| Bar Raised for Ballet Mom |
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My 6-year-old daughter has taken dance for years. Now, suddenly, it's serious. What's a ballet-challenged mom to do?Sure, I’ll cop to it. I’m a ballet mom. My 6-year-old daughter has been taking dance for more than half her life, but only during this spring’s recital did she decide that she now requires certain official accoutrements:
Alas, I am totally out of my element. The only dancing I ever did as a child was The Hokey-Pokey, which is a decidedly unbunworthy experience.
I recently received a list of summer experiences my child can have through her studio, including some week-long exposure to different types of dance, singing, and theatre. What is missing from this course listing is a Ballet Mom Camp, covering important topics like, “Locating your child backstage—quietly!” and “How to put cosmetics on your little girl without crying and/or freaking out.”
“So, what do you think?”
She turned to appraise herself in the bathroom mirror. After several moments of silence she turned toward me and, with generosity bordering on pity, said, “Well, if that’s the best you can do, I’m sure it will be fine.”
“But—but I thought it looked pretty good,” I said, crestfallen.
“Oh, it does,” she said quickly, and patted my arm reassuringly. “But maybe you could ask one of the other moms for some help.” Then, in a script from my own book of parenting she added, “Everybody has to practice to get better.”
Another issue for ballet moms is that of younger siblings. My 3-year-old son begged to go to dance class, so I signed him up. He did well for the first few weeks; then things quickly headed south. In fact, they sped south at breakneck speed.
According to his teacher, my son knew the recital routine very well . . . he simply chose to abstain from participating in any productive way. This soon became obvious to me.
During rehearsal I watched from a hidden spot, cringing as my son roared like a lion, then rolled pell-mell across the floor, knocking pint sized ballerinas over like so many tutu-clad bowling pins.
“But I’m a superhero!” he shrieked indignantly, as I collared him and marched him out of the room.
“First,” I said, fighting for control, “superheroes do not knock down precious little girls in pink tutus! That is the opposite of what superheroes do. And secondly . . .”
Well, I won’t recount the secondly, but it involved a long lecture featuring words like “respect” and “following instructions,” and then, once I got really worked up, it included a hypothetical scene in which the other mothers of cute, bruised ballerinas chased me through the parking lot on recital night.
The recital itself went off without a hitch. I sat in the auditorium worrying that one of my daughter’s bobby pins would break from the strain of inexpert placement and impale a nearby dancer, but thankfully there were no cries of pain from the other girls. Also, I don’t think anybody else noticed that her bun was slightly off center.
The dancers in what had, until recently, been my son’s class performed admirably, adorably, and were allowed to remain upright during the entire number. My son, sitting securely in the audience next to me, turned to me during his class’s time on stage an informed me that he was “an excellent ballet dancer” but that, if allowed to choose his next class, it would be flying, because he is an even better superhero.
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My daughter would vote for another class, and break into her own piggy bank to sign me up. This week before dress rehearsal I worked for 20 minutes to wrangle her voluminous hair into something resembling a “high ballet bun.” I used two hair bands and 38 bobby pins, and enough hairspray to immobilize a medium sized sheep. Finally I stepped back, mopped the sweat off my brow, and surveyed the results. 
