With only girls in our family, the scholarship advantages for male dancers wasn’t on my radar, but it’s definitely a good one.

Good luck to all of the dancers in your family!

Vicki

Vicki — Great article! You said everything I have felt for the last 15 years or so. I cannot think of anything I would add….well. maybe one thing at the end of my comment.

My son and daughter both started dance because I could not leave work in time to pick them up at the studio where their mother was taking recreational classes to continue her high school/college dance interests. So my wife threw them into a tap class for that hour so she could attend her class and I could take them home when their class was over.

That was 15 years ago.

Since then, our son conquered his extreme shyness. Walked away from kids making fun of his dancing. Spent five years in his public school’s pre-professional dance program. Pulled his grades up from “C’s” to “A’s”. And became one of the more popular kids in the school; admittedly easier in an arts-based school that is 75% girls.

His first comment on his first college term was how easy everything seemed compared to the full schedule he had in high school. He spent two years studying electrical engineering before deciding a life in front of a computer monitor was not for him and he followed his dream to become a firefighter and paramedic. He still dances occasionally, mostly choreographing tap pieces (his specialty), but the lessons he learned in the dance studio and rehearsal halls set the stage (pun intended) for his continued success.

Our daughter followed a similar path through high school, even switching from her regular public school to the arts-based school in order to spend more time in technique class (with no additional cost to us!). She also found a love as a school teaching assistant to beginning and intermediate students. Those same lessons kept her organized and successful.

Now she is in the training program at Miami City Ballet and preparing for her shot at a professional ballet career using the same lessons from the dance studio. She handles college classes through an online service with our local Oregon colleges until she settles somewhere as a full-time student and, hopefully in the next year or two, contracted professional.

So I spent way too much time and words on this response, but I want to confirm your observations parallel mine.

Now, for that additional benefit I see–and this one is specially for male dancers. Way too many boys play football and basketball, and now soccer and lacrosse and even squash, to have much hope to earn a scholarship to a premier college. Try dance, especially ballet. It’s unfair to the girls, but colleges will throw money at your feet if you can dance. You can double major, you can graduate with another or additional career in mind. One friend of ours recently graduated from NYU Tisch in dance and Computer Science, he continues to dance and make a solid income.

Nichelle — Thanks for such a great site. Keep up the good work!

Vicki

Unlike Vicki’s daughters, I actually kept dance as a major part of my life in college. I majored in it as well as psychology and was on 2 dance companies throughout college. I know a bunch of people who minored in dance as well just to keep it a part of their lives. In the college aspect, I wanted to add this point to Vicki’s article:

Dance and the commitment of dancing keeps college students out of trouble.

While I still partied in college, I didn’t during the week. I only went out on weekend nights or not at all if we were in a rehearsal stage before a performance. Dance is exhausting to a malnourished body and dancers realize this. Even if they don’t at first, caught up in the freshman thrill of freedom, they realize it after an extremely hungover rehearsal/class experience. And while this isn’t full-proof for each college dancer, it really helped me keep my head level and keep my grades up by creating a structure for me throughout my college years. I went to a liberal arts college, so this experience wasn’t at a conservatory of any degree, but I saw similarities in my fellow dancers. If a dancer wanted to grow in college, they had to set boundaries for themselves like no partying during the week, and we did.

I wish I had had your site available when my girls were dancing.

Vicki