If you'll be in New York City on Monday, August 2nd and you've been trained to dance on pointe, join the throng at the Central Park Bandshell from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. for "Break the Ballet Record." Esteemed dance photographer Gene Schiavone is inviting anyone over the age of 13 who can manage a respectable sous sous to be part of the attempt to get into the Guinness Book of World Records. Men are welcome, too!

Details after the jump!

When I look forward to a competition weekend,  as excited as I am about watching my daughters dance, what I feel is a special kind of dread.  I am about to voluntarily hostage myself to the halls of a high school or the "ballrooms" of a hotel for something over 48 hours, with only brief furloughs.  Few of my personal strengths will be called on, and most of my personal weaknesses will be on display.

For starters, I am a control freak.  I understand this about myself, and under normal circumstances I can keep it under control.  But during competition weekends, very little is open to my direction.  The schedule is set but not fixed, so I can't even work around it.  The girls might be dancing at two, but they have to be ready at one just in case, and it could be three by the time they get on stage.  So I can't zip in, watch them, and then go do the grocery shopping.  There is no set lunch or dinner time, so I spend a good part of the day trying to figure out how to get food to, and then into, my children.  Competitions tend to run late at night and start early in the morning, so sleep, which is my antidote to chaos, is in short supply.

Then there is the need to negotiate through the weekend socially.  I genuinely like people, really, but I am introverted and easily distracted and perhaps a tiny bit hard of hearing.  Being with all those people (or even just the ones I know) for all that time means lots of opportunity for light conversation.  And I a) can never think of anything interesting to say, b) have fairly odd interests anyway, c) cannot stop turning to look at the constantly moving mass of humanity all around me.  On the other hand, I was brought up to treat people with respect, which means I should listen carefully to them.  Over and over again each weekend, I am confronted with my social awkwardness.  And it gets worse when I'm tired, and when I get tired I notice my ineptitude that much more.

I probably look like a snob, but I tend to cope with all of this by planting myself in a chair and then curling in on myself like a blue-jeaned armadillo.  I do crossword puzzles.  I knit. I hang out backstage, helping with the sets if possible, staying out of the way when necessary.

I also throw myself into taking care of anyone who will let me.  I push the girls to help themselves to snacks; I bring water and sustenance out to the men who aren't allowed in the dressing room where we keep the cooler.  I try to think of fun things to do for lunch and dinner.  I make trips to Subway when I fail.

But now that my girls are teenagers, the last thing they want is a mother hovering over them in the dressing room.  So part of my contribution to the group effort is making myself stay out of their way.  I feel as if I work really hard at competitions, and yet, at the end of it all, I haven't really accomplished anything much.  Except to live to sit another day!

I knew I was in trouble as I sat in the tiny waiting room as the team director gave last-minute instructions for getting dressed for the first competition.  "Don't worry if you've never worn false eyelashes before," he said.  "Your mothers can show you how to put them on."  I looked around at the other mothers, and we burst out laughing.

I am part of that generation that, having been raised during the rocket-breasted, helmet-haired, bright-red-lipstick era, decided against it.  No "foundation garments," no hair spray, no cosmetics.  Take us as we are or not at all.  I've let up a bit on cosmetics, and even hair spray, but my philosophy is basically the same.

And so I am continually taken aback when my girls emerge with their competition make-up on.  It looks great on stage, but up close it makes me cringe a bit.  With their hair and makeup done, and in their costumes, I can't tell my daughters apart, or distinguish them from others on the team.

Makeup is among the things I've learned to live with as the parent of competition dancers.  Perhaps the funniest thing that's happened since that hysterical day in the waiting room is that I have become the go-to person for fake eyelashes.  I got tired of being assailed at 8:30 on a Thursday night by a daughter who forgot to buy lashes for the next day's competition.  Too many late-night trips to the pharmacy.  So I went on line, and discovered that I could order them in bulk.  I addition to avoiding those late-night lash runs, I could save money.  

My younger daughter has become my on-site representative; everyone goes to Maggie for lashes.  The first several years I sold them at cost -- another sign that in fundamental ways I don't get the culture I live in.  This past year I started making a tiny profit, mostly because I didn't want Maggie to have to deal with change in odd amounts. I suspect I could charge $10/pair on those late Thursdays and parents would be grateful just to be able to avoid the trip out.  At any rate, I plow all the profits, such as they are, back into lashes for my own lovely dancers.

