Dance Evaluations and Lessons Learned

It’s amazing how far a little bit of communication goes to soothe concerns, ease bad feelings and boost your sense of well being. As you might have guessed, Julian’s evaluation at Teen Dance Company went quite well and helped not only him feel better about what he’s doing there and how his teachers are dealing with and viewing him, but it made his dad and I feel a lot better as well.

 

No, we didn’t storm in and ask that he be treated like a prince, and they didn’t offer to treat him like one either, but it turned out okay all the same. And they gave us 30 minutes rather than 15 minutes, as scheduled.

 

As I’ve said previously, we’d been feeling like he wasn’t “appreciated,” but, in fact, it turns out he is. (We should have known.) And, it seems, he’s cared for as well. We were shown by Mark Foehringer the exact issues he’s working on with Julian and why. We were given more information on why the modern teacher, Brian Fisher, doesn’t yet want to move Julian up to the higher class, and it’s not just that Julian doesn’t know enough modern technique either. (After all, he’s only been studying modern for two months.) He’s actually concerned Julian might get hurt if he puts him in the higher class. (I suppose the fact that he goes 110 percent when put with the “better” kids and doesn’t actually know what he’s doing 110 percent of the time could lead to injury.)  Everyone wants to be sure Julian is doing things correctly and not moving forward with bad habits that later will be hard to break or that will cause him to get injured. (This speaks to the subject of moving slowly rather than quickly, something boys don’t like to do, which I will address in my next blog post.)

 

No one was jumping up and down and telling us how excited they were to have Julian in their company, but I suppose they can’t do that. They have to treat everyone equally. (Okay, I’m trying to be nice and play devil’s advocate to some extent here. I still want them jumping up and down, because I have, after all, brought them a boy, not to mention a boy with a fair amount of talent.) They did seem to indicate that they were pretty happy to have him with smiles and nods but no outright words when I said something that gave them a chance to actually do so. I’ll take that.  

 

As for the actual evaluation, they told us Julian is doing well overall. And all the teachers enjoy having him in their classes. (And why shouldn’t they? He’s a pretty pleasant chap most of the time, unless you’re his mother hassling him about his bad grades. Then he becomes something quite the opposite.) And many of the issues they saw with his dance, such as tight hips, lack of flexibility and problems with control of his back, they mostly attributed to the huge amount of growing he seems to be doing. (I think he’s grown about six inches in the last four months.)

 

The really great part was that Mark was able to give Julian specific things to work on and accomplish so he can move up to the next levels in ballet. One, interestingly, had to do with musicality: actually doing his barr work with the music in mind. For example, not popping out of a plié but actually coming out of it with the music.  Also, Darlene Castro-Easterling, who serves as the Pilates and tap instructor, said she will give Julian special stretching and strengthening exercises. Mark also will give Julian special stretching exercises.

 

Additionally, and this may be the best part of the whole meeting, when I brought up the fact that Julian is not getting to practice the “guy” ballet moves he already knows, nor is he learning any new ones, Mark jumped on this and solved the problem. While the girls are putting on their point shoes on Thursday nights, Julian will get 10 or 15 minutes alone with Mark to work on the “boy stuff.” Then, instead of being in the other “lower” ballet class that night, he will stay and do ballet with these girls, who are the really serious ballet students in the company, and Mark will carve out time for Julian to continue working on things that boys need to learn, such as partnering. Yahoo!  How the class will be structured for him is a bit up in the air, since all these girls are on pointe, but I’m sure it will be fine.

 

So, we left with Julian feeling pretty good about things in general. He even said that after hearing Mark explain to him in more detail some of the thing he needs to correct in ballet, he understands better and feels more inclined to go to him after class and ask for that type of explanation again. That’s a great lesson in and of itself: knowing that a bit of one-on-one time with a teacher so you can get an explanation about a correction can help you correct it more quickly.

 

And mom and dad felt better, too. We felt that the teachers at TDC are looking out for our son, not just now but in terms of helping him develop as a dancer for the long haul, and that they enjoy and appreciate him. And they were responsive to his needs. We were told to trust them…I guess a bit of trust is a good thing, too.

 

All is well here…for now. 

 

(Note: During the month of November I write and manage a blog called Write Nonfiction in November – http://writenonfictioninnovember.wordpress.com. It’s both a blog and a challenge to nonfiction writers, myself included, to start and finish a nonfiction writing project in 30 days. As you can imagine, between working on my own project and blogging – although I do have guest bloggers this year – this endeavor takes up a lot of my time. And I do also work as a freelance journalist and nonfiction book editor during November…life and work and driving kids to and from dance and swimming go on.  So, if my posts in this blog get a bit less frequent this month, please understand and be patient. Don’t go away and not come back! I’ll be writing more often again in December. And if you come here and don’t find anything new to read, you can always find me at http://writenonfictioninnovember.wordpress.com or at http://purespiritcreations.com/wordpress, although that blog also will be taking a back seat to Write Nonfiction in November for the next 30 days.)

Patience: A Virtue Lost on Boys Who Dance

Julian has never been one to wait for anything. Like most boys – or maybe kids in general – patience represents a virtue lost on him. He rushes headlong through his dance education every chance he gets.  He is impatient. He wants to move up, move forward.  Luckily, his teachers tend to slow him down.

His old tap teacher, Anthony LoCascio (of Tap Dogs fame), kept him in a slower-paced class even though he was able to move up to the harder class so he would get the technique correct first. The same was true in ballet, whenLise LaCour wouldn’t let Julian move up to level 4 as quickly as he wanted at Ballet San Jose School even though he even asked her specifically to move him up.  She wanted him to develop his muscles and improve his technique. Now he’s being held back at Teen Dance Company as well. He can do the higher level dance classes – and he’s even more challenged by them, but they want him to get the basics in the disciplines he hasn’t yet learned (modern and contemporary.

