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AHH!! LAMO!! thats a long time!! but i use to cheer and my mom had to sit through over 100s+ routines and only see us for like 2mins!! haha she said it was painful and boring..until we came on!!
Oh, it gets better. As it turns out, most of the time during this dance recital was comprised of dance solos. In order to get a solo during the performance, you have TO PAY FOR THE PRIVILEGE. That's right, kids. You don't earn the right to solo through hard work and auditioning. Nope, you just write a check.
So even if your child is dumpy, uncoordinated, and wobbles around on stage with all the innate talent of a toadstool, you can bribe the dance academy into forcing 600 stupefied parents to watch the excruciating ordeal of your daughter strutting by herself in the limelight.
And, then, there were numerous kids who received Five-Year and Ten-Year awards. I found out later that these weren't free, either. Nope. For your daughter to receive a Ten-Year Award in front of the audience, you had to write a $150 check for a gaudy little trophy. Geez. You'd think after paying for ten years worth of dance lessons, the poor parents wouldn't have to pony up for some trinket signifying that they were good customers for ten years.
Here's the deal. 99.9% of all dancers aren't going to be prima ballerinas. A slightly larger percentage might be in beauty pageants (another completely different topic), and slightly more than that will be cheerleaders or be on the high school dance squad.
So why do so many parents put up with getting fleeced like this? And why do so many parents put up with these annual ordeals?
Oh, it gets better. As it turns out, most of the time during this dance recital was comprised of dance solos. In order to get a solo during the performance, you have TO PAY FOR THE PRIVILEGE. That's right, kids. You don't earn the right to solo through hard work and auditioning. Nope, you just write a check.
So even if your child is dumpy, uncoordinated, and wobbles around on stage with all the innate talent of a toadstool, you can bribe the dance academy into forcing 600 stupefied parents to watch the excruciating ordeal of your daughter strutting by herself in the limelight.
And, then, there were numerous kids who received Five-Year and Ten-Year awards. I found out later that these weren't free, either. Nope. For your daughter to receive a Ten-Year Award in front of the audience, you had to write a $150 check for a gaudy little trophy. Geez. You'd think after paying for ten years worth of dance lessons, the poor parents wouldn't have to pony up for some trinket signifying that they were good customers for ten years.
Here's the deal. 99.9% of all dancers aren't going to be prima ballerinas. A slightly larger percentage might be in beauty pageants (another completely different topic), and slightly more than that will be cheerleaders or be on the high school dance squad.
So why do so many parents put up with getting fleeced like this? And why do so many parents put up with these annual ordeals?
That right there would make me drop that dance studio, no question. Looks like the owner is more concered about making a buck then teaching dance.
WOW! I'm gonna go hug the owner of the dance studio where my girls went. I'm SOOOOOO glad she never ran her studio and recitals like any of these mentioned. My oldest took dance for over 10 years and the youngest for about 5 years. Sat thru many a dance recital w/ grandparents too. Here is how ours went down:
The Dance Recital was broken up into THREE Performances on two different days. One on one day and two the other. In each of the 3 "shows" there were intermissions and this is when you could go in or leave. She did not like for anyone to enter or leave between "acts" as she had the flow going pretty quickly and it would interupt parents and others in the audience and the lights were down as well. The LONGEST we ever had to sit in the auditorium was about an hour. I got lucky many times in that my two kids alternated in their "acts" between each other. For the wee little ones they were in the beginning of one of the performances and then an intermission and she would thank the parents again for attending and being such great parents and support throughout the year and then ask them to go claim their little ones backstage. At that time the lights would go up and parents/grandparents could leave.
As for the awards she did that at the beginning of each performance for those in THAT set. Not all of them 3x's. YIKES! We also did not have to pay for any trophey when they got a 5 year or 10 year award.
As for the dances and all no one did the same as another class. Each class (act) did their own dance to a different song. Sometimes they had a common theme but NEVER the same exact dance and song. GADS!!!
Watching the little ones was always very cute and entertaining.
That is simply ungodly punishment! Could you leave after a certain point or was your child performing thru/out the evening in different sets? Uggghhhh. Very poor planning on the instructors' parts if you couldn't leave "in shifts." Best to divide into 2 evenings or 2 programs - one 2 hr for younger students, one 2 hr for older. I grew up in dance and piano, and my instructors broke the programs up into 2 nites - one for younger students, one for older.
Four hours is simply INSANE - for the kids as well as the parents.
