<p>“The world of ballet gave me a good preparation for the world of politics.”</p>
<p>OK, I don’t know where your daughter has danced, but knowing what I know about the behind the scenes machinations that go on at competitive dance studios and within dance companies — it makes perfect sense to me. </p>
<p>Go rent the movie Center Stage. (Warning: absolutely terrible movie – but the point is that it does give at least a superficial depiction of the politics of dance).</p>
<p>TheDad:</p>
<p>It means she’s learned to tiptoe on her pointes around potential minefields, dance on the edge of disaster and execute a graceful pas de deux to court potential allies.</p>
<p>I agree that the ballet world is more brutal than politics anywhere.</p>
<p>Unbelievable as it might be, after years of the dance and skating world moms(…and yes, what I saw of dance moms pales in comparison with the skating moms) and a slight exposure to political life (first hand), I agree that dance would be excellent preparation!</p>
<p>Marite: what you wrote is wonderful… made my day.</p>
<p>Tangential topic - have you had mixed feelings about your daughters being involved in something which is so demanding yet so political? </p>
<p>I have. </p>
<p>And it starts at such an early age!</p>
<p>Further musing – can pursuit be very competitive and yet not political?</p>
<p>Thanks, dmd. Dance lends itself to metaphorical language, doesn’t it?</p>
<p>I saw “Center Stage” with a bunch of ballet school students and their parents…it’s the perfect teen wish-fulfillment fantasy, the adults were wrong and the kids were right after all. We have it on DVD and it still gets played every year or two. CM, yes, my daughter danced ballet at a very competitive school (see <a href=“http://www.westsideballet.com%5B/url%5D”>www.westsideballet.com</a>) for K-12. She was the “worst of the best,” a soloist who was the equivalent of a double-A ball player who wasn’t going to make the pros. She was a good dancer, she’s a terrific student.</p>
<p>Nicely done, Marite, comme d’habitude, but I think my D was thinking more of the egos and the prima donnas and the personalities.</p>
<p>Fendrock, do you mean being involved with Dance or Politics? I have no problem with D’s involvement with either though I’ve got to say that her studio kept the politics down to a dull roar compared to many places. You see all sorts of people…dancers who went on to be pro who were very kind and gracious and those would leave their footprints up your back and down your chest if you were in their way. And, yes, the parents were usually worse than the kids. I remember years ago when I got paged several times during a day (pre cell-phone era) and it turned out to be a father complaining about the placement of his daughter’s picture in the Nutcracker program. LOL to anyone who thinks I had that kind of power or would want it…photo placements are determined by the director though I was very pleased one year when my preliminary mock-up of a page was so accurate in groking the director’s mind that only the #5 and #6 dancers were flipped in order of precedence.</p>
<p>Anyway, I have no problem with D’s involvement with either. Ballet was a gift that D gave the whole family…I didn’t know a plie from a pipe wrench when she started. We still go to ballet–had season tickets in Orange County before LA started getting better programming–and are supporting the new LA Ballet Company…why, I gave Paloma Hererra a ride on Friday.</p>
<p>As for politics, my D shows every sign of becoming a public policy wonk and realizes that politics is where you make it happen. She’s dealing fairly well with the oft-depersonalization you get as an intern in that environment and has pretty well “clicked” with it.</p>
<p>The Dad,
I really enjoyed your comments and the link (didn’t realize that your D’s school had two former male students who we know who are currently with major ballet companies). I thought that we were the only family who actually had to deal for many years with the competitive, political nature of the ballet school world. I have to say that in this case, though, D never played politics - it wasn’t her nature, and as a parent, I tried to stay away from it as much as possible, because it’s something that I don’t know enough about to even get involved with it, and I also find the thought of it to be very stressful and certainly not positive. In some cases, the parents were politically active, and that definitely helped secure their D’s position in gaining specific roles in certain productions.</p>
<p>Don’t forget gymnastics–just as bad as skating, because the whole point of it is to be judged.</p>
<p>At least piano recitals are about the music, not about how many notes you can execute before you hit the ice or the mat (to mangle a metaphor.)</p>
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<p>Could be, but have you ever participated in the politics in any college academic department?</p>
<p>WashDad’s Law of Small-Group Politics: The less there is at stake, the more vicious the politics.</p>
<p>NYUMom, I’m happy to say that politics rarely got a kid a part at D’s studio. Doesn’t mean there weren’t politics. There were a couple of nasty queen bees that ran the parental support organization that served to channel a lot of the volunteer labor. I wound up doing an end around and reporting directly to the directors with the fig leaf that my work was for the company, not the parental support organization. <cough> Some of the politics were magnified by class status, e.g., some of the girls who went to private schools and lived with a “guard gate” mentality, figuratively if not always literally, condescended to some who went to public schools and didn’t have Juicy™ outfits to lose in the dressing room in the first place.</cough></p>
<p>Side note: my D’s year-cohort kinda reminds me of the West Point class of 1903 or 1904, whichever one it was that “the stars fell on”. For academics, not dance. We’ve occasionally put students into Stanford. But that year saw students into Cornell, Vassar, Barnard, Smith and blankingonothers…some six or seven in total. Unusual in that not all <em>that</em> many kids here think of going “back East” for college. Normally they put one or two into the pros each year…I think that year they struck out. Anyway, there have been several parents around here whose D’s were with major junior companies or well known studios.</p>
<p>WashDad: one of the Russian writers…I think it may have been Solzhenitsyn since he’s a fave of mine…said something about petty tyrants being people who have no freedom or power outside of that role.</p>
<p>As a mother of a gymnast, who is good but not usually “the best”, the advantage of scoring is that the child can judge their performance against previous performances. Of course, that does not account for the weirdness of judges who like some things and not others. </p>
<p>TheDad I hope your D is having fun. We see ours in Florence in a week and 1/2, I can’t wait.
Ellen</p>
<p>My experience with ballet was that it was the mothers who were cut-throat. The girls (and of course it was mostly girls!) were not always the nicest, but I’m sure they learned at their mothers’ feet. Fwiw, one student became one of the best know ballerinas of our time, so the competition was fierce. I still love ballet, but maybe it’s a good thing that I have sons. I don’t know if I’d want a daughter of mine to go through the negative side of dance.</p>