Dance Moms
I spent last week and weekend volunteering behind the scenes with my daughter's dance school. Every year end the school puts on an extravaganza that sells out for its two performances. But before that, there is a stage rehearsal and a dress rehearsal and volunteers are needed for those, too.
I am not a dance mom. I volunteer for the free tickets (and even at that I end up having to buy a few every year for last minute friends who want to see the show) and because I pretty much have to be there anyway, so I figure I may as well be part of the production as just sit and wait for it to be over. But this year, I really enjoyed being around the dance moms. There was something very refreshing about being around people who don't care about politics or anything related to politics but who care deeply about how well turned out a certain ballerina's foot is or how tight a certain jazz ensemble's pirouettes are, and so on and so forth and more of the same, etc etc.
Normally, that stuff is a total yawn for me, but this year I was really into it. Perhaps it's because my daughter is older and can do her own bun.
Yes. I said, "bun". Because while some things may change, some things very much stay the same and I can't think of anything more "the same" over our years in dance than the ballet bun. To say it was one of the happiest days of my life when she could do her own bun would not be overstating things, I don't think. I am so sadsack at bunning that once, minutes before an exam, another dance mom, noticing my daughter's lopsided bun and simply not being able to restrain herself - leapt out of her chair, "Just give me two minutes!" and redid the bun to perfection. After my daughter went in to do her exam the dance mom took me aside and said, "The bun matters, you know. They'd have marked her down with your bun." I pled guilty for my bunnery skills and she very generously forgave me with, "Bring her early next time and I'll do it again. And always invest in new tights for the exam - she'll suffer for that little run at the back."
Meanwhile, out of earshot of the dance moms, I've simply tried to dissuade my daughter from even taking the exams. Still, she insists and so far so good, although every year I threaten to write a letter complaining about the uptightness of the examiners and the very obvious bias by the Royal Academy of Dance towards rail thin ballerinas as opposed to not.
They ALWAYS score higher than their non-rail thin classmates and, call me biased, but it ain't on account of their superiour technique or talent. And I've got SEVERAL dance moms who will back me up on that one. Dance moms with perfect hour-glass figured daughters who have managed to become dance teachers IN SPITE OF year after year of "Pass" grades from ballet examiners from the Royal Academy of Dance. Brilliant performers who look like normal healthy women as opposed to anorexic anaemic waifs but who never ever get Highly Recommended on account of they clearly won't starve themselves for the honour.
But back to volunteering. The dance studio is in the suburbs and the show is downtown so every year, I get to witness first hand the divide between suburban matrons and downtown swingers (which is what the other dance moms think I am - in the early years in a pitying way but in more recent years in an envious-bordering-on-jealous one). To say that young dance parents are scared shitless about their little ones being in the heart of downtown is putting it mildly. My Gawd, you'd think there was a pervert hiding down every hallway of the Ottawa Adult Education school. It's beyond ridiculous and somewhat insulting for those of us (and I'm the only one, I admit) who live downtown in a small apartment in not the most reputable of buildings as opposed to out in the suburbs in an open concept 5-bdrm/3-bthrm house with a 2-car garage and enough lawn to feed a herd of cattle - by choice.
I mean, seriously - what do they think is going to happen to their precious wee ones between the stage, where there are dance mom volunteers to see them on and off, and the changeroom, where there are other dance moms to oversee them until mom comes to pick them up? (And pity the dad who does because - good grief - if you want to be treated like a pervert, just enroll your daughter in dance school and at recital time, instead of buying a ticket to watch the little darling perform on stage even though she can't see you and will never know the difference and you'll have wasted $16 to see your five-year-old dancing to some smutty pop tart tune like Hit Me Baby One More Time - hang around outside the changeroom waiting to pick her up right after her performance.)
Oh, and lest I forget - there are yet more dance mom volunteers to take the little ones from the changeroom to the stage and back again. So yeah - there's not even an in between stage and changeroom distance for parents to worry about. It's completely covered. Every second of that child's time downtown is covered by at least three dance mom volunteers at any given time.
How fearful are people allowed to become before the dance mom runner (that's the changeroom to stage and back again job - runner) has a right to literally slap some sense into them? I mean, c'mon - just one good, "WHACK!" followed by a sharp, "SNAP OUT OF IT, SOLDIER!" so they can see that downtown isn't Sodom and Gomorrah (although, there's probably more sex going on downtown than out in the suburbs - but we don't have lawns to maintain so there's all that extra time and energy to spend on more carnal pursuits of happiness) or a Den of Inequity (although, there's certainly a helluva lot more diversity of income, I'll tell you - including the odd homeless guy who spends the night in my building's stairwell and, this being 2007, is still sleeping there AT NOON!! the next day when *I* head out to work).
Downtown, in my opinion, is much safer than the suburbs because there are people everywhere until all hours. But I admit - I'm a people person. So, what is it about living in the suburbs (and I used to be a suburbanite, so I know what of I speak) that makes people so fearful of downtown?
Why... it's people, of course. The very thing that I would argue makes downtown safer than the suburbs is the very thing that suburbanites are so fearful of - people. Lots and lots of people. Different people, too. Different colours, different incomes, different ways of living. And that scares people who live in the suburbs because after a while, people who live in the suburbs are so used to being insulated from humanity and anybody and everybody who isn't just like them, that they become alienated from it. They are isolated from people by property and downtown, with its close quarters and teeming humanity, is an assault on their sensibilities.
Is the isolation and alienation of the suburbs such that people eventually become freaked out by their own kind and would rather surround themselves with property than humanity? Because having just dealt with a bunch of young parent suburbanites (which I once was, too) in a downtown setting, honestly - I have to say there's a reality gap between what downtown actually is and what these people are afraid it is.
And I'm not even sure it can be blamed on the media this time...
With the dance mom volunteers it's a bit different because they have teenagers who WANT to be downtown - all the time - so they view it more as a huge driving inconvenience (I mean, Gawd forbid their kids should take the bus -even though the bus is probably the safest way to travel there is - and the more people who use it, the safer it becomes) than a scary place - although, as I've said, there seems to be another reality gap in terms of bus safety and who uses the system. Me, for instance. And my three kids. And all the other normal looking humanoids I see using the bus when I use it - which can be late at night, even.
Anyway, as I say, I get an annual dance show peak at the behaviour of suburbanite parents downtown, once a year, and because I'm an adapted downtowner, I have to say - it's pretty whack. Scared, fearful, suspicious - it puts me in mind of how villagers must have felt about other villagers in the middle ages in Europe, divided by forest as they were, superstitious about what evil lurked beyond their little, known corner of the world.
I wonder why that is and why it's so encouraged? I mean, all that tract housing extending for miles and miles so people can learn over time to be afraid of other people, barricading themselves in prisons of their own making, peeking out at humanity from behind window treatments so elaborate they could clothe all the homeless of downtown. NOT that the homeless don't wear clothes downtown. They do. Honest. And there's not having sex in the streets, either. Just don't linger in my apartment stairwell if you hear more than one guy talking to himself.
