Nowadays, it’s all about competition. Look at how many TV shows we have that pit people against one another: American Idol, The Voice, The X-Factor, Dancing with the Stars. Come on: wise up! These days, criticism comes with the territory. You have to have some pretty tough skin just to survive.
Dear Abby:
Many of the girls on my daughter’s team are getting frustrated because there is one particular student who never keeps up with the choreography. What can we do to help the girls deal with this frustration?
The ability to comprehend dance movement quickly is an asset to every professional dancer. However, this decision, this frustration, this problem is up to the dance teacher—not the moms, and not the other girls. If this child who’s screwing up the choreography is causing them to lose competitions, the teacher will address it, fix it, and possibly lose a student—losing tuition money—but that’s the way the cookie crumbles.
Abby
THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS “OBJECTIVE”
Seriously—sometimes I have to question what judges are thinking when they award points. There’s no rhyme or reason to it. It’s whether they like you or not. Sometimes they don’t like the song or the costume or even the makeup. Go figure. Sometimes I’ll create a dance routine that I just love. I don’t care what anybody thinks of it, because I believe in it. If we don’t win, fine, I’m okay with that. That’s the way it is: the people calling the shots get to choose who wins and who loses. When you try to succeed in life, you’re just putting yourself out there, heart and soul open, to be judged, and you have to be ready to accept all criticisms, even when you don’t agree with them.
Judges always have an opinion. They could hate the color red, hate the song “The Rose,” or their pet peeve could be a dancer rolling around on the floor in a lyrical dance. It’s their opinion, and they have been hired to give their expert opinion of you and to write down a score. There’s no such thing as complete objectivity when it comes to scoring a dance performance. Sometimes the determining factor in a score can be who went before you or after you. There could be a dancer before you who gives a terrible performance and the judges increase your score because your performance looks better in comparison. The problem is that if you follow a bad dancer, but then more great dancers perform hours after you, you may end up with second or third place because the judges were basing your score on the low score ahead of you. It is actually better to follow the performance of a great dancer than a really bad dancer, so your score is higher if you outperform the great dancer before you. It’s probability and statistics. See, I really am concerned with education.
It’s all relative and based on who a judge sees perform next. A judge may give you a 98 and you think you’ve done amazingly well and the judge loves you, but then you realize that the judge is just a high scorer who gives everyone a 98. It’s the kid who gets the 100 from her who wins. It’s a numbers game, back to the math again. And you thought dancers only had to count to eight.
Another thing about dance judging and competitions is that scores are not posted right away as in sports like ice-skating. The teacher picks up the scores later. The judges know who won, but nobody else does. So if you win, you don’t know if you won by ten points or by two-tenths of a point. Sometimes the judges will give a high score for the entire day of the competition, and that’s a big deal. Like when Maddie wins highest score for the day after competing against sixteen- to eighteen-year-olds. That’s huge, because Maddie is only eleven!
Dear Abby:
My son dances in the house all the time and really wants to dance, but he has a learning disability. How do we find the right dance studio for him?
I strongly believe in checking out all the dance studios in your area, or because it’s a boy, a little out of your area. Not everyone in the neighborhood needs to know what he’s doing on Saturday afternoon. He should have the freedom and confidence to follow his dreams without others judging. Regarding the learning disability, I’ve had kids who were dyslexic and they shine as dancers, because when they look in the mirror, everything makes perfect sense to them. If it’s a slow learner or perhaps some type of ADD, you never know. In dance class, learning is very different from academic classes that require books. They might pick up things quickly and that might be the way to go. Maybe that’s their outlet, how they emote and get through the day. I would give it a try, but I wouldn’t go in saying he has a learning disability, because that’s just as bad as walking in and saying he’s the next Mikhail Baryshnikov. Parents shouldn’t do that either.
Abby
ABBY’S BLOND BOMBSHELL
by Koree Kurkowski
Abby has always been someone I looked up to, listened to, and of course took correction from. She was the adult figure in my life who taught me a craft that has been my passion since the age of five. I continued dancing after graduation and I am still performing daily. A few years after leaving the studio and while I was dancing professionally in Las Vegas, Abby came to visit. We reunited with hugs and stories. I decided to give her the Vegas treatment and buy her a martini. One martini somehow led to another. By the end of the night, I was doing ballet barre at the bar! I thought I wasn’t a student anymore. I guess I was wrong! It was a good experience seeing Abby let down her guard and have some fun. At the end of the night we went to her room to order room service. Abby fell asleep pretty quickly, but no worries—I enjoyed the famous fried rice from the Mirage by myself before heading home.
Koree Kurkowski fell in love with dancing at age five. She danced competitively with Abby Lee during her school years, then signed with Royal Caribbean while a senior in high school and performed for about two years with Royal Caribbean and Celebrity cruise lines. She moved to Las Vegas at age twenty after being hired as a showgirl/dancer in Jubilee! (“I was the shortest in the show at that time.”) Other Las Vegas credits include Pin Up, Sin City Kitties, Bite, and Fantasy.
MAN UP!
