 the male dancer
written by DancersDaddy at on 14.11. at 02:32:08 - as answer to: 3year old son in ballet by justagoodmommy In our case, I'm the supportive father, and the mother has more of a negative reaction. Our 7-year-old told me today that he wants to take ballet (his 3-year-old sister is in pre-ballet). This is no surprise, as it's always been obvious that he inherited his daddy's gift of dance. Don't get me wrong, I never went very far with it, and my life has been very full, but I often wish I had continued. I'll never forget when the choreogropher of a show I was in told me I was "a natural". Who knows exactly what he meant by that, but his advice was to get into a studio and stay there. I didn't. Life got in the way and I got distracted. Eventually went into the military, and by the time I got out I had a family and jumped into a career. I know now that I'll never be a dancer. It's not about me anymore, instead it's about my children. Before you start to think that I'm pushing my son into dance so I can live through him, hardly! I'll now surprise you by saying that I came to this forum looking for support of my feelings. I'm somewhat of an idealist, but I'm also somewhat of a realist. I've seen the pictures on the wall of 200 girls and about 8 boys. I know the score. I was accused of being gay in school before I even knew what gay was and I WASN'T taking ballet lessons. I was simply a nice, non-athletic guy. But in my heart I know he'll never be a jock (although I would support him if he wanted to play football or something). I know he wants to dance, and I know he's GOOD. I have learned enough about dance over the years to be able to see that. So, it's not just mothers who are trying to convince fathers, there are also fathers trying to convince mothers, and fathers trying to reconcile their love of dance with their knowledge of how boys in dance are perceived. Best of luck to all of us :) Answers to this message:
|