This leads me to some information I was given by Denise Wall of Denise Wall’s Dance Energy in Virginia Beach, VA, and mother to some great dancing boys – Travis Wall and Danny Tidwell of So You Think You Can Dancefame. First of all, she doesn’t let anyone move up to a higher level class in her studio unless they are ready. Not only that, she sends her ballet students down to lower levels. She says once they begin to understand how to use their muscles correctly, they can practice this in the lower level classes, relearn the technique and become better dancers. They understand the moves better, you see… This allows them to perform them with a new consciousness and to enhance their ability, making them stronger and cleaner dancers.

Basically, she says that younger dancers simply don’t understand how to use their muscles correctly. (I argue that most dancers never learn how to use their muscles correctly. They actually don’t know how to use their muscles specifically in the way Wall teaches. She agrees, saying, “If you don’t get it eventually, for you to become a professional is going to be hard, because you aren’t going to be controlled. You have to make it look like it is easy.”)  For this reason, she says, “Everyone has to go back to the basics, even your advanced students.” When they do this, they learn to control those muscles, and to activate the correct muscles at the correct time. “Then people will say, ‘That looks so easy for them,’” says Wall.

The key here, moms, lies in finding a teacher that knows how to teach your dancin’ boy how to use his muscles correctly. (I can’t say I’ve found one, but I’m gonna keep looking and possible take Julian to see Denise Wall one day.) The teacher needs to do the following, according to Wall: “Teach every muscle students are supposed to engage for everything they do. And make sure they know what muscle they are supposed to start with. Like with a releve…people just lift their heels up, and that’s not it at all. If you are just lifting your heels up, you are doing so much damage to your Achilles, because all your weight is going back into your heel.”

So, ask your son if he thinks about what muscle to engage when he does a releve. Ask him if he even thinks about it? If not, it’s time to get back to basics!

And keep this in mind when he wants to move up to the higher level class faster than maybe he should. (Yes, Julian…that means you.) This reminds me of the caution we’ve probably all heard when we’ve taken our children to a pool. “Walk, don’t run!”  Sometimes moving slowly simply provides the faster way of arriving at your desired destination – at least when it comes to becoming a professional dancer. Patience can be, if not a virtue, at least something worth developing when it comes to being a male dancer.

What’s a Mom to Do When Her Dancin’ Boy Doesn’t Think?

I pulled up at my son’s school on Friday to pick him up and take him to dance just in time to see him jump up onto a fence with his right foot and land back on the ground with — your guessed it — his hurt left foot. I was livid. I wouldn’t talk to him for the first 15 minutes in the car. Then, when I finally did open my mouth I told him to quit dancing or at least go tell all his dance teachers to forget about having him in their recitals and ballets in May and June.

What was he thinking? He wasn’t thinking. He admitted it. And what was I thinking? Taking him to fancy sports doctors and all? Sometimes I think I’m crazy.

The good news is that at Ballet San Jose School the ballet mistress and school director, Lise LaCour, is concerned about Julian’s recovery process — and having him ready for the end of the year ballet and showcase. So, she has not only asked her best instructor and only male ballet teacher, Peter Brandenhoff, to keep an eye on Julian, and she has requested that Julian come for extra classes. The extra classes seemed like a pain in the patooty, and Julian isn’t too crazy about it. We were a bit worried about him overdoing it and getting hurt again, which would not be good, but we’ve seen the logic to Lise’s approach.

By attending extra classes last week to do only barre work, Julian has been strengthening muscles he will need to do the jumps and turns he can begin doing a little bit this week. This week, he will continue doing extra barre work while he starts across-the-floor exercises (one out of every three times the others do the exercises). Next week, he’ll increase the amount of across-the-floor work he does (every other time the others do the exercises) while continuing to do double the barre work. As the week progresses, if his foot feels fine he can even do a little extra across-the-floor work, meaning that he can do some of the exercises in the extra class as well. Little by little, he will get stronger without hurting himself (hopefully).

He is doing all of this in a jazz sneaker at this point, mind you, to protect that small bone and growth plate on the side of his foot. He will dance in that for four weeks before going back to his normal jazz and ballet shoes. For hip hop, he is wearing regular street shoes or sneakers.

The other part of this good news comes with the extra attention Julian is getting from Peter Brandenhoff. For years, I’ve been trying to explain to Julian that when he does barre work he has to do it as if it is an isometric exercise. I’ve shown him with my arm the difference between raising my arm with no resistance and with a lot of resistance, with the muscles loose and the muscles tight. Somehow, he never got the message. However, Peter spent some time with him last week as part of his recuperation and watched him do his barre work very carefully. First he simply corrected his technique. The, he showed him how tightly he had to hold his muscles with each move and even when holding a position. Julian came our of class dripping wet — for the first time! He’ll never be able to take ballet class again and be able to tell himself he’s working hard unless he works like that.

That made me as a mother the happiest! Yes, I want him back in shape so he won’t get hurt. Yes, I want him ready to perform in his end-of-the-year recital, ballet and showcase. More than that, I want him to improve and to excel, and the lesson he learned from Peter will help him accomplish that. He wants so badly to be a good dancer, and he spends so many hours at the ballet studio. Yet, he doesn’t seem to improve as much as he or I think he should. Now he should see that improvement come in leaps and bounds. At least I hope that’s what we’ll see.

Of course, he could again stop thinking and then he’ll either just forget what he’s been taught or get hurt again. That’s a boy for you.