My son the dancer: how I became a 'dance mum'

We chatted to self-confessed 'dance mum' Vicky and her 10 year old son Fin, a keen dancer, to find out what life's like when you just *have* to dance...

Hi, can you introduce yourself and tell us a bit about your family?



I’m Vicky, and I have three boys (cue the gasps / comments of ‘you’ve got your hands full there’!), Callum is 11, Finlay is 10 and Ewan is 6. Callum and Ewan both play football for a local club and are members of Scouts, but Finlay is a dancer – ballet, tap, contemporary, street, stage school – as much as he can possibly fit in.



How old was Fin when he first got interested in dancing?



I started taking Finlay to pre-school music classes when he was 12 months old. He absolutely loved the music and was completely devastated when he had to finish the classes at the age of four because he was starting school.



When I was looking for an alternative for him to go to, I discovered a local dance school that had a boys only class. He joined the class in the April, a few weeks after turning 4 and he was in his first dance show a month later. From then he’s just kept adding more and more classes.



When did you realise that this was something he was really, really passionate about?



I took Fin to see Billy Elliot in the West End when he was 6, and by that time he was already completely in love with dancing and he was doing ballet as well as tap and modern. His godmother Caroline and I spent the majority of the show watching Fin, watching Billy. He laughed, he cried and he was in awe of the dancing.

That’s also where he got his love of musicals from, which has become a bit of an expensive hobby – his birthday and Christmas presents regularly contain tickets. We’re already booked for Wicked, Annie & Lord of the Dance so far this year.



Fin made a scrapbook of that day out in London and still has the Billy Elliot ticket and programme from that trip. We watched the show again last year when it was streamed to cinemas for the 10th anniversary.



As a mum, how involved are you in Fin’s dancing activities?



Most of the time I’m relied on to hand over the money and provide the lifts, but when it’s show time I chaperone – my job is signing all of the children in and out because I can’t do hair or make up! The logistics of shows (Fin was in pantomime at Christmas and Easter last year), competitions (three done this year so far, two more booked in) and rehearsals are the most complicated bit of dancing, especially when there are two other boys to consider.



Fin has performed in his dance school shows, but also in some amateur and professional productions. The problem he often has is that lots of pantomime companies don’t accommodate boys – they have no boys’ costumes, so even though they audition boys, they don’t usually take them on. Fin gets quite demoralised by this; the hardest part he ever had was when he was given a role in a pantomime last Easter. He was the only one without a costume – eventually a pair of trousers arrived and he had to wear a dress. I have to say, I had a bit of a heated discussion with the director of that one, but his response was that he’d never said he’d take a boy as a dancer.



Thankfully this year the local panto was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs so Fin played a dwarf, alongside his friend from dancing. It’s getting round to audition time again, though, so we don’t know whether they’ll take any boy dancers this year!



I do feel as if I have to constantly speak out and stand up for Fin – and his dance teacher is now great at writing ‘girls and boy’ on all of her Facebook posts and emails!



Has Fin himself ever been discouraged from pursuing dance by the fact that it’s sometimes still seen as an unusual activity for boys?



One memorable evening, a few years ago, we were walking out of dance class behind one of his classmates and her dad, we could hear them chatting about the class and the girl explained to her dad that there were lots of girls in her class and one boy. The dad then responded with ‘boys shouldn’t do dancing, they should be playing football downstairs’.



Parents who don’t know me usually ask me at dancing ‘what classes does your daughter do?’ and when I reply ‘my son does…’ there tends to be a moment of shock on their faces before the conversation continues. Thanks to him having danced for so long, though, Fin’s school friends just know that that’s what he does. He does get some hassle from some of the boys but nothing too bad.



Looking back, did you spot anything about Fin when he was very small that showed he might have a talent for dancing?



He’s always responded well to music, but we really only started going to the music class because the time worked well – I could take Fin while his older brother Callum was at pre-school – because they’re so close together in age it gave me the opportunity to give Fin some one-on-one time.



Do you get nervous watching Fin dancing on stage or in a competition?



Yes! It makes me feel physically sick! Fin breezes on without a care in the world and I am terrified. I also find it impossible to watch him without crying, I’m so incredibly proud of him.



Do you think Fin will carry on dancing as he gets older?



I honestly can’t imagine Finlay not dancing, he’s just had two weeks without it for the Easter holidays and he’s suffering from withdrawal! I do worry about him going to high school next year and the possibility of him getting bullied – but I just hope that if he ever does stop dancing it’ll be because he’s decided that he wants to stop, not because he feels he’s been forced to.



Hearing from Mum is all very well, but we wanted to hear from Fin himself about his dancing career…



Hi Fin! Can you remember how you first got interested in dancing?



I tried football and rugby but I didn’t like either of them, then my mum found out about the boys only dancing class and I loved it! I remember feeling really sad when I finished going to the pre-school classes. My friend Millie went to dancing too, so I joined her tap class then stayed for ballet and now I just want to do everything. I’ve just added a contemporary class to my Saturday lessons.



What do your brothers and your friends think of your dance career?



My friends don’t mind and I don’t think my brothers are bothered, they say that they don’t like watching the shows but I think that they like it when they’re there. They enjoyed the pantomime I was in at Easter. They don’t like having to drop me off or wait around for me though!



What advice would you have for younger boys (or girls) who might be thinking of starting dancing?



Try it out, it’s really good fun and you make really good friends at class.



What do you want to do next in the dance world?



I want to be in Billy Elliot, dance in the West End and on Broadway.

More to explore:



Got a little one who’s already dance-obsessed? Check out our special Music and Dance page on the CBeebies website.



Find out how music can help little ones learn.

Little ones can learn to dance like the elves from CBeebies Elves and the Shoemaker on the CBeebies website.

Get into dance with BBC Get Inspired.