Tag: competitive dance

The Hidden Cost of Competitive Dance in America
There is a point in every parent’s life when you realise your child’s hobby has developed its own economy.

I think we reached that point somewhere between the dance costumes, competition fees, hotel rooms and my wife working an eight hour shift at Bridgestone Arena while I sat in a car outside a dance studio doing work on my phone.

Our ten year old daughter Georgia dances competitively.

Seven routines this year.

Our seven year old, Brianna, has gone back to dance too and has already announced that she would like to try out for the competition team next year.

Because apparently we looked at our current family schedule and thought it lacked ambition.

The funny thing is, none of this feels particularly unusual anymore.

Afternoons are spent driving to the studio.

Groceries happen while somebody is dancing.

Work gets done from the car.

Weekends disappear into competitions.

Family trips get built around nationals.

Money quietly moves from one part of the family budget to another.

Somewhere along the way I realised there is an enormous economy sitting underneath American kids’ activities that you barely notice until your own family becomes part of it.

And I don’t just mean money.

What you see is a few minutes onstage. What you don’t see is the family economy of time, travel, work and money that helped get her there.

It Starts Out So Innocently

Georgia started ballet when she was two years old in Australia.

She loved dance from the moment she put on her first ballet shoes.

Back then, dance was relatively simple.

You went to class.

You learned your routine.

There was an end of year recital.

Parents watched.

Everyone went home.

Competitive dance is a different universe.

Georgia is now in her fourth year on company, and the older she gets, the greater the commitment becomes.

Tuition is higher.

There are competition entry fees.

Costumes.

Choreography fees.

Solo lessons.

Travel.

Hotels.

Food.

Then there are seven competition dances, which means seven routines have to somehow make their way from a studio in Tennessee onto stages around the Southeast.

We regularly travel to Kentucky and Georgia for competitions. Nationals this year was in Daytona Beach, Florida.

We were there for seven days.

One day without dance.

We called it a family holiday. Technically, I think that counts.
- This Week in America — A Kentucky Weekend: Dance, Derby & the Moments You Don’t Plan
The Three Minutes You See Aren’t the Expensive Part

A competition routine might last a few minutes.

Getting a child onto that stage can consume an entire weekend.

For us, a typical competition begins on Friday.

If we’re heading somewhere like Atlanta, Georgia may have to leave school early so we can get there that evening. At the moment her elementary school doesn’t consider dance competition an excused absence, which is something that will become more complicated as she gets older and Friday night performances become more common.

We arrive Friday evening, check into the hotel, find dinner and get to bed.

The preparation has already started.

Georgia may have done her fake tan a couple of days earlier, or sometimes before we leave on Friday.

If she has an early Saturday performance, Nikki can be up at 4 a.m. doing hair and makeup.

Four.

In the morning.

I grew up dancing ballroom in Australia and somehow I don’t remember Bankstown RSL requiring this level of preparation.

Then you arrive at the competition.

Some of these events are extraordinary.

Huge stages.

Professional lighting.

Multiple cameras.

Some of the bigger ones feel less like the dance competitions I remember growing up and more like television productions.

It is genuinely impressive.

You can then spend anywhere from 8 a.m. until 9 p.m. there.

At one competition in Atlanta last year, it was so crowded that Brianna and I couldn’t even find somewhere to sit and watch Georgia.

We had already checked out of the hotel.

So after driving all the way from Tennessee to Atlanta to watch our daughter dance, we went back to the car…

and watched her on an iPhone. Parenting is magnificent.

Some of the larger competitions feel closer to television productions than the dance competitions I remember growing up with in Australia.

Then There Is the Cost Nobody Puts on an Invoice

This is the part I hadn’t really thought about before becoming a dance parent.

Time.

A 30 minute dance class does not take 30 minutes.

There is the drive there.

The wait.

The drive home.

Multiply that across two children and several days a week and suddenly large pieces of your family life are being organised around a dance studio.

I deliberately schedule my own ballroom lessons while the girls are at school.

Afternoons are largely theirs.

If one of them only has a 30 minute or one hour class, sometimes there isn’t much point driving home, so I stay in the car and work.

Other times I do the groceries while they’re dancing.

You become surprisingly good at this.

Dance class at 5:00.

Groceries at 5:07.

Back at the studio at 5:56.

