May is underway already and my daughter has been attending ________Ballet School for over one year now. She has had many ups and downs, working very hard, but she has definitely improved. I see a fine dancer emerging from her. She has grown in confidence and strength, although she needs more strength, I hope it will come. Strength is apparent in many things, not just ballet. I learned when growing up, and finding dance, that dancing is not only good for the soul, it is good for discipline, is character building and improves your ability to perform just about any other lesser sport, such as volley ball, etc. I found that after a few years of dance I was able to play sports with above average ability, that previously I just wasn’t into at all. Every year my grandfather used to buy me sporting equipment, baseball, bat and glove, badminton equipment and a net, ice skates, roller skates, and one year we even bought a tennis racket from someone in The Trading Post (where he spat in a dog’s eye), and all of these things I tried to eschew for him, and more, but to no avail-they just did not enthuse me. I swam every day in the summer, sometimes staying at the pool until after dark, but other sports I just didn’t excel at. I remember the other girls driving home other players in softball, and standing in the field letting the ball go by me-irritated, that is what I was. In volley ball I could not serve a ball over the net with any force or impetus. I could run. I climbed trees. I did roller skate, but not with any stability or verve, and not as well as my friends. I could ice skate pretty well but they closed the rink. No one I knew really played any of these different sports and surprisingly it was not kids from my local school that would go to the pool. But I did make friends. I walked and we danced to popular music a lot. We wanted to have a girl singing group, or my friends did, mostly I just liked the music and to dance. I was creative in many other ways though, drawing, I could build things, and I did go through long periods where I would just sit by a window and read books, until my mom had enough and kicked me out to go do something else, and “not be a house plant.” Maybe that is why I put my daughter in ballet. Because after ballet, I could do anything better than anyone else, practically. It just made me an athlete-confident, strong and focused. It is what I needed. When I had a teacher that said to go back and do something over, I didn’t complain, but just went and did it. We didn’t have much money, and I paid for classes myself.

The world today is different, but what ballet can do for you is not. I know I didn’t put my daughter into ballet thinking,”she is going to be a ballerina.” I put her into ballet so she could see what she could do with herself, to grow in confidence, to use all the muscles she wasn’t and to gain some discipline. Each day, she grows a little (almost two inches since August 2012) in stature, and is beginning to “know what she knows.” She is beautiful to me of course, but I can begin to see the woman she might become, all the more confident and lovely each day, and ballet helps-it works wonders! She knows that ballet makes her special, and that we cannot avoid in our children-why should we? But, todayI asked her why she did not ask her friend to join her in a modern class one day next month, and she said “no way.” I thought,”Well!” I said, to take _____wouldn’t be so bad for her, she might like dance, thinking, certainly she is not competition yet, and why would she say “no?” Well, I can remember wishing my friends wouldn’t take ballet, because I felt it was mine. I didn’t want to be competitive with them, I just wanted them as friends. As soon as one of them did take a contemporary class, by my example, I immediately left off that friendship, and now I feel remorse over it. Well, not exactly remorse, but rather I see now that it really doesn’t make a difference who takes ballet, and to have a friend in ballet does seem like an impossible thing sometimes, but it happens, when both parties are mature enough to realize everyone is different. I think that girls in ballet ought to have the same kind of trust exercises required of boys and girls in ballet in pas de deux classes. Girls should stick together-boys do! But do boys in ballet? But this has never been done, addressing these issues of petty competitiveness which actually serve to make us better dancers, strive harder, follow other examples, laugh and have fun, support each other when we fail, or fall, instead of smugly thinking, “it serves her right-good-she fell!” Wishing other dancers to fail is actually bad-not good, and we always think of other dancers as merely competitors, but we need to put this in the right perspective, for without other dancers, who would we have to be better than? Or better put, possibly, we are only as good as the best person in the class, and seek to be better than that person, whoever it is, and without them, our bar just went down to the next best person. How does that prepare us as dancers for the rest of the world?

