It wasn't about technical perfection. It was about the experience.
A young girl called Peach finishes her recital number with a flourish. Her white-blonde hair is carefully lacquered into a perfect dancer's bun and she is wearing an elaborate orange tutu. As the music cuts, she steps definitively to the front of the stage, shading her eyes under the lights, and peers out into the applauding crowd looking for the faces she knows.
Some of the girls wave during their routines. Some twirl in their tutus for the entire number. Some go through the steps with a technical precision that defies their young age. All of them are in their element.
After each class routine wraps up, the girls have a chance to introduce themselves to the crowd who hang on every moment.
Simone Caddell, the Tiny Tutus studio principal and creative drive behind the annual recital, asks her ballerinas their name, age and their favourite ballet step. It's an important part of the recital when the performers, some only two years old, speak to their crowd.
The first three girls like jumping and are happy to demonstrate. Another likes twirling the most, and performs a spin on the spot to happy applause. Peach takes the microphone in her delicate hand and looks out under the lights.
"My name is Peach. I'm five," she delcared.
"And what's your favourite ballet step?" Ms Caddell asked.
"Cartwheels," she said, without an ounce of hesitation.
There's a full second when the entire room, folding into ripples of kind laughter, waits to see if the smallest Giselle will throw caution to the wind and attempt a tumble. She looks determinedly back at her principal, as if waiting for the prompt. The crowd melts in her hands.
"Well," Ms Caddell said, graciously, "maybe you can show me that later?"
The Tiny Tutus ballet class was founded by Ms Caddell in 2009 on a principle of throwing out the traditional and typically strict ballet ethos in favour of an open class that encourages parents and families to get involved in their children's dance instruction.
"My first class lessons were very strict and very traditional," Ms Caddell writes on the Tiny Tutus website, "Parents were absolutely not allowed to watch. I remember searching for my mother as class was coming to the end and parents were trying to sneak a peek through the tiny window in the door and how much I loved it when I saw her eyes as I was dancing.
"Dancing for some reason was so much better when I saw her watching and saw how proud she was of me."
Recitals run annually in most major cities, and the organisation now boasts more than 50,000 students across the country. The highlight of each recital, though, is the big closing number - the Daddy Daughter Dance, where fathers and grandfathers of the ballerinas spend four rehearsals learning a choreographed routine to perform with their ballerinas.
Peter "Pepe" King, the grandfather of young Elinor Cox, was at Lake Macquarie on Saturday mingling with the other dads while the ballerinas were arranged backstage.
Mr King has a background in ballroom dancing, and Elinor's mum, Allison Cox, is a renowned dancer and actress. Performing, he said beaming, is in the blood.
"It's quite a challenging routine," he said, beaming in the suit the dads all wear on stage, contrasting against their dance partners' elaborate and elegant costumes, "But the guys have been great - they're really lovely men to work with and do this together.
As the dads take the stage and the music lifts, the crowd falls into a rapt attention. There are lifts with the high notes that get a rousing applause, dips and spins that tug at the heartstrings, and a waltz routine that captures the audience as the ballerinas step up onto their partner's shoes.
Ryan Riboldi's two girls, Bianca who is five and Claire who is seven, have been dancing with Tiny Tutus for two years. They have been helping their dad learn the steps at home, following an instructional video from their class.
"The love it," Mr Riboldi said, "I'm a little bit nervous; hoping it all comes together.
"There's a lot of backup," he added, looking to the other dads waiting for their moment on stage, "You're not flying blind ... there's a lot of work that has gone into it and we just have to do our bit.
"It's a lot of fun - it's all about the fun."
One of the dads has been listening to the track in the car in the lead up to Saturday's event at Warners Bay Theatre. When the moment comes, they dip and twirl and guide their partners around the floor to a rapt reception.
"Anything that builds a community and brings people together," Mr King said as the theatre began to fill with expectant families carrying the occasional bouquet for a dancer, "In a world when we're all moving towards individualism and finding yourself; forget about yourself and become a part of a community. This is a community, and it's lovely."
