's work placement at Les Mis, hence the lack of updates on how Dance Waves went.
The final dress rehearsal went very smoothly from a costume standpoint.  I arrived at Jacksons Lane Theatre at midday on the 28th March, and handed out the costumes I'd taken away with me to alter.  The reinforced seams held up, and we didn't have to deal with any new rips for the rest of the day.  Kaaianu's underarm gussets made a great improvement to the ease of her costume.  It was now slightly baggy just around the armhole, but this was a vast improvement on the tightness of the week before.
One of the parents requested that we shorten the tiger ears her daughter was wearing so that there wasn't so much weight causing them to slip, so I cut them down to size and sewed them back on to the headband.
We were still having issues with some of the ears coming off during the dancing, so Jodie and I went out and bought some kirby grips to keep them in place.  We wanted 4 grips for each child so they could be placed either side of each ear, so for the 38 children that required them we bought 135 (with a few spares).
The other problem that we dealt with was the horse ponchos.  The hoods kept falling off as the children ran round, so we needed to tighten the neck fastening.  We  did this by pleating inwards to the side seam either side of the fastening.  Our first thought had been simply securing each side with a safety pin, but we were both concerned about the safety hazard of pinning so close to the kids necks, so we opted for a few securing stitches instead.
This also meant cutting a new slit either side of the poncho for the childrens arms, as the old ones had been brought too far forward by the alteration at the front.
The show itself looked great.  There were a few mishaps with the music, and I noticed a couple of tiger/lion hybrids (Jodie and I weren't involved in the dressing so there were a couple of mix ups) but it all added to the overall charm, as the younger kids were all clearly bewildered by the whole thing anyway!