I remember being in a hotel room in Springfield, Massachusetts.  The girls had been in classes all day, and had rushed back to dress for the evening competition.  One after another, girls knocked on my door, holding fistfuls of dollar bills that they wanted to exchange for lashes.  I found myself musing over the reaction by anyone watching a security camera.

So many things that make sense in the context of dance competitions seem utterly insane outside!

This is the question that haunts me.  I guess on the whole I've decided they are good, because my girls are still competing, but there is always a big but.

On the plus side, my girls are really strong and self-confident.  They know their bodies well and are, I think, plagued with fewer of the body issues that affect some other girls their age (they are teenagers now).  They can walk on and off any stage without a shudder.  They dance really well, better, I think, than they would have if they had only taken classes.  They genuinely enjoy competitions.  They have been busy their whole lives, and I've never had to worry about where they are or what they are doing.  And competitions are a family event, however weird.  My husband is an integral set-building part of the team, and whatever we do, we do together.

But there are things that trouble me.  It is ridiculously expensive; costumes especially, and I tend not to like them very much.  I don't like the cheap glitzy look most of them have, and I'm not always convinced that they improve the dance.  Sometimes I crave a dance in which the costumes are black leotards and pink tights.  I don't mind paying for lessons and choreography, especially since I think our choreographers are pretty remarkable.

I find the element of competition itself difficult.  It does make the girls dance better, but there is always a bit of an unfriendly -- or perhaps just self-absorbed -- atmosphere.   This exists in all competitive environments, and it may be that I am uncomfortable with competition.  I like that my girls seem to have learned to take it in stride and to appreciate good teams when they lose to them.  Learning NOT to win is probably as important as learning to win.

Most of all, I am troubled by the ways in which competitions distill and intensify popular culture images and messages that I don't like to begin with.  The sexualization of young girls.  The in-your-face attitude.  The dances in which a single male dancer cruises through a series of partners, reifying society's complicated double standard.  The troubling sexual messages that permeate popular music.  The raw gender stereotyping.

I don't actually fault competitions for this; they exist in a world in which all of this seems normal, and they draw on the music that's available.  It's hard to buck that kind of trend.  But it is especially hard for me, as a cultural historian and a feminist who cut her teeth in the 60s, not to notice how little society seems to have done to fight attitudes that I think harm men and women alike.

Day 62 in our 90-Day Social Media Success Challenge for Dance Studios...

A friend of mine, who I met through the wonderful world of social media, asked me the other day, "how do you create all of those great YouTube videos?" She wants to begin integrating video marketing into her company's social media marketing campaign, and she's interested in a step-by-step plan for how to create great online videos. So, I decided to write about it, in order to help her, and all of you as well.

If you read this blog regularly, you already know that I am a strong believer in the power of online videos to connect with your customers, make your brand (dance studio) more personal and tangible, and create a powerful online presence. I even suggested 5 ways that you can use videos to promote your dance studio through social media, in a previous blog post, and in a video (http://youtube.com/dancestudiosuccess).

But for today, I will give you the 5 essentials to creating great online videos.

Today is Day 60 in our 90-day Social Media Success Challenge for Dance Studios, and the 5th installment in our "My Dance Studio's Social Media Success Story Challenge". To see some of the previous success stories, click here, http://kinerenterprisesincblog.com/category/90-day-social-media-success-challenge-for-dance-studioscompanies/my-dance-studios-real-life-social-media-success-story/.

Today's post features a wonderful, growing dance studio in Waynesboro, Virginia, called Old Dominion Performance Arts Studio. Old Dominion Performance Arts Studio is a non-profit organization with the purpose of enriching their community and citizens through the education and training of performance arts. I met the Dance Division Director, Dulcey Fuqua on Facebook, and I've learned some wonderful things about Old Dominion P.A.S. eversince.

Check out their social media success story!

I took my daughters to USTD Nationals in Atlantic City last week, and so it was probably inevitable that I would find myself contemplating the link between beauty pageants and dance competitions.  One of my correspondents mentioned starting out in pageants because it was a place to dance competitively. Today's competitions, including USTD, have successfully shifted the focus -- I was impressed with the quality of the dancing I saw and the seriousness of the judging.  But when it came to the Miss Dance title competition, the connection to Miss America was impossible to miss.

I would love to hear from dancers who got their start in pageants.  What was it like?  Why did you choose to enter?  Did you feel tension between the pageant and the dance, or did they complement each other?

And was there a moment in time when  pageants and competitions parted company?  Are there competition founders and directors out there who can comment on this?