Get Funky at the Regent Theatre!

Oct 18, 2011

Get Funky

Lainey boogies at the Regent
-Ryan P. Standley, Arlington Patch.Com Columnist

My daughter Lainey is five years old and I love her. Recently we visited the local stage for a children’s concert.

The Regent Theatre in Arlington presents Family Fun Series every Saturday at 10:30 a.m. till spring, and its kick off last weekend featured SteveSongs. The auditorium was packed, including devoted fans that sang every word and brought cardboard signs posting requests.

If you watch PBS Kids, you may recognize SteveSongs as the slicked hair, red polo shirt, acoustic guitar player that sings interludes between cartoons. Suffice to say, Lainey was star struck.

“That’s on PBS!” she exclaimed.

SteveSongs (no space) even shot a video that day for Recess Rocks, named for an anti-obesity program. The call-and-response hip-hop groove was beat-boxed by a band member. Choreography involved spinning, touching the ground, jumping and pointing to the sky. Imagine Village People’s YMCA times fifty.

“Watch this!” Lainey demonstrated during the song.

Kid limbs flailed everywhere and afterward Steve himself was winded.

“Okay,” he panted, half-joking. “That was practice. Now let’s do the real one.”

Again, a cameraman wondered the stage and filmed the aerobic number. The pandemonium continued—next, with a song about bubbles.

Lainey awed as back-up singers waved bubble wands.  She rushed down the aisle into what appeared to be a munchkin mosh pit, with kids jumping and stabbing fingers at bubbles. Two bubble machines spewed from the balcony, which caught Lainey’s eye, and she sprinted back up the aisle toward them.

Steve then invited “a few” kids onstage for a song. He hadn’t noticed an easily accessible staircase, an artery that flowed, until 30-plus kids stood onstage. Meanwhile Lainey patiently raised her hand, waiting to be summoned onstage, which never happened. But she didn’t seem to mind.

“Fun, huh?” I asked as we walked home.

“Watch this!” Lainey said and did a spin, touch the ground, jump and point move, which nearly knocked over a pedestrian on the sidewalk behind us.

And the songs have been stuck in her head ever since.

Lainey sings this SteveSongs tune every morning:

  Wake up in the morning and I brush, brush, brush.

  Comb my hair and eat my mush.

  Blow a kiss [smooch!]

  And I’m on my way.

  I get to go to school today!