Reply to At what age do you invest in your child extracurricular activities such as traveling with team

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[quote=Anonymous]The Disney performance opportunity is a fun program.  My sister's students did it years ago and the kids really enjoyed it.  They had a travel agent coordinate it and the prices were good for Disneyworld (staying on property).

In my opinion, a performance trip like this is much more worth it than a nationals. For a national convention, you spend just as much money for a cheap plastic trophy, where at the Disney performance your kid gets a cool performance opportunity and most of the money goes towards a family vacation vs just on entry fees.

That said, how much performing will the novice petite team members do? The Disney performance (8 years ago) is around a 25 minute show put on by your studio. When my sister took her students, they just used older kids (9+), because the younger kids did not have the skills, stamina, experience or dance/performance quality to do much more than maybe five or so minutes of the show. The older kids carried the number and had the most stage time. I imagine it will be the same for your daughter, particularly since she is a novice.  Think back to your recital and the big production numbers. They are exceptionally entertaining andnusually impressive. They are designed to be crowd pleasers.  To do this successfully, the best dancers are usually front and center for most of the dance. The novice or less impressive dancers are in the background, like a chorus or ensemble in theater. There is nothing wrong with this type of staging; it is done that way in tyeater, ballet, dance and countless other performances all the way through the most professional productions. However, will you feel you got your money's worth if you go to Disney and your daughter has a two minute smaller group section with the other eight and under novices and the rest of the time she is either offstage or in the background behind the older, more skilled performers who are there to entertain and impress and have the skills to do so.  If they are taking more than 20 dancers what I described will likely be the scenario you will get at the end.

Ask the owner if she can do the competitive team and not the summer travel (some studios make that part optional) or if she will be able to continue in the same technique classes/levels as the team without competing so her technical level can progress at the same pace.  That way, if she decides to try out later, she will be well prepared.

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