Mole does ballet

Mole started doing ballet classes in our village back in March. Hedgehog unofficially started too, stealing Mole’s ballet shoes and running onto the dance floor to leap about and point her toes.

I never did ballet, apart from a couple of ad hoc and alarmingly difficult classes at a place in Clapham in my late twenties, with a terrifying Russian teacher who would shout at us if we put a hand or a foot out of place.

So some part of me quite liked the idea of getting Mole into ballet, sort of giving her what I never had (that is, mastering an elite dance form), at an age when things easily stick. So on Thursdays we would toddle down to the sports hall, all dressed up in pink leotard, white socks with wrap over cardigan, to meet with three or four other little friends for ballet class.

At first we had some white ballet shoes ordered via the teacher, which promptly shrunk in the wash so that they were too small, and then mysteriously disappeared one morning. So we re-ordered some basic ones on amazon.

Hedgehog was always wearing Mole’s ballet shoes around the house whenever Mole’s back was turned, so when the white ballet shoes turned up one day in a bag under the stairs (Squirreled away by Hedgehog who is obsessed with bags) she happily got her own pair. Hedgehog can be very cunning like that.

The classes consist of a lovely teacher, equipped with ghetto blaster and an album of twinkly bouncy music, set to a series of dance routines. In rough order these are: ‘pick the big balloon up and let it go’, ‘put teddy to bed’, ‘chasing the choo choo train around the room’, and ‘woodland animals’.

Next they move onto floor work. First there is the pointing and flexing of the feet, otherwise known as ‘good toes, naughty toes’, followed by bouncing the knees while holding onto the ankles, and looking through your ‘windows’. Finally there is the grand parade where everyone pairs up and skips across the room in twos.

It is all very sweet and good fun. Mole is very attentive, keeping her eyes fixed on the teacher and following her every move.

The only thing that makes me think twice about ballet is how gendered it has all become. The class is made up entirely of little girls. This may seem innocent on the surface, but I wonder if a more sinister side lurks beneath. Are the classes about the joy of dance for its own sake? or are they about a particular idea of the feminine and the way that little girls look in tutus?. It is all a bit too contrived and corseted. There is something about ballet that reminds me of a perfect, fake woman. The film Black Swan springs to mind.

At Mole's most recent class the regular teacher was away and there was a stand-in teacher. The rather awkward thing was, I liked the stand-in teacher better. She wasn’t a ‘traditional’ teacher. She played jazzy and stompy music on her ghetto blaster, rather than the usual twinkly delicate music, there were brightly coloured streamers that the toddlers loved spinning around and around, there were stretches and jumps and romps, it was altogether more… WILD.

It was this wildness that I really loved, because it just seemed more in sync with how children are and what they naturally want to do. The music was not about being controlled or disciplined or dancing as though you're being watched. It didn’t care about leotards or tights or pony tails, it cared about the joy of being in the moment, and using your body.

There was a time back in the Summer when the four of us went for a day out on the Southbank. One of our visits was to see an exhibition of The Moomins at The Southbank Centre, and we came across a women’s break dancing contest going on in the Royal Festival Hall just next door on the way out.

This was arguably much more exciting than The Moomins for Mole and Hedgehog. They ran into the ring and started gyrating to the moves, wiggling their hips and skipping around, totally enthralled with the dancers and the energy in the room, which was infectious.

Ballet is still the most popular dance form out there, and it’s still evolving, which probably explains why ballet classes for little ones are so plentiful. But it was a useful reminder from the stand-in teacher that the world of dance is huge, and that if you want to hold the little ones attention, it is the energy of dance and the spontaneity of it that they really love.

So will I be continuing with the ballet classes? Sure, for as long as Mole wants to. And I’ll relax on the fact that it comes with an all-girl cast and that the leotards and swishy skirts are mandatory.

But really we know that at the route of it, dance is for everyone, girls and boys alike, and that it doesn’t always have to involve standing on your tip toes (owch).