When your kid is on the firing line, will she crash and burn? This is one of the reasons I’m so tough on my students. I would prefer for them to cry in front of me, their mentor, in the safety of the studio, not at an audition, baseball tryout, or ROTC boot camp in front of four hundred of their peers. When you walk into my classroom, I’m going to give it to you straight, just like in the real world, because that’s the only way to prepare you for the real world. Part of my job is correcting flaws. It needs to happen. Better me than the first person auditioning you for a Broadway show, interviewing you for a job, or evaluating you for a promotion.
Showing a range of emotions onstage in a lyrical performance is wonderful. Performers taking on roles such as Helen Keller or Lizzie Borden require a range of emotions teetering on hysteria. These routines are what we call tearjerkers. It’s great to be so expressive that you make the audience feel your pain or bring them to tears. Offstage don’t sweat the small stuff and get so worked up about every little thing. My mom was always rattled about one thing or another. Relax.
If you’ve been in my class for years, then you know that sometimes I come in and I’m in a rotten mood. It is a teacher’s job to leave her troubles on the doorstep. The dance studio should be a place to set your spirit free, to forget your problems and just dance like nobody’s watching. Then again, you’ve seen the moms I have to deal with, so let it roll off your back. You know I love you. Don’t tell me your knees are black and blue, and then never wear knee pads or complain because your mother won’t buy them for you. If you carried your sled up a hill of snow ten times and now your calves are killing you, don’t come to me complaining about how sore you are. And don’t tell me your legs are sore from dance class when I know what the curriculum is and I know there is no way your legs could be sore from dance class.
The parents at the studio think I’m a big ogre. They want to coddle and hug their kids, and shelter them from the big meanie. They tell their kids that I’m wrong and they’re perfect the way they are. I tell the parents that if they want to save their kids f
rom me, take them somewhere else. The parents and the kids know what they signed up for. They’ve been there since they were two years old. The studio was fine when they were three and four, five and six, and even seven and eight. Then the show started. They were happy customers until they had a little money and a little power. Then they became complainers. I am actually nicer on camera than I normally am, because there are things you just can’t say on TV. I would never say anything racially offensive, but I would say, “This is a black piece. It’s about Katherine Dunham,” or I might say, “You need to feel like you’re in that cotton field and you’re carrying that basket.”
I have a lot of male dancers and I’ll tell them, “You look like a woman,” or I’ll say, “What do you think you’re doing? Britney Spears doesn’t want ten androgynous guys dancing behind her—she wants men!” I can’t make comments like this on TV, because viewers will say I’m homophobic. Of course I’m not. In reality, my male students wouldn’t be where they are today if they danced like girls. These men have to lift female performers and make them look pretty. This is how I normally speak to my students, but on TV, I can never say those things.
My mom and dad were older than the norm when they had me. So they raised me to be independent because they didn’t know how long they’d be around. My dad, George L. Miller, died a horrible death from esophageal cancer on Father’s Day in 2000. My mom, Maryen Lorrain Miller, passed away while I was working on this book, February 8, 2014. I think parents today do way too much for their kids. They forget that one day they’re not going to be there and their kids are going to have to function on their own. Some parents do everything for their children—from doing their homework for them or, at the very least, writing a note to the teacher letting him know that they were up late the night before and didn’t get their homework finished. Or if the kid doesn’t want to go to Susie’s party, Mom calls and makes excuses for the kid instead of giving the kid the phone and saying, “You call Susie and tell her you’re not going to her party.” Now, my parents would have insisted I go to Susie’s party because we had already RSVP’d and bought her a gift. Parents tend to handle everything for their kids—they become their assistants. They let them get away with too much, instead of having their kids man up, face issues head-on, and deal with their own problems.
If my daughter came home and said she wanted a solo, I would make her go ask the dance teacher herself. If a mother calls me asking me if her daughter can have a solo, I’ll tell her a hundred reasons why she can’t have a solo. I want the kid to come to me, not the parent. I believe in throwing the kid into the pool, maybe with water wings, but throw him in. If you’re afraid of letting a kid fly on a plane by himself when he’s fourteen, then buy a plane ticket and follow him. Be fifty feet behind that kid, but let him do it himself and see how he does from a distance.
Have you raised your kids to survive on their own or are you doing everything in your power to keep this world a safe place for them where no one will ever call them a name, and no one is going to pull the chair out from under them, and no one is ever going to beep at them on the highway? I’ll ask a student a question in the studio and the parent will blurt out the answer! When that happens, I say, “If she’s merging onto the 405, and I’m behind her on the freeway entrance ramp and my horn is going full blast, is Daddy going to run out and stop traffic so she can merge onto the freeway?” No! Let your kids figure it out now! Train them now and force them to man up!
BUMPS, BRUISES, AND BREAKS HAPPEN
Dancers and athletes especially will fall, get whacked on the head, twist, sprain, and fracture things. I know moms want to kiss away every boo-boo, but that’s not what your kid needs. In life, your first literal or metaphorical tumble won’t be your last. And usually your ego hurts more than your injury.
