My little dance PERFORMER !

My doorbell rang on a random evening. To my surprise, it was my neighbour who usually used to be busy at this hour. She told me that her son is going to participate in a dance competition at his school, and she wanted me to prepare him for the same.

I am a dance teacher by passion, so what was the big deal? What was something that made me hesitant? He was only 4 years old. Teaching dance to a toddler is a committing job and not to be taken lightly. But I agreed when I saw his face and his excitement to learn dance.

Teaching dance to kids is not just about explaining the steps to them and making them do it. Understanding the mood of a child, his thoughts, feelings is something far more challenging than simply dictating. Being able to communicate with them and being able to understand them is something one learns when only you engage with them.

The first few days went with enthusiasm and excitement, but the last two days were difficult. Patience is the most important lesson a rather naughty child can teach you.

His eagerness to invent his gymnastics steps during practice, his will to inspect and everything around rather than doing the steps, his continuous questions asking, “Didi, can I go to play after 3 minutes, right?”

For a person like me who gets pretty serious with my work, it was tough. But as the time passed by, I learnt to engage with him, crack jokes with him, play with him and his smile gave me the most satisfaction.

The highlight of my story would be that right before his performance he came running to me and said, “Didi, we can do anything in this competition, not just dancing, right….?”

My heart skipped a beat, I thought, does he want to do something else, what if he did not enjoy dancing?  “So, what do you wanna do?” I asked.

I cannot express the amount of happiness and satisfaction I felt when he paused for 15 seconds, thought and happily said, “I only want to dance!”

Eventually, at the competition, he performed confidently and perfectly.

The claps and appreciation made him super happy and that made me even happier.

So that day I learnt, by doing something you love, you do not just earn satisfaction, but you learn to see things from a different perspective and trust me, it changes you.

Prarthana Singh