Child retrieved.

Nobody forgotten.

Successful evening.

The car becomes an office, waiting room, transport department and occasionally somewhere to eat dinner. A portable charger has become essential equipment for this dance dad when I’m working from the car.

Nobody sends you an invoice for any of that.

But it still costs something. Time is part of the hidden economy too.

Sometimes Hockey Pays for Ballet

This may be my favourite part of the whole strange system.

Nikki is the only member of our immediate family who doesn’t dance.

So naturally, she has been dragged into the dance economy anyway.

She works concession stands at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville through a fundraising arrangement that allows parents to work events to help raise money toward their children’s activities.

She’s the only parent from our studio doing it, but she works alongside dance mums from other studios.

The shifts are long.

Usually around eight hours.

There is a small set amount, but most of what the group receives comes from tips that are shared among the people working. Nikki will typically generate around $120 to $150 from a night, with checks made out to the dance studio.

That means somebody can walk into Bridgestone Arena to see a Predators game or a country concert, buy something from the concession stand and leave a tip.

A little piece of that money eventually helps pay for a child’s dance.

Last week Nikki worked the Brooks & Dunn concert.

Now the Nashville Predators are back.

So in our house, hockey season is also dance fundraising season.

Country music pays for ballet.

Hockey pays for tap lessons.

America has some fascinating economic systems. Similar nonprofit concession fundraising arrangements operate elsewhere in Tennessee, where registered organizations staff arena concession stands and funds can be applied toward participants’ fees and other activity costs.

In our family, a night working concessions at Bridgestone can help pay the next dance bill.

Not Every Family Experiences the Cost the Same Way

There is another side of competitive dance that I’ve become increasingly aware of.

Some of the families around us appear considerably better off than we are.

You see the houses.

The cars.

The travel.

Some live in homes that, by our standards, look like mansions.

I don’t know their finances, and appearances certainly don’t tell you everything.

But I do know ours.

There have been times when I’ve looked at what is coming up and wondered how we’re going to afford all of it.

So far, we always have.

We have never sat Georgia down and told her she might have to stop dancing because we can’t pay for it.

I hope we never have to.

But it has made me realise something.

When people talk about opportunities for children, we often focus on whether the opportunity exists.

I’ve written before about something else I’ve come to admire in America: the willingness to encourage children to imagine what might be possible.

But encouragement is only part of it.

Someone still has to get the child there.

Pay the entry fee.

Buy the costume.

Book the hotel.

Be available at 4 a.m. to do the hair.

Someone has to sit in the car. Someone has to make the whole thing work.

Because This Isn’t Just a Hobby to Her

This is the part that matters.

If Georgia were miserable, none of this would make sense.

She isn’t.

Dance is her passion.

She started ballet at two and she’s now ten. She’s been on company for four years.

I regularly give her the opportunity to try something else.

Her response is usually some variation of:

Dad, are you serious?

This is all she wants to do.

If we told her tomorrow that school had been cancelled permanently but dance was still on, I suspect we’d barely finish the sentence before she was in the car.

She lights up when she dances.

She already talks about going to college and eventually becoming a dance teacher.

There are genuine pathways from dance into higher education in America. Universities including USC’s Glorya Kaufman School of Dance offer competitive talent based dance scholarships, while other universities offer scholarship opportunities tied to dance majors and auditions. USC Glorya Kaufman School of Dance

She’s ten.

Nobody knows where any of this will lead.

She may become a dance teacher.

She may pursue something completely different.

Life has plenty of time to work that out.

Right now, our job is simply to give her the opportunity to find out.

I’ve already had moments when I’ve realised just how much Georgia’s dreams are being shaped by growing up here rather than in the Australia where she was born.

She started ballet at two in Australia. Eight years later, dance is still the thing she wants to do more than anything else.

Apparently One Competitive Dancer Isn’t Enough

Then there’s Brianna.

She returned to dance this year and is taking jazz, hip hop and ballet.

She now wants to try out for company next year.

This should probably terrify us.

Instead, our reasoning has become:

Well, she’s already at the competitions anyway.

There would be overlap.

The second child is cheaper.

We’re already paying for the hotel.

What could possibly go wrong?

There is something slightly alarming about reaching the point where adding a second competitive dancer starts sounding like an efficiency measure.

