It’s been years since I’ve taken the chance to flush out any thoughts on this here blog. My world has been spinning, like a neon colored top the past couple of weeks. I’ve estimated that the amount of new names logged to my brain is roughly 73, maybe 86. These names are important, considering these little buggers are all under the age of 5. Oh wait, little Alastair turned 5 on Monday. What a thing. A lot of the time that I teaching is spent thinking about what these kids will go on to do, to be, to say, to feel. It’s amazing how much character shows through someone’s face and words at such a young age.
I watched bits and pieces of No Direction Home, the Scorsece-directed Bob Dylan special, shown exclusively on PBS, our good Northeast public broadcasting friend. Last night, in part I he said that we aren’t built on our past, something to the degree that we are only what is happening now. What’s happening now is all we know.
This thought in some ways is admirable, but I instinctively feel something differently. Maybe it’s just a thought, inside my own head, but I feel very built on my past. I feel like I can give something to what will someday be a child’s past. Without carrying the risk of a self-absorbed “teacher” teacher, I feel like I am moving towards something when I work with the munchkins. If nothing else, I’m teaching about the magic of movement. It’s a special thing to appreciate the bodies we are and the mobility we have.
A nice little boy joined my class at the JCC last week. His mother was a little weary of a class of 7 girls dressed in pink tutus. Don’t get me started. This whole “boy” thing in dance class is getting ridiculous. There are teachers who have really just reinforced and pounded in this feminine ideal in to dance. During registrationg at Center Stage a woman came in with 3 kids. Here youngest was a 4 year old boy who really wanted to take a dance class. He had grown up seeing his sisters going to their recitals…what little sibling wouldn’t want to be a part of the magic?
She came to our studio because she heard, “we have boys”. This is true, we have 3 boys in our studio, which is 3 more than a lot of the studios in surrounding areas. But she didn’t sign him up because there weren’t any other boys in the class he’d fit in to. I work hard at making my classes non-gender specific. What is dancing all about? As I’ve hinted, it’s about using our natural mobility and maxing it out to make shapes, ideas, and concepts. So, little boy L at the JCC had a great class. We jumped, and meowed, and made flowers, suns and triangles with our bodies. He wants to dance like a beaver next week. I’m going to take some time to learn about the movement of beavers for our dear little L. Maybe I should bring in some logs…