Our Junior class for children (ages four, five, six and seven) devotes half an hour to very mild physical training and limbering and stretching work on the heavy felt pads, and then there is half an hour of dancing games. The hour thus passes all too quickly with our interested little pupils. As they show proficiency in this work we give them the actual dancing steps which are arranged in effective routines. All of the technique is necessary and beautiful and they love to go through it before the big wall mirrors and see themselves in graceful poses.
NED WAYBURN AND TWO TINY PUPILS:
HERBERT COLTON, 6; PATTY COAKLEY, 5
Those whose little bodies are especially adapted to it are allowed to take up so-called acrobatic dancing, and it is not surprising that the heels-over-head idea appeals as it does to the juvenile mind. It is action such as they crave, doing "cartwheels," "splits," "back-bends" and many showy "tricks," and they just love it. They are never forced in this work, but really accomplish it themselves under painstaking instructions. Children eight, nine, ten and eleven years of age are assigned to the intermediate classes, beginners or advanced, according to the proficiency or talent that they show me. Those twelve, thirteen, fourteen and fifteen years of age are placed in the Children's Senior Classes, either beginners or advanced. I, personally, grade them and supervise all of their instruction. When they reach the age of sixteen, the girls are put in the adult girls' classes and the boys at sixteen are given private lessons from then on. There are no mixed adult classes.
One thing we are very careful and considerate about is, putting a child on her toes in the ballet work. We find cases where teachers elsewhere have forced this too soon, before the child's feet and ankles were prepared for it. Mothers are sometimes to blame for that, for they are eager to see their little daughters do this pretty work; but we insist upon proper foundation work first, developing the child gradually, and then, when the strength is there, we know we should be able to do the rest not only without danger of permanent injury but with assurance of pleasing and perfect success.
Children thus gradually get instruction in five basic types of dancing, i.e., musical comedy, tap and step, acrobatic, ballet, including classical, character, toe, interpretive, and exhibition dancing. They may develop best along one of these types, and choose to follow that one out to a real professional quality, or they may acquire a good working knowledge of all and thus have a diversity of accomplishments. Then when they reach the age limit of sixteen that permits them legally to enter upon the profit-taking period, they are ready to respond.
I watch the little folks with their instructors every Saturday. They are graduated according to their ages at first, and then graded according to ability, usually at the end of each term (every twelfth or thirteenth week). The youngest group gets one hour's work, all their little bodies can stand, while those between eight and fifteen inclusive get two hours instruction each Saturday. Their mothers, guardians or governesses are in a spacious waiting room.
We are making a lot of children happy, and at the same time laying a foundation for their health and beauty, and perhaps for their financial prosperity. The future great dancers of the next two decades are somewhere in this lot of little ones; which ones it will be is unknown to them or to us, but all are given an equal opportunity, and many will make good.
