Smile like you mean it

June is festival season in Cuzco. Almost every day there are parades and processions and everyone dressed in their finest national dress and/or as gorillas clogging up the streets. The big one, Inti Raymi, takes place at the end of the month but before that we have Fathers Day. The kids at school are putting on a show for their dads. Unfortunately for everyone concerned, it's a dance show.

I don't know if you've ever tried to make a three year old dance against their will, but it's mighty tricky. My kids have perfected the art of starfishing, planting their legs into the floor and going rigid, with a shriek. The shriek is the worst bit because you never know if you've accidentally done serious damage. I recently got the shriek for almost a whole minute before I realised that I had my walking boot on the socked foot of the littlest child.

The required dances are not your average child friendly hokey cokey type affairs. The most partyish of the dances involves being given increasingly complex requests by singing drill sergeant. Head back! Tongue out! Arse out! Thumbs in the air! Penguin knees! Do a twirl! Try it (all actions at the same time, mind). I've had to dance like that every day for a week.

The other dances are traditional cuquenan dances, the peruvian equivalent of those awful country dances we learnt at school but with all shakira's best moves thrown in and everything sped up. The result is something called- i love this- Alcatraz. Herding half the class through this technical little routine, while simultaneously trying to stop the other twenty non combatants in the class from ripping each others throats out, has been tiresome. But of course there is always worse to come in these situations. The next dance, the Saya, is even more technically demanding although the kids have more opportunity to freestyle. The main problem with the Saya is that i am in it. Regretfully I am not a natural dancer. My sister has teased me for years that I dance like someone trying to wade their way out of a pond. Nowadays I use alcohol as an artificial enhancer but you can't really do that in a classroom and anyway I still look like a frog with electrodes attached. Nor do the cruel children help my self esteem.

teacher, move your hips. Move your hips teacher! That's your KNEES. You look really dumb.

Thanks, three year old, I knew that already.

'Copy Lucy!' shouts the teacher over the music. This is particularly ridiculous because she's dancing away herself, perfectly and effortlessly, while I'm suffering multiple dislocations and the agony of the damned. The kids, quite sensibly, refuse to copy me. They're quite good at the wiggly bits themselves and don't need any tips from the likes of me.

Smile! shouts the teacher. Smile for your dads! My own father is more likely to die laughing if he sees this particular routine and still the never ending music continues and we wiggle and wobble away.

Then the worst bit. The teacher says - you know, I don't think they'll manage on the day unless they have someone to copy. You don't mind, do you?

So this week my plan is to break my leg.