A Response to Ms. Harrison

Ms. Harrison,

Well said. I agree with many things you have said. In a perfect world the art would exist solely for itself. However, its not a perfect world. Thank you also for your frustration, for one of my desires has been to share that emotion with others about what has transpired

The ballet isn't just for that one girl. The ballet is for everyone. For the seven year old who gets her first chance to dance in a real performance, and for her family sitting in the audience. Its for the man who discovered the joy of dance after high school and who has danced just as many years as the senior company girl.

Twelve years at the back of the class and three years being admired. Thats a wonderful sentiment. However, you sound as if ballet ends at eighteen. For the truly gifted, those really able to bring tears to an audience, their careers are just beginning at eighteen. Now they are at the back of the studio again hoping to one day be "that" dancer.

A child terrified to perform but goes on anyway. Everyone experiences that fear, how wonderful to learn to overcome it at an early age. There are adults who will never be able to perform, or even speak, on stage due to horrible stage fright. However, much more often I see the joy on the tiny dancers face and the pride in the parents, as the dancer executes their first true ballet move for the audience.

If you are able to bring tears to an audience, should you not be able to continue your dance. Instead will you become the shrewish mother who demands her daughter get promoted in the company. The mother who throws money at the school in order for her daughter to have a better part. Maybe, you become the frustrated part-time ballet teacher who lives out her abbreviated career trough her daughter. That Ms Harrison happens much more often than a local high school dancer in Columbus, Ga bringing tears in an audience to anyone other than her family.

You speak of discipline. the discipline to do as you are taught and told. Do you think the girl in New York will care one iota if the male dancer she partners with smells like a beer? Could be Gin and cigarettes and she would dance because the director let her. But noooooo....Mommie he smells bad I don't want to dance with him. Please, grow up. He might not be happy that he has to dance with you either. That doesn't sound like discipline to me. EVERYONE is paying to be there, not just the company girls, and some are paying with their own money.

Maybe, as you get a little older you will become like my wife. Who finds as much joy now, in being able to perform a leap or a turn just right in class, as when she was a child. She has danced with all the teachers at this school and many other as she has moved around during her life including New York. This exposure, to not just many different ballet instructors but also styles, has given her a unique multidimensional insight many here don't have.

I hope that you will continue to dance. Anyone reading your comments will be able to see the love you have for the art. However, with every passing year you will find it more difficult to find a studio that will allow you to dance. Not only that, it will be difficult to find a good studio that will let you dance. We found both here when we returned to Columbus.

When you are young the world is somewhat one dimensional, sort of like standing on one side of a large building not knowing what is around either corner. As you age, you begin to walk around those corners and see new things as well as look back from where you came differently. The statement that ballet is not about grants and funding shows your naivete. The art cannot exist without the money. Money makes the world go round and money is one reason this whole thing started.
It seems that some people feel that money entitles they and their children.

Without money where is the venue that allows the crowds to comfortably watch the dancers. Where does the violinist, or is a tape alright for that. Without money where is the school and the teachers to teach the dancer so that she may learn to elicit those tears.

A few people with money wanted their daughters to have better parts and positions in the company. Expel a dancer because she cannot do a double pirouette, how about taking the double pirouette out of the piece so that the monetarily elevated dancer might be able to dance it.

Again I tell you that a performance lives or dies on the executive director and the artistic director. When Mrs Hirsch stated, in the parents meeting after Mr. Herriott was fired, That she could pull off the Nutcracker in seven weeks she put the yoke on her shoulders. It was this assertion to the Board that prompted the sudden firing and it was that same deed that prompted this blog.

The seven weeks are more than half-way gone. Hundreds of lives have been affected by that one statement by Mrs. Hirsch. I hope it was worth it to her.

You do seem a little confused about things. To my knowledge there is no Millie and Dan that have anything to do with the ballet. Those are simply characters in a little piece of fiction that I have been writing for my nephew (who loves it). Nick Saban maybe a stretch, but a good hook to attract attention to the blog.