One thing I noticed about my daughter when she was just starting ballet in I think, her second year (she was eleven or twelve), and that was that the teacher created a lot of competition between the girls by praising one or two, and my daughter was from that moment on, determined to be better than that one, or every one, at every thing, and I found myself using them to explain that while she was good at these things, this other dancer was good at these other things, but I did not have to-she knew. And she likewise talked about this, but mostly it served to try and make herself better. There were some things she knew this other dancer had, such as ridiculous feet, but she spoke with sympathy about the other faults the girl had, and it did not take me long to realize that my daughter did not really feel sorry for her faults, she was happy that she did not have those faults (at least). Subsequently, I have not tolerated (often) the talking down of other, better in some ways, dancers, who have been selected for summer programs, year-round programs, scholarships, etc., that my daughter coveted. In fact, when the teacher gets after these other dancers after competitions, too much, to try to instill some humility into that dancer, I pointed out to my daughter that the teacher was possibly only doing this to make the other dancers feel better about themselves and to spark competition between the dancers and this child, who is a good dancer. Who is? She has most of the physical qualities companies look for in their dancers, and she dances pretty well, I think. I said my daughter ought to substitute, in the phrase,” you only have good ________, something that she felt confident about in herself, her vanity-and apply the entire criticism, personally, for if she did not, she too would run the risk of thinking she was too good, better than everyone else, would not strive to become better in that area, other areas, or feel she was good enough, or better than everyone in her class/school.

I suppose I am too jealous of the corrections. I wanted them ALL as a dancer, and every dancer is aware of whom the teacher is giving corrections (mostly) to, and envies or pities that person, but any correction can and must be applied to oneself if there is to be improvement of a substantial nature and understanding of ballet. Yet, professional dancers can almost never broach criticism, particularly when they turn to teaching or the direction of a school. They automatically think they know everything and must be respected above all other parties for their expertise, by their students and parents. When opening up communication between parents and teachers might result in improvement in not only the dancers, teaching but teach these children that as a group they are strong. If students witness their own teachers vanity and those at other schools, are we not grooming htem to be vain peacocks, like their teachers, instead of artists and dancers? It is an art. It is not simply put, being someone people want to watch dance because you are pretty, otherwise why would we say of Plisetskaya that she was “beautiful when she danced?” It is not just gymnastics, otherwise why would Pavlova’s teacher said, “cease these gymnastic routines! They are not for your delicate frame! I shudder when I see you try to compete with the gymnastic didoes of other dancers, for delicacy shall be your mien, your strength.” It is not the early starter who can burn out or be injured, for otherwise we would not have had Rudolf Nureyev, Margot Fonteyn, Gene Kelly, Suzanne Farrell, Misty Copeland and many others in many countries at many times (I am so tired of reading you can’t when you can-if only you will!). It is not merely technique, or Vaganova would not have been compelled to  create a science of movement and training, and there would be no great Russian dancers. Without Isadora Duncan there would be no history of contemporary dance, exercises by her, or any dances, ballet or otherwise in a tunic, and all dancers would probably wear scarves! There would be no modern dance. It is not likely that there would be just one ballet, one choreographer, and no variety of music to choose from, but there is, and there are many varieties of dancers, including many types of ballet dancers. Students of dance need to realize they are not the only ones, and they should be taught to accept challenges, open invitations to other people to dance, prepare to perform, dance, and that this does not change their ability at all. In fact, it makes them grow. It is hypocritical to say, ” I love dance, and I want to see dance continue and ballet, in particular, to be popular”, if you shut out competition, other dancers, others schools, choreographers-you do nothing for the art. Watch “Chocolat.” If no one tries it, they may not ever be advocates of it, may not seek to see it performed, understand it, and may only enter their children in it as competitors, to be better than everyone else at gymnastics, or prettier, or at technique, or performing-it is all inclusive. Ballet needs to open its doors to adults, all children (rich and poor), all kinds, in order to survive.

