The whole girls and dance culture kind of scares me - it brings up images of curling irons, buns and makeup, lots of pink glittery outfits, dance teams with young girls in trashy outfits unknowingly objectifying themselves at basketball games and then if you were to be any good at it it's a forty minute drive one way to a two hour lesson, every day, eating disorders, more revealing outfits, wigs, pageants, a land as foreign to me as Narnia. It sort of worries me that girls are bombarded with the whole Disney / Barbie / Fairytopia 100 times more intensely than when I was younger - and even back then in the 70's I was acutely aware that I was a lot bigger than all the other girls in the ballet class that I begged my mom to take me to ... so I worry about my girls who are very likey going to be around six feet tall - and who both LOVE to dance and very much want to do all the dance stuff other girls are doing.... But there is a style of dance that seems just a little less girly to me, and that is Irish dance. When I was rowing, one of my mates who is at least 6 feet tall, went to two Olympics, competed in numerous World Championships etc... did Irish step dancing all the way through high school. So when I found out that there was a good Irish dance group in Spokane I decided that if Lucy wanted to do it I would help her get started - my thinking is that this is a style of dance that a "tall girl" can do - and that spending years doing Irish dance wouldn't necessarily preclude Lu from doing sports as well - I don't know- there are wigs involved too. So last weekend we took the girls to the Bing to see An Dochas and the Haran Irish Dancers for their Christmas concert and out to dinner afterward. Lucy and Grace were on the edges of their seats during all of the dance numbers, which were breathtaking. Lucy was doing her steps down the street back to the car and as we sat eating dinner she said: "Mom, I got better just from being there."Like by osmosis? or transmission? from her teacher who danced in front of us to her... hummm... sounds like the natural ideal of teacher student interaction. 12 more days till I leave for Mysore....
Sunday, December 27, 2009
just by being there...
The whole girls and dance culture kind of scares me - it brings up images of curling irons, buns and makeup, lots of pink glittery outfits, dance teams with young girls in trashy outfits unknowingly objectifying themselves at basketball games and then if you were to be any good at it it's a forty minute drive one way to a two hour lesson, every day, eating disorders, more revealing outfits, wigs, pageants, a land as foreign to me as Narnia. It sort of worries me that girls are bombarded with the whole Disney / Barbie / Fairytopia 100 times more intensely than when I was younger - and even back then in the 70's I was acutely aware that I was a lot bigger than all the other girls in the ballet class that I begged my mom to take me to ... so I worry about my girls who are very likey going to be around six feet tall - and who both LOVE to dance and very much want to do all the dance stuff other girls are doing.... But there is a style of dance that seems just a little less girly to me, and that is Irish dance. When I was rowing, one of my mates who is at least 6 feet tall, went to two Olympics, competed in numerous World Championships etc... did Irish step dancing all the way through high school. So when I found out that there was a good Irish dance group in Spokane I decided that if Lucy wanted to do it I would help her get started - my thinking is that this is a style of dance that a "tall girl" can do - and that spending years doing Irish dance wouldn't necessarily preclude Lu from doing sports as well - I don't know- there are wigs involved too. So last weekend we took the girls to the Bing to see An Dochas and the Haran Irish Dancers for their Christmas concert and out to dinner afterward. Lucy and Grace were on the edges of their seats during all of the dance numbers, which were breathtaking. Lucy was doing her steps down the street back to the car and as we sat eating dinner she said: "Mom, I got better just from being there."Like by osmosis? or transmission? from her teacher who danced in front of us to her... hummm... sounds like the natural ideal of teacher student interaction. 12 more days till I leave for Mysore....
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The daughter inherits the grace from the mother.
ReplyDeletelove this post!
ReplyDelete-janny