Prepare for Dance

Ballet is challenging enough when you have good vision, but for dancers who need glasses, things can get even trickier. While it’s true that you rarely see professional ballerinas performing in glasses, young dancers are a different story.
Ballet and other styles of dance are possible to do while wearing glasses, but some steps and styles are harder to perform bespectacled. By securing glasses properly, and choosing the right frames, you can dance in glasses easily.

Elastics keep the pointe shoes on the dancers’ feet, and the ribbons give the feet and ankles vital support when dancing en pointe.  If you don’t want your dancer to get hurt, you need to make sure the ribbons and elastic are attached properly.  My daughters have both been dancing en pointe for several years now and they sew on their own ribbons and elastics, but I will still sometimes check their pointe shoes and add another layer of stitching or two if the ribbons or elastics aren’t well attached. 

Typically, a beginner ballet class for young children will last between 30 minutes to an hour, depending on age. Dancers will learn a combination of creative movement skills, fine and gross motor skills, and classical ballet steps. 

Tap dance is making a comeback lately, with movies like “Happy Feet”, tap being featured on popular shows like “So You Think You Can Dance”, and viral videos from tap artists such as Syncopated Ladies. With its origins in African and Irish cultures, tap dance evolved into a unique art form that is beloved all over the world, and you can find classes for all ages and levels at dance studios. 

If your child has ever been mesmerized by “The Descendants” or won’t stop singing along to “Hamilton”, chances are you’ve got a musical theatre fan on your hands! Whether they want to be the next big star or just want to dive deeper into the wonderful world of musicals, signing your kiddo up for a musical theatre dance class might be on your mind! 

If you’ve got a kid who is cooler than you’ve ever been, hip hop class might be right up their alley! Good hip hop classes stay on the pulse of what’s popular in current hip hop culture, while paying homage to the founders and movements that created the styles that make up contemporary hip hop. 

If you are a parent of a dancer who is in the midst of choosing colleges, then you will know how much researching, preparation and planning has gone on before an actual dance audition for a college even occurs!

If your dance mom college audition experience for your dancer is anything like mine, you will see yourself on the end of a video camera (or your phone) filming video auditions, or video pre-screening auditions which are followed up by an in-person audition. 

If your dance college audition experience is anything like mine, your dancer will pick about a dozen colleges, some with in-person dance auditions, some with video auditions, some requiring classical ballet variations, some requiring a self-choreographed solos, some requiring written essays, some requiring interviews, and all with different timelines. So how do you prepare for all that???

Dance Recitals and end-of-year ballet concerts are very exciting for both dancers and parents. For the kids, they get to wear make-up, costumes and dance on stage in front of an audience. Parents get to see all the hard work from throughout the year come to fruition.