Why Children Should Dance

Ladies' Mirror, Volume 5, Issue 4, 1 October 1926, Page 64

Why Children Should Dance

By 'Vacani

Teach your children to dance, and you will teach them not onlv to be supple and graceful, but to be healthy and happy. Have you ever noticed how much more graceful the present-day child is than was the child of, say, ten or fifteen years ago? Nowadays, small girls and small boys take an intelligent interest in their surroundings ; their bringing-up teaches them to observe. In former times, almost as soon as a child could walk, he was put to book-learning, and, unfortunately, mites of five and six had to stoop over their desks the greater part of the day, poring over their history and geography books, and learninghow to do sums. Dancing seldom entered into the curriculum of their earlier years. If a little girl began to learn how to dance when she was twelve or thirteen, it was thought quite soon enough. Little wonder that the dancing mistresses of former years often found their task a hard one! It is natural for a child to dance, to be happy and joyful; but the mother of twenty years ago seldom recognised this fact. She didn’t realise how dancing not only improves a child’s health, but his or her disposition as well. A child who learns early to love dancing and the graceful movements connected with it not only acquires a sense of rhythm and an appreciation of the beauty of music, but he or she also, gets full measure of the happiness and joy which should naturally belong to childhood and not be repressed. From the health point of view, as from the mental point of view, it is important that children should learn to dance when they are quite young. In learning to dance they learn to hold themselves straight and to breathe correctly. They acquire balance —any well-known doctor will tell you that no lunatic can balance properly; so the connection

between mental and physical balance is important, as you will admit. Dancing teaches poise also and self-confidence. It teaches children how to walk properly, be graceful in their movements, and to have complete control over their muscles. Come of my happiest hours are spent in my dancing classes, teaching the children. I believe in teaching numbers of children together— take so much more interest in their work. The element of competition enters into it, and children, as you know, are good imitators, so the indifferent dancers watch the good ones and try to dance as they do. Then, again, children love being with each other ; they have such sociable instincts, and a dancinglesson is ever so much more enjoyable to them when a large number of children take part in it than when the class only consists of a few. Teaching the very small children is a labour of love with me. I teach them to sing as they dance, and these choral dances are always a pretty sight. There is no doubt, either, that dancing promotes health, especially when allied with simple physical exercises. All children should be taught some simple exercises. They can do them to music and thus gain that perfect sense of rhythm and time which is so essential to good dancing. The important point about teaching boys and girls to dance very young is that, as they get older, this sense of rhythm and time acquired early in life will become second nature to them. They will always be good dancers. It is a wellknown fact that one seldom forgets the lessons one learns well as a child. A good dancer in childhood will remain a good dancer throughout life.