My 3-Year-Old's First Dance Class - A Father's Perspective

A Toddler's Typical First Dance Class, and Why You Should Give It A Shot:

My three-year-old's first dance trial class was to begin at 5 PM and I decided that I needed a haircut and a shower at 4:30.

I went ahead and scrapped every inch of hair with my electric razor, got into the bathtub, washed in a hurry, and bolted out the door to catch up with my partner who was sprinting, pushing our daughter in her tricycle stroller.

We were on time, no problem. There were a handful of parents, mostly mothers, with their toddlers frolicking about and playing with the toys in the playroom by the reception. You could see on most of these parents' faces that they were simply experimenting with this activity; there was no sense of seriousness or pressure in their demeanor. I guess I was probably expecting a bunch of Dance Moms and was pleasantly surprised.

My daughter and partner went into the playroom while I searched the school for a place to park the little one's tricycle. The corridors were carpeted and pristinely clean, and the floors in the little ballet studios looked freshly mopped. The mirrors and the attached balustrade looked just like they do in the movies. I walked all around in my dirty boots till I found a place to stock it: the staff kitchen.

By the time I got back to the reception, parents and kids of all shapes and sizes had swarmed the place. No one was really talking to each other; it was just a commotion of little ones running around and adults running behind them. There were a couple of fathers too, which made my presence seem normal. I stood by the playroom's glass wall to see what my family was up to, and for a second, it all seemed alien. My partner, the little one, how much she had grown, the dance school, all of it seemed surreal. My daughter did not look like she belonged to me anymore; she was becoming her own person, growing into her own tree with her own little individual presence. The dance teacher came forward and called for the class. She kind of saved me from the rabbit hole my thoughts were about to take me through.

The kids were all lined up, and the parents, hysterically excited, buzzed around behind the line like wasps in a bee trap. The teacher then took the kids into their trial session through the pristinely clean corridor. My daughter was not used to the crowd, she's yet to be enrolled in kindergarten. She turned around to look for her mother, and her guardian angel was right behind her, with her cheekbones holding her lips up like a badly hung shirt on a coat hanger.

The parents were made to wait outside the classroom. So we all did. We stood right outside the room, but all our heads were inside, literally. We were giraffes sticking our elongated necks in, one head perched on another, tearing, proud. Meanwhile, the kids inside were doing the same thing that they were doing outside.

Once they got comfortable they became orderly, it was like an automated response. Mind you all the kids were 3 to 4 years old, and there were about 10 in this class. Once the order was established, the teacher began asking kids for their names.

After the introduction was over the teacher began a few easy exercises. The beauty of the way she went about making the kids listen to her and follow her movements was that each of her moves had a story attached to it. For instance, the arm reaching over during a side stretch was a digger arm. Can you see it? The digger arm? Well, the kids could.

It was not just the relational aspects of the teacher's narratives that were interesting; through her stories, these kids were able to pick up on a very crucial aspect of what it is to be human. It is the idea that you can move your body (to an extent) as you please, that there is a certain free will that is attached to our body which can be exercised by our thoughts. This in turn concretes the idea (which in most cases has already been developed by the age of three) that the various parts of the body are in fact a part of us. If you want to kick your leg up, you can think of doing it and actually do it. If you want to claw the air like a cat, you can. Your motility is (to an extent) under your control.

A couple of kids moved away from the teacher and were playing by themselves. The teacher let them be. The ones who were engaged with her picked up most of the movements within seconds. Probably if we adults were as good as they are at picking up new things and learning, the world would have been in a better place by now.

The class went on for the next half hour. I had moved out from being a peeping giraffe and made space for another mother. I sat in the waiting area in the corridor, pulled out Celine's Journey to The End of The Night, and studied the art of complaining. A peeping giraffe leaned against the switch on the wall and turned off all the lights in the corridor. I am not sure if she had not noticed what she had done, but hey, her kid was dancing. I got up and went to put the lights back on.

I switched on the lights, but, I couldn't help myself but peep in again. The kids were learning to hop and freeze. When the teacher signaled 'freeze', they all froze. That's when I noticed that my little one had a wet patch on her crotch. She had peed herself. I thought I had to go out there and rescue her from a potential public humiliation. But, kids don't care about such trivial bullshit now do they? They don't stare at each other crotches while having fun. There was no humiliation, no dilemma, no conflict. They were truly dancing the cosmic dance.

By the time the class ended her wet patch had dried. The kids walked out, elated. My partner picked our daughter up and hugged her. I gave the little one a five and told her I was proud. My girls went into the girl's room and I to the boys. I peed, shook myself dry, and went to wash my hands. Stubs of hair were still sticking to my ears and neck. I put my head under the tap and washed my head. I wiped dry with tissue paper and walked out.

The plan was to get the little one ice cream on the way back. She didn't want any. We got back home and for her, the day went on and her dance continued. And when her mother went for her bedtime shower, she sat in front of me and taught me how to stretch like a digger.

Kahan J Sudev