Grades

I can't wait til I've got dancers competing in the grades.

I know that's possibly a strange thing to aspire to, given that every teacher really wants champions and anyone who says they aren't aiming for a World Champion is maybe not being 100% honest. I definitely do want to teach champions. I want to take to the stage in impossible heels and pick them up when they run down the podium to me. I want to shake and cry with them when we can't add it up in our heads but then realise they've done it, they've won, and Dan the Man has announced them as World Champion. I want to commission elaborate cakes showing them standing with a sugar paste trophy for their Worlds party. Yes, obviously I want that.

But I want excited little five year olds with home-curled hair and tiny skirts and blouses, tiny little feet in outrageously small Hullachans, babies who don't really know what's going on past the fact that they get to show off their dancing and then they get a medal. Or ten, twelve, fourteen year olds trying time and time again for that first in the primary hornpipe so they can say they've got everything in intermediate.

First solo dresses, excitedly writing down results, the best feeling in the world when you win the primary light trophy with your hop jig.

Years ago I was at a feis early doors, waiting for my own prelim that afternoon. My old teacher and I went into the grades hall and saw the u6 beginners lining up for their first ever reel at their first ever feis. Totally un-self conscious, just dancing for joy. The lady at the back of the stage counting them in. A lead round that goes round in five ever decreasing circles and a first step that's ended up danced with their back to the judge. Running back to their places with huge smiles when the bell rings, then trying to dance again straight away. The Kit Kat as a bribe or a prize. The oh my god I got a medal happiness that only a first-ever 'highly commended' can bring. And my teacher turned to me and said, "this is what it's really about."

It IS what it's really about.