ballet dad blog
  • Home
  • The Blog
  • Contact
  • subscribe

Blog Forty-Eight

1/11/2016

0 Comments

 
Catching up #1

​Our wifi broke before Christmas. I continued writing but stopped posting. I have some catching up to do. Here goes:


Choice

I suggested in a recent blog that I often dilute the information that our son is at a ballet school with the excuse, "But I didn't have a choice." This needs some thinking about. I wonder if it is really true. I have a mild suspicion that I might no be taking full responsibility for the situation in which I find myself.

If those 'scouts' had not come to his primary school all those years ago and offered him four years' worth of free classes, life would now be different. There is every chance that he would not have found ballet had ballet not come and found him - something that I sometimes half-jokingly refer to as his initial 'abduction into the cult of ballet'. It would have felt wrong if back then, if I had said no to the free classes. He needed a chauffeur or a chaperone, and I thought nothing of fulfilling this parental role. The reward for taking him to class twice a week was that our child gained an insight into a completely different world - a world that his mother and I would have been unable to give him access. We didn't know at the time just how embedded ballet would become in our lives, and had we known, it wouldn't have changed a thing. We just wanted our child to have a broad range of experience and explore something outside the normal parameters of family life. I would have had the same attitude to something musical, or something to do with acting and drama. Chess, collecting creepy-crawlies, baking, football, swimming or athletics would all have precipitated the same reaction from me - I would have been encouraged him. I probably would not have been so encouraging if he had fallen into rugby or some activity with military cadets; I would not have bought him his first pair of rugby boots or allowed him to put on a military uniform. When he started ballet, we were all oblivious to the impact it would have on him and where it was all leading.

I also drove him to all his auditions. This was the point where I could have put my foot down and pointed out the impracticalities of becoming a dancer. However, I played with fire - thinking that we would wait and see if he got in, and then make up our minds. And, as parents have told their children since the beginning of time, if you play with fire, you get burned.

Once he'd got into a ballet school, it was too late. The joy surrounding us was overwhelming - he cried, his mum cried, even one of the receptionists at his primary school cried. I didn't cry. I can remember the day clearly. It marked the beginning of a completely new set of worries.

I could have been the father who said no - the archetypal father resistant to ballet. But my reasons are perhaps different from the stereotype. I worry about the heartbreak, should the dream end; and I am aware of how few who begin a vocational training at such a young age actually end up dancing as a career. It would have been simpler to end it before it had began - extinguish the dream before it had really caught alight. But then, I would have had to suffer a completely different set of consequences. I would have been known as the person who stopped him from fulfilling his potential. The story would be indelibly written in our family history, and long after my death it would still be spoken about in hushed tones - 'we nearly had a famous dancer in our family, but he was stopped from attending ballet school by his over-protective dad.' Like a cake that was never baked, like flowers that were never sent, or that novel that was never written; the void keeps the fantasy alive. It's just like my career in music: I'd be a rock star now, but I never actually formed a band ... or learned to play the guitar.

So, with all things considered, my opinion remains the same: the decision was out of my hands; I genuinely don't believe that I had a choice.

0 Comments

    Anonymous

    Archives

    August 2020
    January 2020
    March 2018
    October 2017
    September 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    May 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015

    RSS Feed

    Enter your email address:

    Delivered by FeedBurner

    Categories

    All
    A Letter
    Alzheimer's
    Anonymity
    Autonomy
    Away From Home
    Birthday
    Blessings
    Camaraderie
    Changing Rooms
    Cheap Seats
    Choice
    Christmas
    Comedy
    Competition
    Confession
    Cruelty
    Daily Contact
    Denial
    Departure
    Dilemma
    Diversity
    Dreams
    Education
    Election
    Elitism
    English National Ballet
    Exit Stage Left
    Expensive Seats
    Father And Sons
    Fatherhood
    #firstworldproblems
    Fitness
    Frankenstein
    Freedom
    Freud
    Guidelines
    Half Term
    Half-term
    Harry Potter
    Hogwarts
    Holidays
    Homecoming
    Ice-cream
    Idealism
    Incarceration
    Independence
    Learning
    Liam Scarlett
    Lies
    Loving Too Much
    Midlife Crisis
    Money
    New Beginnings
    Nutcracker
    Obsession
    Parents
    Perfection
    Presents
    Reactions
    Rebellion
    Responses
    Ricky Jay
    ROH
    Royal Ballet Company
    Royal Opera House
    Rules
    Rumpelstiltskin
    Safeguarding
    School
    Siblings
    Silence
    Sister
    Snobbery
    Steven McRae
    Strangers
    Sugar Plum Fairy
    Swan Lake
    Swans
    Swimming
    Tamara Rojo
    Teaching
    The Golden Rule
    The Price
    Thomas Whitehead
    Time Passing
    Truth
    Uncertainty
    Vampire Bats
    Victory
    Vocational Training
    Widening Participation
    Work

  • Home
  • The Blog
  • Contact
  • subscribe