For any of you dads out there that have daughters who dance you will totally appreciate this.
Hannah has been taking dance for 10 years. She has done really well in both ballet and tap, especially tap. But dance is a different animal compared to most other things. At least with this studio we have been taking her to.
Take for instance soccer, or football, or any other sport your kid might want to play. If you want to watch their progress you can stay at practice. You typically have two or three opportunities a week to see them either practice or play, if you have the time. You can offer words of encouragement or suggestions for improvement. You can see them interract with their coaches and other team members and see how they are fitting in (or not fitting in) socially in mixed groups.
Not dance. You drop the kid off at practice and pick them up in an hour or 45 minutes. If you want to see them practice you can stand in the lobby and look on a 15" monitor and try to guess which kid is yours. There is no sound. All you hear is the thud, thud, thud from the upstairs class as they do their leaps or whatever while Tchaikovsky blasts at 110 decibles. When they pile out of class you can feel the cattiness and the female drama that goes along with uppity dance studios. It's sickening. You ask how dance class was and the report rarely has anything to do with dance and everything to do with who said what or who did what to whom and who is the biggest brat or who is the most condescending.
You do this week in and week out, eating up your week nights and the middle of your Saturday for a grand performance that lasts 2 minutes. If she is in more than one dance, you may luck out and get 4 minutes. Two grueling hours later and $1,500 bucks in monthly dues, gas, and costume costs you snap a few pictures and start all over again.
Now don't get me wrong. Some of my proudest moments have been watching Hannah in all her gracefullness and moxie dance a ballet or tap number. I can scarcely describe the feelings that flood over me when I see her up on that stage in her little ballerina costume tinkling her toes to some beautiful classical number. But guess what. I get a similar rush (close but not the same) from watching her muscle some girl out of bounds or tackling the ball off her opponents feet and clearing the ball out with a perfect pass, or scoaring a goal. And guess what... I can see her more often doing it. In fact. I can see her all the time, and there is less drama, better things to talk about and best of all, I can practice with her.
So this year she gave up dance. She has joined another competetive soccer club The Blue Knights and we have already watched her play her first indoor game. She's out of shape but it was a blast to watch her play! She scored a goal and had some great plays.
So taking inventory of what we've gotten out of this brief experience with soccer again I say good choice. And it was her choice. It was a fairly easy one to make as well since they had her practicing with kids much younger and in a lower class than her in tap. We watched her on a "review" and thought that she was as good or better than the older girls who left and went to the older class half way through the review (something that happens ever practice. They just warm up with the little kids and leave. Hannah stayed). We pointed that out to the studio owner and she said she agreed with us and was about to move her but it didn't seem right. Too little too late and Hannah had already had enough. So had we. So she made the choice, we supported her and so far, so good.
Ask me in a year though how much I miss her dancing and it may very well be a different story.
