I am fighting with a couple of my younger students right now. My problem with them is that they have gotten into the annoying habit of pretending to be airheads. They repeat everything that I tell them in the form of a question, prepositioned by a “so like” while batting their eyelashes. Let me state right now that these kids are NOT stupid – far from it.
I think the reason this behavior annoys me so much is that I have fought long and hard for the right to show my intelligence and not pretend to be dumb just for the sake of somebody else’s ego – or to fit into conventional learning techniques (tedious). I developed the ability to learn dance exercises, whole ballets, etc. quickly. It has usually been one of my advantages and one of the main reasons that I became a rehearsal director at the age of 24. Learning quickly has also meant that I was bored out of my skull a lot – waiting for the slower learners to catch up. OK – whatever – that’s part of life. Not unbearable – but doable. Or it was when I was simply a dancer – there is always something to work on physically (get the legs higher, point the feet more, etc.). The problems really began when I was working as the rehearsal director to new choreographers.
This is how it normally works. The choreographer creates his dance with the dancers, changes his mind, reworks the choreography – over and over until he gets it the way he wants it. The rehearsal director sits on the side of the room and absorbs – so they know what the choreographer wants – after all – when the choreographer leaves, the rehearsal director is responsible for the piece. So you sit on the side of the room, day after day after day – watching the dancers do the same routine over and over and over. The boredom can be overwhelming – so I created a solution – knitting. I figured that at least by the end of the day – I could say that I accomplished something.
In the last group that I worked with, one of the choreographers took offense. I spent the entire morning sitting on the side, listening to the rehearsal and knitting. After lunch, he turned to me and said “Do you think you could put down your knitting and actually pay attention?” I looked at him, put down my knitting, walked to the front of the room and watched the run-through. As soon as the dancers finished, I turned to the choreographer and said “The entire cast is late on the 5th count of the 3rd eight, the large move on the second phrase was wrong, Bridgett lost the timing on the 15th eight……,” continuing to rattle off every mistake in the entire dance. His mouth dropped open. I tapped my head with my finger, “photographic memory”. “Uh, great – uh – you can go back to your knitting.” “Thanks,” I said and went back to my usual spot on the side and picked up my knitting.
That’s the day when I decided that I wanted to be treated as I really was – smart. I guess my real question was this – why should I have to waste my valuable time just because I understand the work quicker? I went to the director of the group and laid down some new guidelines: I would no longer do endless, dull creation rehearsals – call me in for a few days at the end of the process and I will let you know when I have it. You want to know why? Cause I’m smart. Granted – I was already an established artist at the time and I had a good track record as a person who could get things done but imagine how wonderful the world would be if we just let kids be as smart as they possibly could be – without having to dumb down to fit in.