My oldest daughter decided last August that she wanted to take her dancing abilities to a whole new level.
I knew it was coming and I was holding my breath in anticipation waiting for it. She said the words I was hoping for my own selfish reasons were not going to be spoken from her lips, "Mom, I want to try out for the competitive dance team at the dance studio".
I gave her an insincere smile and told her no problem we would look into it as I was trying to fight back the tears and anxiety.
Let me give you a little bit of background info on this topic. When I was growing up, I grew up in a neighborhood full of girls. I have great memories of growing up and some of those girls became my BFFs for life even though I moved far away from them when I got married :(. Each and every one of those girls was skinny, flexible and could dance well including my only sister, except for me. I have 2 left feet and never had any flexibility in my life. Now don't get me wrong I took 10 years of dancing growing up but let's face it, I sucked at it. I always wondered why the teacher put me in the back during dance recitals and why she never smiled at me, it was because I sucked and I fully accept it now but my own mother never told me the truth and told me I was great at it and looked beautiful on stage. Even mothers lie time again to their own children so they don't hurt their feelings.
I fully admit I should not be able to share an opinion on this topic as I am not a dance expert by any means but I believe my daughter to be a pretty good dancer. She is graceful and pretty flexible and her body seems to move fluidly- I really enjoy seeing her dance.
She tried out for the competitive dance team and made the team but in all honesty I think everyone makes the team as what dance teacher in their right mind is going to turn down the extreme dance tuition fee hike that you have to pay each month when you are placed on the competitive team.
I honestly feel as if I am part of a new universe now. We have practices all the time during the competitive dance season which kicks into full swing January thru June. We are at the dance studio several times during the week including Saturday's and Sunday's. I learned a new term "blinging" which means to add sequins to the costumes to make them look prettier and really sparkle. We have meetings and several emails back and forth on how to bling the sequins exactly and where to place them. We also have to travel several hours from home so that involves staying at hotels etc. and sometimes the dance competitions are during the work week so you have to use vacation days to get the kids to the dance competitions, I can think of many places I would rather be using my vacation days towards but I won't digress. When the actual dance competition takes place we have to be there several hours ahead of time to get the dancers ready including perfecting the twist bun which took me several weeks to learn how to do and also to learn how to correctly apply fake eyelashes and stage make up. Oh, I almost forgot you have to know how to sew the costumes as well. My initial thought was I hand over all this money, the costumes are ordered from wherever they order them from and then the costumes come in ready to go- boy was I wrong about that. In my home economics class during high school we never learned how to sew so thank goodness my husband can sew or we would be toast! Sometimes the kids dance at 3PM during the actual dance competition but then the awards ceremony doesn't take place until 830PM that night so you have to wait for hours.....this whole new world is very challenging but fascinating at the same time.
To sum it up I get the vibe that I don't belong in this dance group as I have no idea what I am doing and am not scared to admit it. Many of the other dance moms are wonderful however there are a few that I believe can smell my fear and they try to capitalize on that fact and try to "get" under my skin by some of their actions and what they have said to me but I will stand strong because my daughter loves it so far and we will keep doing it as long as she is fully committed- but if I can figure out a way to change her mind, I may try as I would prefer soccer cleats to ballet shoes any day of the week :) And I can do a pony tail in 10 seconds flat, instead of a twist bun that takes me 2 hours :)
