Beauties Tame the Beasts

Fathers and daughters dance together at Yanarella’s November recital

By: Jeffery Battersby

It’s 9:00 am on a Sunday morning and Mary Ritter’s got her hands full.

A rambunctious class. 

A room full of boys.

Noisy, boisterous, rowdy, and loud. 

She takes a moment to study some writing on the small sheet of paper she holds in her hand. She looks at her class, takes a breath, and then, in a voice that sounds as if she’s smiling from the inside out, she conquers the noise with her own.

“Okay!” she draws out the “o” and “a” to gather our attention. 

There are thirty of us in all, and the moment we hear Mary’s voice we clam up like perfect little Sunday school angels.

“Okay! This is great! Welcome! Come on in here onto the dance floor. We’re gonna teach you how to dance!” 

Actually, we’re not boys.

At least not in the physical sense. 

We’ve graduated slightly to boy brains in men’s bodies.

Boy brains that, upon hearing the word “dance” uttered in any proximity, much less with direct reference, to ourselves, still has the ability to make skin crawl. 

Men who, until this moment, have been happy to stand in the waiting room of Yanarella School of Dance.

Men who are used to standing in the waiting room of Yanarella School of Dance… watching our daughters as they step out onto the floor. 

And now, for one brief moment, we look at each other like the lost little boys that we are.

For 47 years Yanarella School of Dance has been teaching Beacon’s little girls how to dance in an atmosphere that Yanarella’s owner, Angela VanVlack, calls, “completely pressure free.” That’s not to say it’s not challenging. It’s just that Yanarella’s not the kind of place where they tie toe-shoes onto tiny feet the moment they pop out of the womb. What it is is the kind of studio that creates dancers for life. Girls, who grow into women, who go off to school, and go off to dance, and then come back to teach the very classes that they took when they were little girls.

It’s a style of teaching that’s infectious. And it’s this infectiousness that’s popping off of Mary Ritter as she calls us out onto the floor. It’s this infectiousness that’s undermining our boy-brain skeevishness and drawing us out onto the floor to try and learn something new. Something that runs against the grain of everything we think we are. 

Nobody knows who initially came up with the idea to have fathers dance with their daughters, but Yanarella started doing it about 15 years ago. Then, for no particular reason, the whole thing kind of fell by the wayside. “We hadn’t done it in a long time.” Says VanVlack. “But this year some of the teachers decided that they wanted to try it again.”

*** 

So we’re here. 

There’s a reason we’re here.

It’s the new little girls that the old little girls are teaching.

It’s the doe-eyed little wonders that we call our daughters. 

Those delightful little creatures that stare into our boy-brain eyes, call us daddy, and then ask us if we’ll dance with them in their recital.

Boy-brains aren’t very good at resisting this kind of stuff. 

“Okay!” says Mary again. “This is gonna be easy. We’re gonna teach you how to dance and you’re gonna be great!”

And so begins our education. 

Jazz Squares.

Can-cans. 

Chasses.

Cabrioles. 

The steps sound as strange as we look trying to perform them, but we work it out.

We laugh. We jump, spin, slide, run into each other, and, well… dance. 

We dance.

We’re dancing! 

And frankly we’re not half bad, even though our daughters titter, giggle, and gently correct us at almost every turn.

OK, scratch that. Maybe it’s not dancing, but it’s something that looks like dancing and, boy-brains being what they are, we’re pretty darned proud of ourselves. 

And what’s more?

We get to dance with our daughters. 

And there’s something to be said for that.

Yanarella School of Dance’s November recital will be held at Poughkeepsie High School on Saturday the 19^th and Sunday the 20^th.

Registration for Yanarella’s 2006 season begins Tuesday, November 22nd

For more information call: 845.831.0759

Comments

[Francesca Pinczes]

This is a great article. It's actually posted in the studio for all of us to look at. And yes, I said us. I dance at Yanarella School of Dance, and I danced with my dad at the recital. I remember you coming to that rehersal. The recital went very well and the audience loved our opening act. We were all very proud of our fathers and husbands (for wives/mothers in the audience). It was a great experience to dance with my father. And this article will always reminde us of that.