Trial interview: Is there a stigma surrounding dance as children mature?

I have conducted a trial interview with a member of my SIG who shall remain anonymous. I decided to trial an interview with one of the potential lines of enquiry I have now disregarded as I wanted to focus on the method of interviewing and not by the information given.

For the benefit of my research I do intend to reveal the gender of the interviewee as well as age. in this interview the participant was female and aged 23. Although this bares no relevance in this trial, I believe gender and age will play important factors in my real line of enquiry.

My interviewee began our semi structured interview by explaining that her classes were non syllabus and so the majority of the children she taught were there for fun or something to do after school. she went on to say that there were schools in the area that they could go to if they wanted to do exams, so the groups she taught were very mixed in ability. 

Q: Are you conscious of different attitudes towards dance, depending on age range?

'Most definitely, my early stages classes are angels, very well behaved and once settled and comfortable, have no inhibitions and are happy to dance and play confidently. All they want to do is dance and sing really. My most troublesome groups are my 6-9's, they are often quite embarrassed to dance and just want to play games.'

Q: What do you think is the cause of this change in attitude?

'I personally think that the parents are responsible for the changes, it depends on what the child is allowed to watch on TV - for example I know lots of my kids watch 'Wiggle Town' which has children on the show who dance - when it comes to ballet, they only show girls doing the ballet, therefore depicting from a very early age that ballet isn't for boys. Children don't argue with what they see on the telly, so it is a battle to change their perspective, even at five years old.'

Q: What type of music do you use for your classes? Does your music choice change depending on age?

'Yes definitely. I do a lot of nursery rhymes with my early stages classes, but where as you might expect the next step to be disney music there is now a straight jump to pop music. I play chart music now from age 5+ and the majority know all the words and tell me they listen to the songs at home.

She then explained that she also does princess parties as well as teaching

'I see the divide at parties as well, particularly with the 5-7 age range. I did one party where the mum asked specifically for only childrens music to be played and none of the kids knew any of the music and all asked me to put pop music on. Most kids have Ipads now, so they can easily access youtube or listen to what their parents are listening to if it is a shared device. Kids are really smart when it comes to technology. 

I also think the age of the parents plays a key role as well. I think older parents tend to stick to the classic kids music and disney where as a younger couple might introduce their taste in music earlier on.'

Q: Have you experienced anything else that suggests there is a stigma?

'I was running a mixed gender street class for months and was only getting girls sign up. I decided to advertise an all boys street class and suddenly I had loads of parents sign their boys up. If that doesn't indicate that the stigma continues into adulthood I don't know what does! I also teach dance as an after school club in a school and spoke to the head teacher about organising an assembly to advertise my new cheerleading class. When I turned up on the day of the assembly I walked into a room full or girls and when asking where all the boys were was told by the head teacher that she had told the class teachers it was an all girls assembly as it was to advertise cheerleading, so not only had the head of the school decided that cheerleading was only for girls, but none of the other teachers had questioned it either. I made it very clear that cheerleading was for boys too, and i now have seven ten year old signed up.'

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