Parenthood

Losing My Yoga at the Dress Rehearsal


So … premature kudos. Maybe.

I put on my game face. The “fuck off, I’m doing yoga” one. Not exactly all divine light and lotus blossoms, but I was rolling.

Dee’s first two performances were 10 dances apart with the first one, tap, coming at almost an hour into rehearsals.

She wanted to watch and it was only mildly terrible with far less skank ho costumes than last year. Perhaps someone read my blog post about that?

Dee and another little girl from the ballet group were the only two not assigned to the ballet dressing room. This was because they performed with a different tap/jazz group. Both the other mother and myself argued to put all the ballet girls together regardless because the costume had too many pieces and the make up was … um … exotic. We were overruled.

I reiterated to Mare, who owns the studio, that it would not be possible to get Dee ready for ballet if the performance was scheduled too closely to either the tap or jazz. Naturally, she spaced the tap and jazz out and left me a 4 number interval to change Dee from her jazz outfit to her ballet costume.

As we were in another dressing room, no one knew where to look for us or that we weren’t quite ready.

I hustled Dee to the backstage door, glanced up at the monitor. Her group was on stage and nearly done.

And it was zen out the frigging window.

You are not supposed to open the stage door when an act is onstage but I yanked it open and yelled for the teacher.

Dee’s teacher is a kid. Eighteen and though talented, not very good with children. She turned, saw my face and shot a panicked look to her mother, the stage manager whose “fuck” expression told me that they hadn’t bothered to look for Dee at all when she turned up missing.

“It’s not that big of  a deal,” Mama said. “They can run through it again.”

“There is no way I can get her ready for this number on time,” I pointed out needlessly. Dee is stricken now as the realization that she was so easily forgotten starts to sink in.

“She can dress backstage on performance night,” Mama says. “All the older girls do.”

Key word? Older.

“We’ll run through the dance again, okay?” Mama says and looks to her daughter who is ushering the little wizards off the stage.

“We don’t need to go through it again.”

And that was all I needed to hear.

Dee is done with dance.

Rob will send the emails and get the money back we spent on tickets for the performance.  I wouldn’t have been able to watch anyway given the complexity and timing of the outfit changes and make up.

Dee was a check. A warm body in the dance equivalent of a puppy mill.

I watched a few three-year old groups early that evening. Kids in elaborate costumes basically standing  and swaying, if that, on the stage while proud mothers snapped photos of their money and time being sucked down a drain.

“Single Ladies” Are Not Seven Year Old Girls


My objections to the only slightly less morally questionable than pageants world of dance festivals has been clearly illustrated by the following video of a seven-year old group of hip hop dancers in a recent competition:

The company YAK that distributed the video has forced YouTube to remove the video but you can view some of it on the GMA link below.

Not a single group of girls at my daughter’s dance school is even a tenth that talented and I am including the older teenagers. It’s part genetic gifting on behalf of the universe and part internal combustion propelling one to work it, but … where the hell were their parents when those costumes were handed out?

And seriously, seven-year olds shaking it like their dinner was at stake?

You can argue the skill it no doubt takes to perform the dance, but it will in no way detract from the fact that whoever let those little girls dress like hookers and get up on that stage to grind out what adults would be willing to admit was the softer side of soft porn if the dancers were grown women has no internal compass where right and wrong is concerned.

Sorry.

Normally the scantily clad ends when their tummies lose the round baby fat look and starts up again at late pre-teen. I haven’t personally witnessed girls in the 6 to 10 range so tarted up, but I am not surprised either. Just feeling vindicated that my spidey sense about the whole “dance” culture is accurate and glad that my seven-year-old is losing interest in favor of soccer and yoga.

I was relieved to read that web reaction was generally uneasy to appalled.

But who are their parents? Surely at least one of them thought this was really wrong? Even if they didn’t speak up too loudly? Of course, the dance mom culture being what it is – sheep-like and creepily willing to go along with ideas and demands that I am pretty sure non-dance parents would roll their eyes at and refuse to do – I am not too surprised.

We are a sick, sad culture. Hypocrites who moan about go-go dancing tots while feeding our children’s dreams of dancing near naked on stage with our own addiction to Dancing with the Stars*.

Age appropriateness.  When did that become passe?

Update: My friend Alicia wrote an excellent bit of commentary on this at her blog. She brings up the valid point of parental responsibility in teaching our children how/when to say “no”. She also points out something that hadn’t occurred to me. Music is internalized. We become the music – taking on its intention – when we sing and dance. Think about that minute.

Additional Update: Two of the parents of the girls – who are eight and nine year olds and not seven – appeared on GMA to defend themselves. They talk about context and that the performance wasn’t meant to be seen by anyone outside family and friends and other competitors. They also fell back on the tired excuse of “but it’s pop culture and everyone else is doing it”. Naive, blinkered, and typical of the kinds of parents I ran across all the time when I was teaching  in public school. They never question or consider the long term consequences.

*Not my addiction, mind you, I watched it with my mom, BIL and sister, DNOS, over Spring Break and was puzzled, and weirded out by the way flat screens make everyone look puffy in a partied too much on the weekend kind of way.

Sunday Morning


Rob read me my horoscope from last week.

Are you in a trance or a rut or a jam? If so, excuse yourself. It’s break time! You need spaciousness. You need slack. You need to wander off and do something different from what you have been doing. If there’s any behavior you indulge in with manic intensity, drop it for a while. If you’ve been caught up in a vortex of excruciating sincerity or torturous politeness, shake it off and be more authentic. Of all the good reasons you have for relaxing your death-grip, here’s one of the best: Life can’t bring you the sublime gift it has for you until you interrupt your pursuit of a mediocre gift.

Don’t know which mediocre gift I should be shedding; I have many.

Writing about ant-ball and gay families* at large in Iowa’s state parks, extra tent pitching needs to be watched or it’s Armageddon, folks.