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| Jennifer Garner takes her glasses-wearing daughter to ballet class. |
It's always a challenge to wear glasses while exercising. The glasses could slip, but you could also slip if you can't see where you're going! Dance is both a fun physical activity and a visual art form, so policies regarding eyewear vary from situation to situation. Here are some general rules for wearing glasses for dance.
Most young children's classes and purely recreational programs for people of all ages allow dancers to wear glasses that stay on easily during movements like simple jumps and turns. If your glasses don't stay on well (and you can see ok without them), it may be advantageous to take them off for parts of class that include jumps and turns.
Some pre-professional dance training programs allow students to wear glasses to class, and others specifically prohibit it. It will be mentioned in the dress code if students are not allowed to wear glasses. If glasses are not allowed, I recommend getting a prescription for contacts from your eye doctor. Even if you only wear the contacts for dance class, pre-pro programs (which generally require 9 or more hours of dance class per week) are intense enough that it's worth it to be able to see well during classes.
Most of the time, glasses are not allowed for performances. Sometimes they are allowed for informal recitals, but generally performers must not wear them on stage. It's usually ok for young children and performers with weaker prescriptions to go glasses-less for the show (try to rehearse without glasses to get used to the feeling). Older students who perform regularly and/or have stronger prescriptions should wear contacts.
For any dance scenario that involves lots of advanced, fast turns (like fouettes) or partnering with turns and jumps, glasses are a safety hazard and should not be worn.
Nice Blog Post !
ReplyDeleteThis holds great assumption that any person with the need of lens correction can wear contacts. This is not true. Contacts are not an equivalent aid to framed lens for a percentage of dysfunctions of the eye. I have a beautiful and promising 10 year old dancer who has met this ignorance with her Artistic Director's foot down that she cannot participate in her earned and prepared role with her glasses on. So in her 5th year of study, her consistent dedication to the art, her grace and beauty has gone as far as telling her that she will never be a professional dancer with nothing but a pair of glasses under the spotlight. Her school has not prepared her in any way to be without her glasses, and wants to rip them off of her for the performance only, where she would be greatly, and intentionally, blinded. Youth development programs who are labeling themselves as such should develop youth rather than lead them to the ultimate conformity of the art with no development for the individual dancer to do so. I didn't bring my child to the program with an invisible disability, and in year one shared that contacts were not an option. My girl has been called to demonstration, highlighted in choreography, takes correction far above her peers - the dancer I describe has been pulled out of a year awaited performance, told she will never be a professional dancer, and humiliated with gross intimidation on the very floor that describes her as promising.
ReplyDeleteTo all the other parents of dancers who are crippled by this ignorance, please advocate for the accommodation that is greatly barricaded in the dance world. If you have a child who cannot comply with contacts, the exception of banded framed lens should be allowed. You will not find much to back you up and run into a wall much like this article that breathes assumption.
"generally performers must not wear them on stage." I ask why.
I have invested in clear, low glare, hai-matching banded frames which would leave a face pale and uniform to the casting.
Why?