Surviving Dance Recitals: A Dance Mom's Guide

Dance recital week may be exciting or nerve-wracking for a young dancer, but for dance moms, the best word to describe it may be Hell. Not only do many dance moms have the responsibility of calming their daughter or son's nerves and keeping track of several costumes, many dance moms take on the dreaded position of "room mom." Being a room mom entails taking on the problems of an entire class or competition line of dancers instead of just your own child. A room mom also gets to deal with problem-causing dance moms, who fail to bring their child to the dance recital on time, or forget costume pieces. Here are some tips to help any room mom or dance mom survive dance recital week with her sanity intact.

Costumes

All dance costumes should be stored in garment bags. It is important that the dance costumes are stored in separate garment bags and not altogether in the same bag-storing dance costumes together usually ends up in costume pieces getting lost. Dance costume accessories such as hairpieces, jewelry, gloves, etc. should be stored in a separate zip-loc bag for each dance, labeled with the dancer's name, the contents of the accessories bag and the name of the dance song. The room mom for the recital should go through all the costumes and accessories for each dancer and make sure they are all there. This costume check-in should take place well before the dance recital, which means that the dance moms need to deliver their dance costumes at least two hours before the dance recital begins. It helps to have dance costumes left with the room mom after the dress rehearsal for the dance recital. Then she can bring all the dance costumes with to the dance recital, thus eliminating the hassle of having to reorganize dance costumes once again.

Extras

There should be extras of everything from bobby pins to fishnet tights. Things break and get lost, and the last thing you need is to have the dancers panicking before or during the dance recital. A few things a room mom should consider packing in bulk to bring to the dance recital:

-bobby pins and hair binders

-hairspray

-makeup

-q-tips

-band-aids

-bottled water

-clear nail polish (for runs in tights)

-tights

-extra costume accessories if possible

-safety pins

-recital schedules

-garment bags

-Ziploc bags

-earring backings

Don't be afraid to ask for help

A common room mom problem is trying to take everything on during the dance recital. But it's perfectly fine to delegate other dance moms or even the dancers to help with things like doing hair and makeup or organizing costumes. It helps to have two dance moms agree to split the job of room mom-either trading on and off to give the other dance moms a break, or all being on room mom duty at once if it's a particularly large group of dancers.

If you're a room mom, dance recital week does not have to induce a panic attack. Stay calm, plan ahead, come prepared and split up the work, and that dance recital (or recitals) should be just fine!