DEAR MISS MICHELE: Teaching Our Girls to Dance Redux
I sent the following letter today, inspired by the NYT story below to pay the one compliment that deserving teachers treasure and the undeserving don't, probably because they: a) never hear it and b) never think to miss it.
It made my children's teachers cry.
They must be VERY deserving!
DEAR MISS MICHELE, Damien, and your handpicked staff of oh-so-special teachers,
No one finds and loves the unique best in each child the way you do, so they can find their own happy spot onstage and the star they are inside as well as out - you are gifted artists and teachers all, but for my children at least, what counts at our studio isn't so much your class but your CLASS!
What you do for your students is so complex and often unseen, steeped in Power of Story, family, teamwork -- it is as this news feature describes the experiences you offer through your art: elegant, graceful, smooth, supple and refined.
I know great technique when I see it demonstrated, and you know I'm a doctor of education, not dance. So you know I'm not just talking about the dancing.
Love to all!
The backstory to this letter is that my kids are definitely not standard issue. Not just their minds and heart but even their bodies are not standard. They aren't particularly built for dancing, nor are their parents; we didn't pass it to them by either nature or nurture, I am reasonably sure. But they love it, are drawn to it and everything to do with it. And their teachers help them love it more, rather than discourage them out of some sense of duty to be practical, because they might never dance professionally.
Also, having one of each sex in dance classes makes our experience unusual if not unique, at least at our little studio. Boys don't typically follow a big sister's example, but for now, my son is the only male dance student in the company. (There are a couple of amazing male teachers though.)
Since it's the only group instruction he experiences, for him it's completely "normal" to have all girls as his peers. I think it's safe to say most boys if not most of their parents would find this decidedly odd, and plenty would disapprove, perhaps actively intervene to "balance" him by shaming him, or me, or siccing Church or State on us, however they might force us into being more like them, so they can stop worrying about how different we are and what we might get up to next!
"She'll never be a prima ballerina.
This isn't about that."
For an hour a week, Veronica and seven other girls from Queens escape a world plagued by awkward physical motion and enter a room where elegant music is played
and they get a taste of movement that is graceful, smooth, supple and refined. .--Corey Kilgannon May 5, 2006, NYT "Given a Chance to Be Little Ballerinas, and Smiling Right Down to Their Toes."
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What Schools Could Learn
Submitted by JJ Ross on 8 May 2006 - 10:08am.
from the study of dance:
"Discipline" is not a verb and you don't inflict it, at least not if you want to call what you do "education."
Those few young pupils deeply drawn to what you love, who do commit to the collective consciousness of your discipline and lose their separate selves within it, aren't inmates or orphans to be "disciplined" but in fact are fellow disciples.
And those drawn to something else are not yours!
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Laughing at What Kids Think These Days
My 16-year-old, one of the healthy teen dancers learning great life skills as she helps the little ones alongside these fine teachers, just read this blog. She immediately shared these cultural referents:
(If this doesn't demonstrate that we're not standard issue, I don't know what will.)
1. My referring to her studio director as "Miss Michele" made DD think of the sleazy televangelist Melvin P. Thorpe in Best Little House (the movie) when he darkly exposes Dolly Parton to his viewers as "A woman known only as --Miss Mona!"
There was a ballet quote that fits here too, come to think of it - Miss Mona: "I couldn't be a ballerina now. I'm too top-heavy. I have a hard enough time balancin' these things now without gettin' on my toes!"
2. Thinking of all she owes her dance teachers brought the end of My Cousin Vinny to DD's mind, where Mona Lisa Vito mocks Joe Pesci's ideal of independence with: "you win case after case, but then afterwards you have to go up to somebody and you have to say, 'thank you!'
-- Oh my God, what an effin' NIGHTMARE!"
Don't tell the Parent Police this is what DD's learned through unschooling, huh?
And we have to go now; she's ordered the latest Forbidden Broadway CD with her lawn mowing money, and we're off to pick it up --