I told my daughter that if her friend attended a dance class, perhaps she would invest in my daughter’s dance company one day, her grandmother is very wealthy. Perhaps they would have more to share-not less. The focus should not be on the end result, but the process. The process should be an enjoyable one, and the experiences at our dance studio suffer because of the competitions, the parts which everyone fights over, the parents sitting in their cars because of the perceptions that 1) Their children are not that good, 2) Are overlooked, and 3) The competitiveness between the parents-which is passed on to the children in most cases-not all-to the point that these dancers are not NICE. My daughter, is always nice, congratulates everyone, and genuinely cares for them and they do not like her one bit. Funny. Jealous and her teacher just quit giving her privates because we had a fight and he said she would never get into a really good ballet company. This is just ridiculous-who cares? She does, but it is ME he got into the fight with. He likes her, and even though it was awkward, she says, at first, now he looks at her when she isn’t looking, comes over to correct her (like he used to), and she is recovering from her latest injury (in the hip) so is able to do more each day. For us, everything is looking UP. She decided not to go to ABT (more about that later), not to go to The Rock, not to go to Dance Master Class (Italy, this year-see my Pinterest), and not to go to English National Ballet in Ohio. Instead, she is taking the summer session with her favorite dance teacher and the one at her school. She will also go to Desmond Richardson’s Master Class at LBHS on June 19th. She will be in the recital and is doing a Hungarian (marriage) dance for recital, and is a dancer of the Winter pas de trois in Cinderella for recital here, and is doing a variation from Don Quixote at another school recital. As well as her regular classes, that seems enough. Maybe her teacher will try to teach some pas de deux. That would be nice. Never know.

Sh is busting herself to complete her school work and is doing a semester with Geometry and Algebra (she failed first quarter algebra) and she is doing it! She also has French, Honors English, Biology and a Juilliard-music class online-as well as gym! She walks with me and will soon begin swimming and doing yoga (for healing and stretching). Now, if I can just find volleyball…..

As for my daughter being accepted into the world of ballet, getting into a major company, being able to do the contortions required by ballet dancers the world over these days, I do not know. But, she is certainly going to be a lover of ballet. Perhaps she will be a great artist, anything is possible if you work hard enough and long enough. Dance is fickle. Directors are fickle. But one must be prepared in life to set out one’s goals and to plan an attack. If the first attempt does not work, you hit again, and each time you set out to achieve new goals, reach a new plateau, it is important to look back at what you did the year before, pat yourself on the back for what you have accomplished and to move forward with certainty that this year will produce as exceptional results, catastrophe withstanding! Everyone also has a different path. She had three injuries this year to contend with (one was a carryover from last year)and I wish more than ever there were doctors of dance in every county, as there are more dancers today than ever and nothing is worse than a dancer with a misdiagnosis. The harder you dance, the more injuries you are likely to sustain. I wish there were a school for dancers in this state which offered dance to all students who wanted to learn and which provided the essentials of training for great dancers to emerge. It would make so much more sense than 500 little schools able to teach only the minimum and not to offer other courses and training which is so important-mime, acting, makeup, hair, stretching, yoga and other therapies, modern and ballet, jazz and character, and wherever there are dancers there should be healing tools for dancers, dance doctors, etc….Instead, schools are set up to make money for themselves, all claiming a not-for-profit status, not dancers, and their directors are usually motivated by their paychecks, their fine cars, paying for their houses, their own companies, themselves-not the art, the student, not scholarships, and if those schools banded together, they could support a company in our area and a school worthy of the name. Somehow, it could be done. This would lower the costs to all, thought it would equalize the payment of teachers, it would be able to support itself and would lead to these dancers being able to stay in their own area and dance.

My daughter stands in class everyday and her teacher looks at her to remind him of the combination, everyone seems to forget it.