But that’s how embedded this world has become in our family.

It isn’t something we occasionally attend anymore.

It is part of the rhythm of our lives.

Nationals Is a Holiday. Sort Of.

This year nationals took us to Daytona.

We were there for seven days and, thanks to some flight credits I needed to use, we flew rather than drove.

We spent plenty of time at the beach.

We ate out.

A lot.

That last part belongs firmly in the expense column.

We had a great time and absolutely treated the trip as a family holiday.

But out of seven days, we had exactly one day with no dance.

That pretty much sums it up.

Even the family holiday gets absorbed into the machinery.

Dance first.

Beach around it.

We turned nationals in Daytona into our family holiday. Out of seven days, one was completely dance free.

Then She Walks Onto the Stage

After all of that, there is the actual dancing.

I don’t get particularly nervous watching Georgia in group routines.

The smaller groups, with five or so dancers, are fun.

The enormous team productions can become a completely different challenge.

Sometimes there are so many dancers moving on and off stage that if you don’t already know where Georgia is supposed to be, finding your own child becomes part of the entertainment.

Then there’s her solo.

That’s different.

I get nervous.

Really nervous.

I feel like I watch the entire thing holding my breath.

For those few minutes there is nowhere for her to disappear.

It’s just her.

And perhaps that’s when the hidden economy becomes visible to me.

Not the dollars.

Not the hotel.

Not the petrol.

Not the hours in the car.

All the things behind it.

The lessons.

The rehearsals.

The 4 a.m. makeup.

Mum working at Bridgestone.

Dad working from the car.

The trips to Kentucky and Georgia.

The week in Daytona.

The costumes.

The school juggling.

All of it leads to one little girl standing alone under the lights doing the thing she loves. Suddenly, it doesn’t feel particularly complicated.

What I’d Tell Another Parent

If somebody with a five year old who loves dance asked me whether their child should try out for a competition team, I wouldn’t tell them not to.

I’d tell them to understand the commitment.

Because the child isn’t the only person joining the team.

The family is.

Competitive activities don’t simply occupy a line on the family calendar.

Eventually they start rearranging the calendar around themselves.

That doesn’t make them bad.

It doesn’t make the money wasted.

It simply means parents should understand what they’re saying yes to.

Because if the child really loves it, you may be saying yes for quite a while.

I Don’t Think There Was Ever Much Doubt

Sometimes I think back to Georgia putting on her first ballet shoes in Australia.

She was two.

It would be tempting to say I never imagined that tiny ballet class would eventually lead to enormous American competition stages, seven routines, interstate travel, national competitions and an entire family economy operating behind her.

But that wouldn’t really be true.

She loved dance from the moment she put those shoes on.

I don’t think there was ever much doubt we’d end up somewhere like this.

The stages got bigger.

The commitment got bigger.

The bills definitely got bigger.

But the reason we’re doing it hasn’t really changed at all.

She loves to dance. Sometimes an entire family economy grows around something as simple as that.

It started with ballet at two years old in Australia. The scale has changed. Her love of dance hasn’t.

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October 2, 2026
Dance Dads Have a Clique. I Didn’t Make the Cut.
THIS WEEK IN AMERICA

I recently discovered that I have failed to join the dance dads.

Apparently there is a group.

There may be a committee.

There could be membership requirements.

I wouldn’t know.

Nobody sent me the paperwork.

My daughter Georgia has been dancing at the same studio for six years now, including four years on the competition team.

I know most of the teachers. I know many of the parents. I know the kids. I know which competition venues have decent coffee, which ones have terrible parking and roughly how many rhinestones can fall off a costume before somebody declares an emergency.

But somehow, after all these years, I remain an independent contractor. A freelance dance dad.

I should have noticed the dance dads years ago

The evidence was there from the beginning.

At competitions, a group of dads would help build the sets. They’d carry everything onto the stage, assemble whatever needed assembling and then, when the job was done, take a little bow before running offstage to applause.

It was like a very specialised Broadway production where nobody actually danced.

I was never asked to join them.

I wasn’t offended.

At first I didn’t think much about it.

But over the years, I started noticing the same dads together elsewhere.

At practices, they’d stand around talking in a circle.

At competitions, they’d sit together.

Sometimes they’d go out for dinner afterwards.

There was clearly a social structure here that I had somehow missed.

