Kids’ dance toned down for festival

Wednesday, March 20, 2002 | 10:50 a.m.

After two months of practice for the Clark County School District's dance festival, the 25 girls and boys of the Harmon Elementary School dance team needed to pass a crucial test to get to the stage.

At the ripe ages of 10 and 11, their routine had been labeled sexually suggestive by their principal, Del Bean, because the girls rocked their hips and shimmied their shoulders with their backs to the audience.

"It was all, how should we say, too exuberant," Bean said. "This is an elementary school audience, and these are elementary school children performing. The dance, as I saw it, was not within the confines of appropriate behavior."

After asking them to tone it down, Bean brought in Assistant Superintendent Carolyn Reedom to view the performance Tuesday. The team can dance at Friday's festival with some minor changes, Reedom said.

In the aftermath of a minor squabble, parents, teachers and administrators were left wondering what's appropriate for this post-MTV generation and who makes the decision?

Sandy Royce, whose 11-year-old daughter, Taylor, is on the dance team, said the battle over the dance routines should never have erupted because the parents had seen the routine and no one objected.

"If anyone is going to say what the children are doing is inappropriate, it would be the moms and dads," Royce said.

Nancy Schkurman, coordinator of elementary fine arts for the School District, agreed with Bean that the original dance was inappropriate but said she regretted any sense of controversy.

"This was supposed to be a fun event, not a source of controversy," Schkurman said. "The Harmon students are wonderful children, and the controversy was never about the children themselves."

One of the main problems is that today's youth face more cultural influences telling them how to behave than any previous generation, said Charles Cooley, a psychologist at University Medical Center who counsels children and families.

School administrators are responsible for not only teaching academics but also educating children about what is considered appropriate behavior by society at large, Cooley said.

"Music, movies, magazines, they all push children to grow up sooner," Cooley said. "The schools have a responsibility, just as parents and the rest of the community do, to try and counter some of those negative influences."

A similar situation occurred last year at Vanderburg Elementary School when Reedom was principal, she said.

"The girls wanted to perform in a talent show to the song 'Bootylicious,' " Reedom said. "They wanted to dance like the girls they watch on MTV, and I explained to them that was never going to happen, not in my school."

The girls agreed to change the music and were allowed to perform, Reedom said.

Harmon teacher Anita Onstead, who oversees the dance team and choreographed the student numbers along with her 21-year-old daughter, also challenged the depiction of the original routine as too suggestive.

"I would never put anything on stage that was offensive," said Onstead, who has taught at Harmon for eight years. "Even if I would, the children's parents wouldn't stand for it. This is a community where families are passionate about values and morals."

Leaetta McGregor, president of the Harmon PTA, said she was disappointed in how school administrators handled the controversy. The student dancers, including McGregor's daughter and grandson, had been devastated after being initially told they could not dance, and were confused about what moves had been inappropriate.

"The children are very, very proud to be on the Harmon dance team," McGregor said. "They spent their lunch hours and after-school time working toward this performance for months."

The dance team was organized by a Harmon teacher as an extra-curricular activity and was not part of a district-sanctioned physical education class, Bean said.

The School District follows detailed curriculum for teaching physical education and the arts, and leans more towards folk dancing and creative movement than jazz or hip-hop dancing, Schkurman said.

"We want children to develop their coordination, learn to follow a music's beat and perform sequences in a group," Schkurman said. "We don't want them doing anything that could possibly offend someone watching, or movements that are age-inappropriate."

Schkurman said she was relieved that the students would be allowed to perform Friday provided they follow Reedom's conditions.

The 16 girls wore black pants and purple T-shirts emblazoned with "Harmon Elementary School Dance Team," while the four boys had on white T-shirts and American flag bandannas. The girls' music was "I'm a Believer" from the "Shrek" movie soundtrack. The boys danced to a compilation of tunes, including "Rollin' " by the heavy metal-hip hop group Limp Bizkit, in a tribute to victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

After watching the dancers, Reedom ruled the girls would be allowed to perform their toned-down routine at the festival while the boys would have to eliminate the use of the heavy metal-hip hop tune.

The song's liberal use of the "F" word was still detectable even though an attempt had been made to censor the song, Reedom said. "I would never allow children to perform a song with profanity in it, even if the words were bleeped out," Reedom said. "I don't care if they did buy that CD at Wal-Mart, you can still tell the lyrics contain inappropriate language."