June 4, 2024
"I told my mom, 'This isn’t serious.... I’m just going to wait till I’m 6.'"
Said Mira Nadon, when she was 5, quoted in "At City Ballet, a Once-in-a-Generation Dancer Arrives/Mira Nadon, the rising New York City Ballet principal, is coming off her best season yet. And it’s only the beginning."The ballet class for 5-year olds was "pre-ballet, which meant running around the studio, maybe getting a shot at fluttering like a butterfly" and Nadon "found out that students began proper training at 6."Is it okay to love seriousness in 5-year-olds? Mostly, we want the very young to laugh and play — experience delight. What's up with early-arising seriousness? When is it too young to manifest staunchly that you know you've been presented with the bullshit kid's version of something and you want the real Have you ever known such a kid? Were you one?I'm picturing the child drawn by Edward Gorey....
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We used to call these “Toddlers and Tiaras” programs. Targeted at families with disposable income. We will build your child into a star. Traveling baseball. Traveling hockey. Olympic soccer prep. Eventually interest diminishes and costs aren’t worth it. Targeted at parents.
My daughter is 20 and is a professional ballet dancer for a large dance company in the Midwest. Since the age of eight, all she has wanted to do was be a ballet dancer. It is very expensive for the parents, but nothing can stop a kid who is determined to be something they want to be ... except for ballet where injury, body type and height end many an inspiring career.
I was performing weddings for my 3rd grade classmates.
Somehow I don’t think this is what you’re talking about.
But it got my parents called in.
A friend of mine majored in Dance at the University. She was talented and dedicated, but was defeated by her crinkly hair and her generous poitrine.
Have you ever known such a kid? Were you one?
Yes, I was.
I'd been drumming in the Junior High marching band for a year. I would carry drums home on Friday to practice and like the old dad's tale it actually was uphill both ways (the school was on a hill and our home was in the foothills opposite). I wanted a drum set to practice on. Mom bought me a toy drum set second-hand from an adjacent neighborhood. Actual drumming destroyed it in short order and unlike real drums, the heads were not replaceable. It was mostly trash. A couple months later, still dragging a tom and snare along with their stands home with me every Friday to supplement the surviving bass drum on the toy set, my parents decided I was serious. They bought me full Maxwin kit for Christmas.
Since most of my drum practice took place during Dad's working hours, let me add God bless Mom for her patience and kindness in allowing me to learn to make prettier noise. It was a great parenting lesson, although I didn't realize that for years, when I needed to emulate it.
I guess I was one of those kids. I never liked the kid's programs, preferring topics with more substance. As a college freshman, while dating a graduate student, a friend who had known me since grade school commented, "J, you were BORN serious". I shared that comment with my mom, and she concurred.
Now that I'm retired (actually semi-retired), I'm trying to enjoy the lighter side of life, but it's not easy.
"What's up with early-arising seriousness?"
Depends. In some fields, talent and desire are obvious early, so it makes sense to be serious, for musical and chess prodigies especially. Female gymnasts won't go far without "early-arising seriousness."
I went to the butterfly ballet class. It's pretty obvious you're getting the not-ballet treatment, but my physical coordination at 5 wasn't good enough to do anything but run and flap.
My niece. She ended up in the Pennsylvania Ballet!!
I would have wanted this when I was a kid. I had to settle for carrying a baseball around 24/7 and hoping to run into someone I could throw it to :-)
Got me to Div I college competition against the best and a minimal offer from Pittsburgh Pirates. Declined. Having way too much fun in school. No regrets, although sometimes you wonder...
I suspect genetics and obsession are the main drivers of greatness on stages and playing fields.
My daughter was nostalgic for her lost childhood when she was 5.
I was born old. At least that's what a lot of people said.
By the age of ten or eleven I was checking out adult history books from the public library, despite the well-intentioned lady librarians and their age-appropriate selections. Hell, I was buying--with my own hard-earned and saved money--serious adult history books soon after.
Of course, in the early '60s these sorts of programs were rare, and we couldn't afford them anyway.
My own son had a week of Theater Camp one year, and Space Camp at Huntsville a few years later, but all they taught him was that he really didn't want to be an actor or an astronaut. Which is valuable knowledge I suppose.
I wanted to be a Major League Baseball player. My dream ended in High School.
“I wanted to be a Major League Baseball player. My dream ended in High School”
Further, things are so different now. My dental technician was telling me about her son who works out with his trainer and gets professional coaching several times a week. When I was young, we grabbed a broken bat and a taped up ball and played until dark in a local park.
If it comes natural why not love it, if it is somehow imposed then...
There's a story about the English historian Thomas Babington Macaulay who had a prodigious memory and his mother took him around to tea parties to perform poetry recitations at young as the age of three. At one of these parties a hostess spilled tea on him and in her discomfiture she continues to apologize and fuss over Macaulay. Growing weary of it he is said to have replied "It's quite all right madam, the agony has somewhat abated."
So what do we have here? A naturally serious child or one who has placed in situations he ought not to have been no matter how precocious. Macaulay went on to have a somewhat notable career, so it doesn't appear either his seriousness or hot tea damaged him that much.
If it comes natural why not love it, if it is somehow imposed then...
There's a story about the English historian Thomas Babington Macaulay who had a prodigious memory and his mother took him around to tea parties to perform poetry recitations at young as the age of three. At one of these parties a hostess spilled tea on him and in her discomfiture she continues to apologize and fuss over Macaulay. Growing weary of it he is said to have replied "It's quite all right madam, the agony has somewhat abated."