The dance mums had their groups too, of course. I’d noticed those.

I just assumed the dads operated differently.

Turn up.

Find somewhere to sit.

Look at phone.

Move costume bag when instructed.

Ask when we’re leaving. Apparently I had underestimated the complexity of dance fatherhood.

Dance competitions have their own little communities. Some of us are apparently non playing members

Then one of the dads confirmed my suspicions

Recently, I was standing outside the studio waiting for Georgia.

One of the dance dads walked out.

I’ve known him for several years. Not well, but certainly well enough that we’re not strangers.

He looked straight at me.

I said hello and asked how he was.

I got a quick good, how are you?

Then he proceeded to enthusiastically talk to seemingly everyone else within a fifty metre radius.

People walking past.

Other parents.

People sitting in their cars.

Had somebody driven past slowly enough, I suspect he would have leaned through the passenger window.

It was like watching a politician work a rope line.

And I stood there thinking:

Well.

Nice catching up.

To be fair, perhaps I’m being unfair.

Because there is another possibility I have been forced to consider. Maybe they think I’m the snob.

This is where my argument begins to fall apart

I don’t approach groups.

Ever.

If I walk into the dance studio and six dads are standing in a closed circle talking, there is absolutely no chance I am walking over and inserting myself into the middle.

None.

They could be discussing how to divide a winning Powerball ticket and I’d probably stand twenty feet away looking at my phone.

Part of it is probably shyness.

I’m much better one on one than I am in groups, particularly with people I don’t know well.

Part of it may simply be habit.

And part of it is that I often walk into the studio without my glasses and can’t actually tell who anybody is.

It’s difficult to confidently greet someone when there’s a reasonable possibility you’re about to introduce yourself to a coat rack.

So I sit down.

I pull out my phone.

I answer emails.

I work on the website.

I check YouTube.

I watch Georgia or Brianna through the window.

From my perspective, I’m giving everyone else their space.
- Somewhere along the way I’ve also learned that a portable phone charger is less an accessory at a dance competition and more emergency equipment. These things can run all day.
From their perspective, perhaps there’s an Australian bloke sitting in the corner staring at his phone who never comes over and talks to anyone. This investigation is becoming increasingly inconvenient.

I don’t actually dislike talking to people

That’s the strange part.

If one of the dads comes over and talks to me, I’m perfectly happy.

It has happened occasionally.

At Nationals over the summer, I ended up having a great conversation with another dad about soccer and the World Cup.

He’d had a couple of drinks, which may have assisted international diplomacy.

But it was easy.

Natural.

Two dads talking about football.
- I first mentioned my discovery of the dance dad clique on This Week in America. You can hear the full episode here on Spotify
I’ve had similar conversations with other parents over the years.

The confusing part comes afterwards.

Sometimes you’ll have a really good one on one conversation with somebody. You think you’ve finally broken through that awkward stage.

Then the next time you see them, they’re back with their usual group and it’s as though the conversation never happened.

Hello again, coat rack.

That’s when the whole thing can start to feel slightly performative.

Warm and friendly when you’re one on one.

Different when the group reappears. And that’s probably why I’ve become even less inclined to push myself into it.

The kids somehow manage to make friends while competing against each other. The adults have developed a more complicated system.

The kids may actually be better at this than we are

Georgia has her best friend at dance.

Like most childhood best friendships, it can occasionally resemble Days of Our Lives.

They’re inseparable.

Then they’re not.

Then they are again.

The other girls her age seem to operate similarly. They have close friendships and often pair off rather than moving around as one enormous group.
- Dance Competitions in America: When the Show Becomes the Focus
Meanwhile, some of us adults seem to have recreated high school in the lobby.

The children are learning choreography.

We’re apparently still working out where we’re allowed to sit at lunch.

And that, I’ve realised, might be part of why I find these situations uncomfortable.

Just tell me where I’m supposed to sit

At competitions, we’re often sitting by ourselves or with Georgia’s best friend’s mum and another parent we know.

I’ve watched other dance studios arrive and seemingly have this sorted.

Their families sit together.

They have a section.

They cheer together.

Some even have team chants.

You can see immediately that they’re there as a studio.

I actually think I’d enjoy that.

Which surprised me when I thought about it.

Because my problem isn’t necessarily being around everybody.

