“Your daughter’s a dancer? Oh, I bet that made her so flexible!” That comment, given so often through the years, always gives me pause. Well, yes, she is flexible…but that is far from all that 15 years of dancing “made her!” When that eager little girl finally got old enough to learn “to dance like ‘Singing in the Rain!’”, we were both thrilled! She learned to tap like Gene Kelly (well, mostly!), but she learned so much more.
She learned to listen; she learned to take turns; she learned to meet new people; she learned to be kind; she learned to discipline her body; she learned new words; she learned to perform strings of tasks, increasing her powers of concentration; she learned to work with a team; she learned the connections between music and story; she learned to tell a story with her motions; she learned to work hard; she learned to push past her “limits”; she learned to find joy in creating music with motion. My little dancer is now a lovely lady, and the woman she has grown into has been beautifully influenced by the dancer she became. Her new joy is teaching students of her own, passing down all the dividends her investment has accrued!