So what do we have here? A naturally serious child or one who has placed in situations he ought not to have been no matter how precocious. Macaulay went on to have a somewhat notable career, so it doesn't appear either his seriousness or hot tea damaged him that much.
The only reliable cure for insomnia is ballet and Harry Potter movies.
except for ballet where injury, body type and height end many an inspiring career.
=================
with ballet as luxury good profession industry has any one pushed for bio-mechanical-analysis of the movements and research injury preventive techniques?
are the dancers unionized within service industry workers?
Turns out that I have a type. Serious girlfriends (etc) since I was just 19 have been of a type. Like my mother, of course. Every one too serious for her own good. GF in college sat 1st chair flute in the city symphony her freshman year. She probably averaged 6-8 hours of music a day during the week. I didn’t find out for better than a year that she would get up around 6 and practice her flute for an hour before breakfast. I mostly just slept through it. Probably couldn’t have done so if she (primarily) played a clarinet, or a brass instrument.
My partner of the last 25 years (in August) was a dancer. Her mother taught dance and was a well regarded choreographer in Las Vegas. So, my partner was born with feet splaying out. Wore braces for a couple years, and that wasn’t helping. So her mother put her in toe shoes at 3-4, which did the trick. She and her 2 sisters danced 3-4 hours a day from the time they started school. Graduated from HS at 15, and went to college on a dance scholarship. Her favorite was ballet, of course. (Little sister also had a dance scholarship, but preferred Jazz. She didn’t finish, possibly because she couldn’t pass the weekly weigh ins). My partner didn’t want to be the prima ballerina, because she didn’t like the spotlight. Just loved the control of ballet. So didn’t have her shoes sabotaged as much as some other dancers did. She was interested in dancing professionally in Las Vegas, where she grew up, until her mother got her an audition with one of her mother’s producer buddies. He liked her dancing, but then told her he needed to see more T&A. End of that dream. She was pushed by her teachers to go back East to NYC after graduation. No interest, plus her modeling agency was offering a lot more money if she would move (modeling is apparently easy if you are a good dancer). Nope. She wanted kids. She worked with her mother teaching dance until she was about 7 months pregnant with her first kid. Also, she has always been a control freak. So, she didn’t do well with running up to male dancers, and letting them lift her up. Esp since she was more heavily muscled than most female dancers.
What’s funny is that my summer GF during college (and still a good friend) also danced through college and beyond. 4 1/2 colleges in 4 years trying to find the right fit. Her preference was Modern Dance. She did move back East to NYC after college to dance, but never made it. Ended up leaving there semi-permanently, and moving here to AZ when her daughter developed asthma from the pollution in NYC.
The New Neo apparently, from her blog, was also a dancer. She posts, fairly often, dance videos. Many here, no doubt, have seen them. My partner and I watch them together. Mostly well above my head. A lot of the dancers are Russians. In any case, some of the best dancers ever.
The Tiger Woods phenomenon is a hope and curse for young children who just want to have a gay old time before they are compelled to maturity.
Speaking of children and Edward Gorey, check out his hilariously macabre "Gashleycrumb Tinies", the Alphabet of Death:
https://tinyurl.com/2p4zwp52
I particularly like "Neville, who died of ennui."
WK nailed the situation in the first comment. There are very few stars, and a whole lot of paying wannabes.
Wifey attended NYC's Performing Arts High School and Jiulliard, the latter as a Baroque dance major.
After dancing in small troupes she wound up getting a "real job", but has continued to be involved in line dancing , contra dancing---stuff like that.
The thing is, everyone notices her on the dance floor. Reason: she's obviously "had training" AND can learn the steps very quickly. So the other dancers like to position themselves behind her to help them keep up.
Thirty years ago she took up jiu-jitsu for a whil, before we had kids. Same result: instructor shows the technique, she does it right away.
Kinesthetics, it's called.
I was one. In kindergarten we got to see the first grade put on a show. I thought it was silly and childish. My kindergarten teacher even commented on my report card that I was insufficiently imaginative, always asking "is that true". This was at Los Alamos and the teachers may have been more progressive than was usual at that time.
Best keep her away from the Curious Sofa.
@Narayanan said..
"with ballet as luxury good profession industry has any one pushed for bio-mechanical-analysis of the movements and research injury preventive techniques? are the dancers unionized within service industry workers?"
Some ballets are unionized (AGMA) and it is helpful around limiting time in the practice studio. Some directors would have them there 10 hours a day if they could, which is how most of the injuries occur.
I assumed the adults meant well.
Martha Graham and Rudolf Nureyev started training in their teens or later. ABT's Misty Copeland started training at 13. I think putting 3-5 year olds in dance training (or any training) is ridiculous, it's part of the Baby Einstein mentality from the 1990s where parents think they're setting up their child for future success.
Once upon many years ago at the youth camp a mother called wanting to make sure her 8 year old son was alright. We got him on the phone and his response was that he had to go because he was having too much fun and didn't want to miss anything. He was completely serious about that.
It was hilarious. Little kids can be completely serious about something they are into, even if how they reason is now foreign to adults.
A professional ballerina friend once shared a video of her first performance in her first dance class.
Intense concentration. Very focused, to the point where she was laughing about it years later.
No parental pressure, as far as I can tell. She just really wanted to be a good dancer.
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