“Did you make the tag?!”
The seven year old third baseman stood sheepishly along the third base line, staring at his dad, who stood by the first base dugout. He said nothing. The opposing runner returned to his own dugout, elated that he had made it home safely.
“Kevin! Did you make the tag?!”
The third baseman shook his head. He had chased and reached out to swipe at the runner but missed.
“What are you doing?! Did you even try? You didn’t even try to make the tag!” his dad yelled. Kevin insisted that he did try. His dad did not accept that. “Do you just want to do spinning and dancing like a ballerina and soft stuff like that? I can put you in that instead! Is that what you want?”
The derision was clear. Other dads nearby felt uncomfortable listening to it. Kevin’s dad wanted him to feel shame for his failure, and compared it to a boy doing ballet. The insinuation being that being a boy in ballet was shameful.
Eight feet away from Kevin’s dad stood the first baseman, my six-year old son, who not more than 2 hours ago was at ballet class.
The comment wasn’t intended to hurt my son. In fact, I think Kevin’s dad liked my son. He was one of the more capable and attentive players on a team with its usual share of unfocused six and seven year-olds. He didn’t know that he did ballet. But I tensed to think he might be hurt by the comment anyways.
My son (let’s call him Rabbit, since I’m Hatter1 ) is generally a reserved and shy kid outside the house. He didn’t say anything. “Maybe he didn’t hear or maybe he wasn’t paying attention,” I thought, but that was unlikely.
I didn’t say anything to him about it after the game either, though I probably should have. This was a few months ago, and I didn’t think about it again until this past weekend.
“Your brother does ballet?”
Last Sunday, Rabbit’s 10 year-old brother (let’s call him Hare) was playing video games at home with a friend. Rabbit meanwhile, was getting ready to go to his weekly ballet class.
“Your brother does ballet?” asked Hare’s friend.
“Yeah.”
“Boys who do ballet are kind of weird,” Hare’s friend remarked.
“Well… I don’t do ballet.” Not exactly a ringing defense of his brother.
If there were any question whether Rabbit heard these comments, it was answered on the car ride to ballet.
“Mom, why did Hare’s friend say that boys who do ballet are weird?”
My wife froze. Like me at the baseball game, she had hoped he hadn’t overheard his brother and his friend. She explained that many people think that ballet is just for girls and don’t realize that boys do it too.
It saddened my wife that Rabbit could be self-conscious about this. As she sat waiting during his ballet class, she reflected on what the right way to respond was. Rabbit had always been aware that he was the exception, rather than the rule, in his ballet classes. He had been going since age 2, initially as “parent and me” classes, and then independently. There had never been more than 2 boys in any of his previous years in ballet. This year, he was the sole boy in his class with 15 girls.
Rabbit liked dance. We called it “dance”, because when he was younger, we worried he might not want to try it, if we called it “ballet.” His older sister had children’s picture books about ballet and they only ever had little girls in them, not little boys. Even calling it “dance” though, he would sometimes lament there was “too much princess stuff” in the preschool years. This was understandable. After all, the class needed to keep 15 little girls engaged as well.
Once the class ended, my wife asked his teacher if she had advice on what he could say in a situation, where people react negatively to being a boy in ballet. She did not have an immediate response. “Let me see what we can do,” she replied, “There is a boys class with 20 boys almost his age.”
“They are ignorant.”
The very next day we received an e-mail from the ballet school principal. She invited Rabbit to come observe the Level 1-2 Boys Class. It was a class of all boys, all 7 to 8 years old. Rabbit jumped at the opportunity. He knew about this boys class, and he knew it was something he could next year be part of. Sometimes he viewed it almost like a light at the end of a tunnel.
“Should I bring him in his dance clothes?” I asked my wife.
“I don’t think so, the e-mail just invited him to observe.”
I tucked his ballet shoes in my pocket anyways, just in case.