Bumps, bruises, and breaks happen! You’re enrolling in a physical activity where injury is likely to occur. It’s very important when choosing a studio and the right teacher to find out what the floors are made of. Are the ceilings high enough? Is the studio a safe environment? Are there poles your kid might run into? All these things and more go into injury prevention.
Some kids are built stronger than others. Some kids have thicker skin than others. Is your child mentally and physically prepared for this activity? There will be bruises to her ego and hurt feelings. She will most likely have girlfriend issues. The old clichés “Two’s company, three’s a crowd” or “She’s a fifth wheel” can play a role. Girls can be really cruel. Sometimes the reason your daughter may not want to go to dance class is because of mean girls.
If your daughter is dancing for recreational purposes and coming to dance class only once a week for fun, there shouldn’t be any injuries. If she’s coming two or three days a week and she’s involved, there might be an accident here or there. If there is core training, and your kid is training on cement or tile floors four or five days a week, you will have a problem. That’s why it’s so important to take a look at the floors before signing your daughter up for dance classes. Go to a facility that has special shock-absorbing floors designed for dance.
Your kid’s feet are going to have a problem if you purchase cheap pointe shoes online instead of listening to your child’s teacher and buying the right pointe shoes, which include a proper fitting.
It’s important that your kid receives proper technical training that’s even on the right and left side of her body. During a normal classroom session, your kid should be working both sides of her body to keep her alignment even.
If your body is telling you it hurts, then you need to stop and rest. If it’s just one part of your body, then rest that part of your body, but just because you have to rest that part of your body doesn’t mean everything else can’t continue to work. If your daughter has a sprained ankle, she can still walk on her hands. She can still do elbow stands or chin stands in acrobatic class. She can still get her body into a split. As long as she isn’t putting pressure on that ankle, she’s okay. She can lie on her back and elevate her feet up in the air to do a hundred sit-ups every hour. She can get in a push-up position and put the sore foot up across the other foot behind the ankle and do push-ups with one foot.
If a kid is truly sick with pneumonia or chicken pox, she can’t get all sweaty and gross in dance class. But she can lie in bed and watch old Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire movies and a Dance Moms marathon. She can study. She can read dance books and work on their terminology and vocabulary. She can continue learning to be a better dancer, even when she’s sick.
You don’t want to “work through the pain” with children because it can cause irreversible damage to their bodies. But you don’t want to coddle them either. You want to acknowledge that your child is hurt—her right knee is bruised or twisted, or she tore her cartilage and has to go to therapy. But in the meantime, you want to point out to your child that there’s nothing wrong with her left knee. You want to deal with and address the pain by seeing your child’s doctor and getting an opinion, but you want her to continue to train the rest of her body. Some kids are so tight that they can lose their flexibility in just a month.
Dear Abby:
For the most part, all the moms at our dance studio are very helpful and supportive, but we have one mom who gossips and spreads rumors about our girls and some of their parents. How can we put a stop to this?
One bad apple can spoil the whole bunch. Do not let this woman affect your child’s education. You can decide to take the high road; be the better person and don’t say anything at all. What goes around comes around. Let the gossip gods take care of her.
Abby
OH, GROW UP!
They say patience is a virtue. I’m not so sure. Am I supposed to have patience with the kids? Yes, I’m a teacher, and that’s my job. But patience with the parents? I just don’t have time. Every moment I spend explaining myself, and the method to my madness, takes away from the time that I spend teaching their children. They don’t understand me, nor do they care w
hen it comes to competition. They like to take credit for their children’s success. Never will they admit that I’m right. They want all the glory with none of the work!
Every child peaks at a different age. Some win every single competition before they are twelve, and then they crash and burn. Others might work and work and work and never win one title. But in the long run, all the sweat equity they put in over the years prepared them for the professional world, including the rejection. You can’t predict the future and force it to happen. Yet parents still feel the need to call me and tell me how to do my job. And I warn you, telling any dance teacher how to teach is definitely setting your kid up for failure. I get that you’re emotionally invested and that you don’t like to see your child upset or disappointed. But it won’t kill her, I promise you. It will make her stronger, more hungry for the win. No matter how much money you pay, or how many times you drive your kid to a dance class, ultimately your child is the one who has to get out on that stage and compete all by herself. Protecting her is hurting her. If your kid truly has what it takes, she will do it. She was destined to be onstage. And if she doesn’t, she will enjoy a wonderful dance education anyway.
I admit there may have been one or two situations when a mom has made a good point or brought something to my attention that I was unaware of. But for the most part, I think kids handle competition much better than their parents do. Have you noticed? The kids are not usually the ones crying, screaming, and throwing tantrums.
So here’s some advice: stop acting like a spoiled little brat. The “Mommy, I want it now” behavior is unbecoming. When kids come to an audition after being lazy and sitting on their butts all summer long, do they really think that they’re the best? Do they really think they’re going to be what I’m looking for? No! Even though I never had children of my own, I have raised hundreds of other people’s kids. These kids need to figure it out for themselves. Be wiser and make better choices. Kids must learn that they can’t improve if they miss classes, rehearsals, and workshops.
Everything I Learned about Life, I Learned in Dance Class Page 8
