Super-Special 15 - Baby-sitters European Vacation - Snark of Jessi's plot

[miri_me]

Is a one-theme-within-a-book snark an acceptable snark? I've just read Super-Special 15 - Baby-sitters European Vacation, and while a lot of it was worthy of snarking (Kristy "acting a character" and snuggling up to a boy (and deciding that, if you can't work out how to say "I kinda like you", kissing him is a pretty good way of cluing him in - and

Comments

[anabellabobella]

Dance companies NEVER sign 11-year-olds. When someone is signed to a company, even at an apprentice level, they are considered to be working for the company. Working isn't the issue. What is is that you get paid and you get a stipend for your shoes (easily $60 a pop on the low end, and company dancers can go through 100 pairs of shoes in a year), and no company will fund the dance education of a girl who has not yet hit puberty. That's a big financial risk to a company considering how close ballet companies already come each year to being in the red. It's not uncommon to be in the hole at the end of the year, and to have to do some quick, panicked fundraising to get back into the black. If you ever want to complain about the cost of tickets to the ballet, just remember that the typical dancer, even principal dancers (leads), have second jobs just to pay their bills. On top of this, most employees aren't highly-paid either, and a lot of labor is volunteer. Usually the only person who is well-paid is the artistic director, and that's a matter of company-survival. A good name can ultimately be what keep a company above water. The good ones are in high demand, and that means money.

There's no way a company would pay for the shoes, supplies, lodging, someone to basically nanny this kid, etc., when the typical company can't stay afloat without scads of volunteers on top of the stars rarely making at much as $60k. Especially no way they'd pay the costs of traveling overseas when no one will pay $180 to watch a bunch of kids.

In the real world, I could see an artistic director asking an 11-year-old for her notes either to humor her or to see what catches the attention of an 11-year-old to better tailor future programs to appeal to kids. Finding out how to get kids interested young can create a life-long love of ballet. This is why my daughter sees at least a couple professional ballets a year and at least a stage musical. Almost 5 years old, and has been to more professional ballets and traveling Broadway shows than most adults, since we started with child-friendly programs when she wasn't yet 2 (most ballet companies have child programs that include tickets to The Nutcracker and abridged versions of other productions throughout the year, like an afternoon where an hour of Swan Lake is done.) If that guy's wanting to take her notes seriously on a professional level, the production has major issues.

A student of a dance school can dance in a professional production without payment. However she's not even enrolled in the school, and this means her parents haven't signed waivers. Definitely not legal.

My legs sprang forward. As if the dance were part of me. As if I’d done it a million times.
But this was different than I remembered. Higher. Taller dancers. Bigger lifts from stronger arms.
I landed too hard. I slipped on a pirouette.

LOL. So she's got the muscle memory for this to be a part of her, but then she botches it? Oh, wait, she was perfect according to Mr. Director. She moved him to tears. WTF? And everyone's just so amazing with this kid that they literally circled around to clap and act like she won the Super Bowl? No.

Also green rooms are for television studios. Theater/dance have dressing rooms, and unless you're in a lead or principal position, you're all in one huge room for the men, and one for the women, and the leads share a smaller room. There is no such thing as private dressing rooms. Dancers have to help each other get ready, and isolation doesn't work.

Dancers do sometimes dance with injuries. Watch First Position, available to stream on Netflix, to see the degree of injury a dancer will still dance on for the Young American Grand Prix (the world's top dance competition for youth dancers, despite the "American" part). It's not advisable, but dancers have been known to dance with pretty bad injuries.

You're not the only one who got creepy vibes from Brailsford. Unwarranted flattery is a grooming technique, and he's going beyond the beyonds with her.

[miri_me]

Btw, thanks for the informed opinion - it struck me as batshit insane, as somebody who had one or two reasonably relaxed lessons a week from the ages of four through to twelve, when I broke a leg (got hit by a car; ballet was not to blame!), and who has read a load of ballet books (including ones where the teachers kept the pointe shoes under lock and key to make bloody sure that kids about Jessi's age - in a full-time ballet school - didn't practice for more than a few minutes at a time, under strict supervision). My sister began pointe work before developing CFS; I'm not sure if she even got the chance to wear out her first pair of shoes before she was too ill to dance. Before that, when I persuaded her that professional dancer was unlikely to be a great fit for her (at 21, she's 5' and a quarter of an inch tall. Our family also tends more to "stocky"/"curvy" than "slender". I also explained what ballet can do to feet to her...) she wanted to be a dance instructor. If things had been different, chances are, I'd know a lot more about it, second-hand.

I get the impression that a fair few of the people making up the corps for this tour are actually students and in their mid-teens - I can't believe that Tanesha's more than maybe 15 at the very oldest, and still shrieking like that (or so delighted to see her little sister's friend, for that matter), and I suspect a fair few of the other members are similar ages to her, since she seems to have quite a few good friends amongst them.

Given that this is an evening performance aimed at a mostly adult audience, I'd have to go with "humouring". (It also fits in with him being a creepy predatory flatterer, but it does make more sense.)

I know, right?! I'm not quite sure how she could have slipped on a pirouette without moving from where she was supposed to be/facing the wrong angle, even if it wasn't a bad slip and recovering wasn't difficult. I can see most people in the audience missing it. But he should have picked it up. Landing too hard might be harder to detect (also, landing too hard doesn't necessarily mean "thudding down like a sack of potatoes" - it could mean just not quite as lightly as she's used to) though?

I thought the green room thing was weird. At some of the amateur kid shows I took part in, at school halls, different classes would get changed in different rooms (with parent chaperones to help and do hair and make-up), and then we'd all congregate in one larger room, so when the teachers came to lead classes to and from the show, they would all be in one place. I couldn't work out the point of something like that if you weren't talking about kiddies from the age of three and up, who do actually need to be herded on and off stage...

Apparently one of my dance teachers once fell during a performance, either broke or sprained her wrist, jumped up, and carried on, still smiling, and pretty much nobody in the audience noticed what had happened. (I think I was seven when she taught me - I can't remember quite how she hurt it, but I know it was quite a nasty injury.)

Also, it's really cool that your daughter's getting that sort of early exposure to these worlds :-D

[anabellabobella]

The ballet in this book is catering to the wish-fulfillment of kids, maybe even Ann herself. Students from ballet schools (though Jessi keeps referring to the company) do NOT do foreign tours. It's a super massive huge deal with an entire company travels. If students were traveling to perform overseas...yeah, let's just say it's not happening. We're supposed to believe that's a professional company, and Jessi was invited.

Your teacher displayed professionalism. Unless a tendon snaps or a bone breaks, dancers finish, and they know it. Shows do not stop for mere sprains. This is part of why dance careers are pretty short.

[miri_me]

If I could work out how it'd make any sense, I'd wonder if maybe they'd combined an upper school trip (one where you can get the parents to fund it because it's educational) with the company's engagement. But, especially given that Jessi doesn't seem to fully understand the difference between "school connected to a dance company" and "dance company", the "why research a topic you know nothing about when you can indulge in creative wish fulfilment?" theory makes a lot of sense.

This is one of the reasons why I never considered a career as a dancer. (Y'know, along with the lack of talent, discipline, build, height... I was basically a pass/pass plus student: I learnt things at about the same rate as my friends, and progressed with them, but I was never going to wow anybody. I think I pretty much always knew that, and therefore saw my lessons as an enjoyable activity, rather than the gateway to my future.)