Dance Season and Lycra

It’s end of year dance show season and time for all those dance mums (and dads) to watch their kid show off their talent. Because every parent wants to watch their seven year old dance in sequined lycra that makes Lady Gaga look respectable. Well apparently, many parents are do, because the shows are full of parents ready with cameras to one day show their grandchildren when they eventually come. And it’s not just the clothing, but the dancing. May I call it an atrocity, the way children are encouraged at such a young age it’s okay to dress and to act that way? I don’t know what the parents call it, but if I ever had a child I wouldn’t take them anywhere near anything to do with dancing just so they don’t get the slightest idea in their head that they might remotely want to do dance. Yeah sure, it has good physical benefits, but I’ll put them in soccer for that, or better yet, ice hockey.

Watching a seven year old twerk in sequined lycra is enough to make Miley Cyrus look tame. And they say the children these days are losing their innocence through media, they’re losing it through dance teachers.

Perhaps that’s a bit presumptuous, I’m not sure not all dance schools are as innocent-devouring as the one I watched the other day. I did hear a comment from a teacher (at a different dance performance which I didn’t get to watch), that they were proud were proud for preserving the children’s innocence. Which according to someone who did watch it, they did compared to this one. Perhaps it was just this particular dance show, though, from memory, I would say it’s not.

I guess the fact that the very first thing seen when the lights came on was some girl sticking her ass in the air didn’t really help. It only got worse from there. I wouldn’t say it was all inappropriate e for some of the older girls, they’re old enough to actually understand what they’re doing, whereas I would say a young child shaking their ass doesn’t really ring in to their minds what it actually suggests. But it encourages them at young age that it is appropriate when really, I very highly believe that it’s not.

What happened to just doing twirls in pretty pink dresses with frills? Those were the good days, when a little kid could show off their dancing without showing off their bottom.

There’s just something about it that I find unbearable to watch, that makes me feel like the destruction of the world is going to be because every girls feels it’s appropriate to wear almost nothing because they’ve grown up doing so in front of hundreds.

But what can you do about it? Not much. Boycott all dance schools? I don’t think that would work much, but hey, it’s worth a try right.

All I know is that I have no plans to encourage children to join a dance school, despite the physical benefits it can bring (and I must admit, some of them were pretty impressive- but they didn’t need fancy clothes, or lack of it, to show it). So that’s just what I think, and it’s what I’ll continue to think, until I see an end of year dance show that succeeds in not bringing out the lycra. And, I’ve got to add, this is all coming from a girl who got pulled out of dance at the age of six because her parents thought it was too inappropriate- but oh, she joined Physie next (fake tans and boofy hair- yeah that didn’t last long either). You know what though, I’m happy they did that, because I don’t own one thing of lycra, and amazingly enough I don’t walk around with practically nothing on and my ass in the air.