As a studio owner I can tell you what we are thinking - we are thinking we have 100 - 300 + families to please and they all want to see their kids dance on that stage. Could you imagine trying to make this many people happy? We must be insane to do this job & put up with constant complainers - because there is no right or wrong way to do this - but no matter what we do people will be complaining. I appreciate the idea of leaving in shifts - it seems like a good idea, but what if your dancer is the last shift - what if there is literally no one there to watch them except you. How unfair to your dancer, when their big recital turns into a performance for mom & dad that you could have done from home. What if you have other children who are in an earlier shift? Most of our families have more than one child enrolled, and in multiple numbers throughout the show. They would have to stay then entire time anyway - you would complain that it seems like a waste of time to spend time to "shift out" when you could be sitting comfortably enjoying the performance. It would be confusing which of your children dances when - and with so many people around, hard to navigate through the crowd - and you would have to do that again during another shift! Why can't people just be respectful and give your child the same courtesy you gave them? If people leave mid dance recital you will be interrupting other people's view of the performance. How do you handle the "black friday" dash to the front row? There are some crazy parents we are dealing with that would literally fight other parents for a good front row seat. We have to consider all of these things. We didn't ask for these problems - we are just trying to teach dance & put a recital together for our students. We do the best we can and we consider all of the feedback - and probably your studio does too! For some, the dance recital is a very big deal. How do you divide it into two programs? What if there are kids in more than one dance? How do you give them enough time to change into the next costume? Again - if younger students have older siblings in the other program - which seems like the majority in my instance - if you split the show - they are there even longer! I know some studios do this - and those studios have unhappy parents. No matter what we do - with so many people - there are bound to be unhappy people. So we must consider what works best for our overall studio.
There's really no possible way to make every single person happy. It's hard to plan a large event like this - Theaters can only seat so many people - they are incredibly expensive to rent - Some dancers bring 20+ people with them... try telling them they can just bring two - that's not gonna fly either.
In my opinion - if you can't sit through a once a year four hour recital - then don't sign your child up for dance.
You DO realize that the OP posted this SIX years ago, right?
She is not sitting through those now.
That's irrelevant. The thread isn't just about the OP. We are encourage to resurrect old threads with new information. I think a studio owner's perspective is an appropriate addition here.
I posted here six years ago and just got this message from someone:
"Bad idea. If parents only sat for their own children's dance, the children would have no audeince except for their parents. They might as well just dance at home."
I didn't even remember responding on this thread that many years ago, lol. But here is what I still think.
I took both dance and music lessons as a child. Later, as a young adult, I helped with stage management for one of the area's instructors.
Four hours is ridiculous without "shifts."
As far as the comment about children dancing at home . . . well, uh, YEAH! Recitals are for family members! That is exactly what they are about! People may be POLITE about seeing 150 other kids "doing their thing" but in the end, people come to recitals not for entertainment but to support THEIR CHILD.
A well produced recital should include a well managed program. If all a dance instructor is interested in is a captive audience, then I suppose it doesn't matter how well managed it is . . . people are going to leave when they start dying of boredom (or the younger kids in the family get too squirmy to endure it further).
Recitals never make everyone happy because here are the facts: no one cares about anything at a recital except THEIR CHILD. So there will always be people aggravated about 1. how much stage time their kid gets 2. how long they have had to sit there before their kid finally got on stage 3. how expensive the costumes were 4. what other kid seems to get preferential treatment and so forth and so on.
All an instructor can do is put on the best program they can devise and forget about how many people are sitting in the audience. This is a RECITAL not a broadway show, for heaven's sake.
That's irrelevant. The thread isn't just about the OP. We are encourage to resurrect old threads with new information. I think a studio owner's perspective is an appropriate addition here.
Meh... I will respectfully disagree.
IF the response was a general one, yes.
But the response specifically quoted a six year old post... THAT made it irrelevant.
The studio my kids' dance at has at least four recitals every year over Memorial Day weekend. Maybe more, those four are just the ones I can specifically remember. They are each about two hours long, comprised of a mix of both the cutesy little tappers and the near professional teen ballerinas, with some tween hip hoppers, a special needs group, and funky jazz. Only a few solos. I may be the only one, judging by this thread, but I actually enjoy the entire performance, not just my kids' numbers. Although if it were four hours straight, that might be pushing it a bit! Almost everyone stays for the entire show, although that may be in part because they do an all-dancers finale number, hat is usually a fun, crowd-pleasing mix of fast songs.
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