Ballet Lessons

My friend Frances is a ballet teacher and very involved in the ballet happenings in Gauteng. She phoned me at the beginning of this week to say the person who was to compere the ballet festival on Friday (yesterday) couldn’t make it so would I fill in.

So, off I went at lunchtime and Frances gave me some instructions on what to do etc. and how to operate the music system. Horrors! I had to play the music as well and this involves stressed teachers mumbling a girls name and track number and then disappearing…. I think Frances saw the look on my face and went off to find an ex student to help – thank goodness. She went off to help in the tuck shop at the dinner break – this was a 7 hour marathon dance festival. Michelle was replaced with a much younger Crystal who, with about 10 second instructions from me (by this stage I was pretty savvy with what to do), grasped the workings of tape decks, cd slots and sound control. Amazing – just give it to a teenager.

Anyway, I was feeling a lot more at ease with my tasks. I was however just a little disappointed and feeling a bit inhibited that I had to stick to a script – no yelling out “Yeah for the girl in blue”, or “give the lass who lost her skirt a big round of applause”. No, it was all quite sedate and controlled.

But the script was about the only sedate thing happening back stage and this is really the purpose of this blog.

A ballet festival is the most hectic and stressful place backstage – which is where I was and hundreds of little girls, teachers, stage hands, bits and pieces of scenery, bags of props, the odd mother or two who got chased away. The teachers have groups of girls (and one little boy) or solo dancers they have to get on stage, pacify restless children, praise the ones coming off the stage, give me instructions, give us the music, make sure the kids have the correct outfits, makeup, hairstyles and so on…… The festival is the result of months of work – possibly the entire year. And some kids get and A+ and some get Cs. There are tears and disappointed faces and some very happy ones.

But here’s the thing – this is actually a public performance appraisal of the teachers. They dancers are judged by the ballet adjudicators and the teacher is judged on the results her pupils get. This is how she gets students to her studio – this is her livelihood. And all the results belted out by the adjudicator in public. And if that is not enough, during the 3 sessions in the afternoon and evening, I told the audience (the parents) 7 times that if they had a problem with the results they were to talk only to the people at the back desk. The teachers take a pounding from the parents. It is very difficult – I now know what Frances means when she rolls her eyes heavenward and says “ballet mothers”.

In conclusion: I wondered how many of us sitting in comfy offices would take having our performance review done with the entire staff and customer base looking on and allowing them to object if they felt like it. …. Not likely.