We arrived at the studio, and the boys’ program director introduced himself. An accomplished ballet dancer, he had headed the boys program for many years. He welcomed us in and two chairs were put to the side for us to sit and watch. Initially intimidated by the new experience, Rabbit stayed silent as 16 second and third grade boys filed in.
All the boys seemed to be friends. They were older and bigger than Rabbit, but they were wearing the same clothes he wore when he went to ballet. Actually some of them had different gear that he didn’t even know he could wear. Full length tights or pants instead of shorts. White socks inside of the ballet shoes. He didn’t know you could do that. I didn’t either. Finding ballet dancewear for boys on the internet can be challenging. Sometimes the answer just seemed to be to buy an item categorized for “youth girls”, because there would be no “youth boys” equivalent listed.
The teacher motioned for all the boys to come and sit around Rabbit and me. This was not the usual way to start class; the boys were clearly confused why they were being called away from their normal warmup positions along barre.
“Boys, this is Rabbit and his dad. They’re going to watch our class today. But before we begin, I want to ask you all something. How many of you have been teased or had other people say bad things about you because you do ballet?”
Nearly every hand went in the air. Some boys responded as if it were a given. “Oh yeah, of course!”
“What do they say?”, the teacher asked.
“Ballet is for girls.”
“Only sissies do ballet, not tough kids.”
“They laugh, because they think it’s a girls activity.”
“And what do you say?” the teacher followed up.
“I don’t care.”
“I walk away.”
“I tell them how the men have to lift up and throw the women, and you have to be really strong to do that.”
“I ask them if they’ve ever seen a ballet.”
“And have they?” asks the teacher.
“No.”
“So they are ignorant,” the teacher continued, “Who knows what ignorant means?”
“It means they’re stupid.”
“No. It does not mean they are stupid, ” corrected the teacher, “It means they do not know something. They do not have the information.”
93% of boys in ballet have reportedly been teased or verbally abused about it.2 That percentage aligns with how many hands went up in this class.
One hand did not go up. The others, including the teacher, look shocked that someone hadn’t been teased about it. “Nobody says anything to me about it,” he explained, “because I don’t tell anybody in my school that I do ballet.”
The teacher went on to talk about how difficult it can be to be a male in ballet. And in the same way that these boys were brave enough to share their stories, he shared his own personal stories of being a male in ballet.
I wondered if he had discussed this topic with this class before. Everyone was faced towards Rabbit and me, but the discussion did not seem to be solely for our benefit.
It was particularly impressive how comfortable all of the boys felt in that class. They knew who they were, they knew they enjoyed ballet, and at least inside of that studio, they didn’t care what anyone else thought. Outside noise was just that: outside. They were proud of what they did. Proud that they were just in second and third grade, and they were in “The Nutcracker”.
“It’s amazing; you get to dance with the professional dancers!”
“Yeah, I get to dance with Clara!”
“You get to dance with Clara? Woahh!”
It was inspiring. While Rabbit stayed silent for much of the discussion, I’m certain it resonated with him. We would talk about what everyone said later and he remembered every detail.
Making the Tag
The boys went to the barre and warmups began. The positions and movements were more difficult and challenging than the ones Rabbit was doing in his class. There was more focus on building strength and muscle definition. Rabbit mimicked the boys while he watched, and was invited to fully participate (and he was glad I brought his shoes.)
The boys welcomed him like he was already one of them, because he was.
The class was tough, but fun. The teacher was strict, but kind. Ballet is all about body control and body movements. I’m certain that has helped Rabbit in other physical activities, including baseball.
So it was fitting that the ballet class ended with the boys… playing tag.
- It’s likely that I will be referring to my kids in many of my entries on AYI, so I may as well give them names in keeping with the Wonderland theme. Rabbit is my younger son and Hare is my older son, as in the White Rabbit and the March Hare. I’ll figure out my daughter’s name later, but it’s probably going to be Alice or Dinah. ↩︎
- Risner DS. Stigma and Perseverance in the Lives of Boys who dance: An Empirical Study of Male Identities in Western Theatrical Dance Training. 2009 Edwin Mellen Press. ↩︎
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