My problem is the bit beforehand.

Walking into a room and trying to work out where you belong.

I don’t want to walk up to a row of people and ask whether a seat is free, only to hear:

Sorry, someone’s sitting there.

Suddenly I’m back on the school bus trying to work out where I’m allowed to sit.

I’m 52.

I don’t need that kind of pressure.

Give me assigned seating.

Put my name on a chair. I will happily participate.
- I’ve spent enough hours in dance venues now that I’m beginning to think a decent stadium seat cushion should be issued when your child joins the competition team.
Apparently I require organised socialising

There was an awards night at Nationals over the summer.

Families were invited.

I didn’t go.

I stayed with Brianna in the hotel room instead.

Maybe I should have gone.

But I could already picture myself walking into the area, looking around at all the established groups and trying to work out where to stand.

No thanks.

Yet if the studio announced tomorrow that all the families were sitting together at the next competition, I’d genuinely look forward to it.

So apparently my social requirements are:

I would like to be included.

I do not wish to ask to be included.

Please provide clear instructions.

Assigned seating preferred. Refreshments appreciated.

Daytona Beach, dance dad life does include some travel perks.

The really annoying part is that I’m perfectly sociable elsewhere

I dance too.

Ballroom.

And at my ballroom studio, I feel completely at home.

From the beginning, people said hello when I walked through the door.

They remembered my name.

They talked to me.

It was welcoming.

Now I can walk in and feel like I belong there.

Same bloke.

Same personality.

Same reluctance to charge into a group of strangers.

The difference is that somewhere along the way, I was given enough little signals that said:

You’re part of this place.

That’s all it took.

At Georgia’s studio, after five or six years, I know almost everybody.

I always say hello to the teachers by name.

Sometimes I wonder whether they know mine.

Although, in fairness, it is a children’s dance studio.

They’re there for Georgia.

I’m essentially transport. Transport with a credit card.

Put me in my own house and I’m completely different

Here’s another piece of evidence against my claim that everyone else is responsible.

We’ve hosted plenty of birthday parties for the girls.

When people come into my house, I’m a host.

I talk to them.

I make them feel welcome.

If I see another dad standing by himself, I’ll go over and talk to him.

I don’t want someone standing alone wondering whether anybody wants them there.

Because I know exactly what that feels like.

Once I’ve spent time with someone, things become much easier.

There are dads I’ve got to know through the girls’ friendships, birthday parties and school events. I can walk up to them now, say hello, sit down and have a chat.

It just takes me time.

Apparently quite a lot of time. Possibly several financial years.

Phones probably aren’t helping any of us

There is also a modern complication.

The phone.

If I’m sitting alone at dance, my phone gives me somewhere to go.

I can work.

I can read something.

I can scroll.

I can look extremely busy while accomplishing absolutely nothing.

Twenty years ago, if you were sitting alone waiting for your child to finish an activity, eventually you probably had to look up.

Someone else looked up.

You talked.

Now we can spend two hours sitting six feet apart without ever acknowledging that another human being exists.

The phone makes being alone easier.

It also makes being alone look intentional.

Someone might look at me and think:

He’s busy. I’ll leave him alone.

Meanwhile I’m looking at the group across the room thinking:

They obviously don’t want me over there.

Excellent.

Everybody has successfully respected everybody else’s desire to do something none of us actually wanted.

The modern dance dad survival kit. A phone, somewhere to sit and several hours to kill.

Maybe I’ve been watching the wrong people

This is the part I hadn’t really considered until recently.

I’ve spent years noticing the group.

Dads standing together.

Parents sitting together.

People going out afterwards.

Maybe I should start looking for the other person.

The dad sitting twenty feet away on his phone.

The mum standing by herself waiting for rehearsal to finish.

The parent who walked into the room, saw the established groups and quietly found a chair.

Because maybe they’re not antisocial either.

Maybe they’re doing exactly what I’m doing.

Waiting for someone else to go first.

I’m still not walking into the middle of that closed circle.

Let’s not get ridiculous.

But perhaps next time I see another parent sitting alone, I’ll say hello.

One person I can handle.

Give me another five or six years and I may even help build a set.

Just don’t expect me to take a bow.

Actually, that’s not true.

I’m a ballroom dancer. Of course I’ll take the bow.

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September 25, 2026