Chapter 1a - Boys Can’t Wear Tights

by Jim Becker

For mature readers only. 18+

There I was, teaching at the largest dance studio around - a veritable palace of pirouettes and parental entitlements. This behemoth of a studio served hundreds of dance and gymnastics students. I believe some students overlapped their trainings. I won’t claim this place had upwards of a thousand students total, but a conservative estimate would land it as a lot of leotards and Lycra.

By this point, I was in a multi-year experience of teaching at this entity that sprouted up in my hometown during my years-long sabbatical in New York City. I needed time to become the consummate chorus boy, waiter, sometimes bartender and fabulous celebrity personal trainer in Harlem that I became before moving back. I’d been brought in, mind you, not just as another warm body with a Spotify account (that’s always played through a cheap ION mono speaker when I remember the days of stereo and sometimes quad speakers in the dance room), but brought in as the expert from New York - cue the jazz hands and inferiority complex from the locals. After decades of teaching for major schools and name-brand internationally known companies, I’d returned to Ohio and begun making the rounds at various studios. But this studio? This one had my full attention. It was the closest to where I lived, and- more importantly- it ran like a business with actual receipts. Financially sound. Functioning website. Toilet paper in the restroom. Separate changing rooms for the boys. I have standards of where I will and won’t teach. You get the idea.

Now, the owner of this empire, Dolly Dinkle, ran the joint alongside her husband - because, of course she did. She always does. Just like so many other small-town dance studio, it was a family affair. The husband, naturally, was a silent partner not possessing the skills of how to dance nor how to teach. His role was limited to replacing doorknobs and, as Dolly so charmingly reminded us, “helping pay the rent.”

Before one competition season began, Ms. Dinkle summoned me for a meeting. You know the kind - scheduled just formally enough to make you wonder if you should bring a resume or a lawyer. Sitting alongside her was another representative, my so-called ‘mentor’ for the year, there to shepherd me into my new role as company choreographer and director (of which she was continuously available and supportive, thank you). Dolly had a grand proposition: she wanted me to take on a bigger role with a select performing ‘troupe’ of competition dancers that spanned the ages of kindergarten through high school -  though, in reality, most of those future leaders of the world were between second and sixth grades.

I smiled - because what else can one do? - and I clarified the heart of a concern: my provisions. No matter the politics, I would not, under any circumstances, costume children in a way that exposes their midriffs. I wanted skirts to fall at least to the knee and - heaven forbid - no armpits on display either.

In the end, I was overruled on the armpits and skirt length, but the midriff line stood firm. She let me know my mentor would be helping me select costumes for my first season. As if I haven’t worn real William Ivey Long in my performance career!

The competition season began without much drama - at least, on the surface. Oh, there were leadership meetings, of course, which I found disruptive and disgraceful as it relates to my sense of professional decorum, but we’ll save that juicy roast for later chapters.

Boys may not have been allowed to wear tights at Dolly Dinkle’s studio, but they could certainly leap around barefoot on stage with their bare chests on proud display.

Before I moved back from New York, I had already been booked to judge a dance competition. As fate (and poor scheduling) would have it, Miss Dolly’s companies were competing that same weekend - meaning I was both their teacher and their judge. Yes, a conflict of interest, but I’d committed to the gig, and I intended to honor it. Management knew the conflict and okayed it.

I shouldn’t have. My uncle was dying of cancer that weekend. My parents insisted he’d want me to work, but I was a wreck. I should have been with my family. Here’s the truth, turtledoves: no dance job - no matter how “coveted” some director claims it to be - is worth missing weddings, funerals, birthdays, or the last moments with someone you love. Period. Full stop. These jobs will try to convince you they’re once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. Blah blah blah. Nonsense. If it’s your family in need, you need to be there. I learned that lesson the hard way… too many times.

Now, that same weekend, another local dance studio - friends with Dolly, naturally - was eager to introduce me to their one and only teenage male dance student. We’ve got a boy! We’ve got a boy! They were practically squealing. And, of course, they wanted him to meet the only male judge on the panel, because apparently, that’s a magical rite of passage or I was to impart some masculine professional words of wisdom to another teacher’s dance student whom I’ve never taught. We met, we shook hands, I asked what he wanted to do with his life, and wished him well.

During a rehearsal, I chatted with his director - because she positioned herself right beside me hoping I would give pre-performance feedback (I think). She was gushing about his “bright future” and “tremendous potential” while her wunderkind practiced his solo onstage in his costume: a Scottish kilt skirt and essentially nothing else.

“Why isn’t he wearing a shirt?” I asked, eyebrow arched.

“Oh,” she beamed, “that’s because we wanna show his strength.”

My reply was swift: “He can point his feet and stretch his line. That’ll show his strength.”

And that’s where the dialogue ended.

I don’t know when it became acceptable to put minors on stage with bare torsos on display while emotionally performing with hips and shoulders shaking, but I wasn’t immune as a teen. My own Dolly Dinkle Dance Studio put me on stage at competition wearing a fishnet skintight see-through shirt. By the time I reached college I was able to easily get a job as a go-go boy at the only all-male all-asian nightclub in New York. Sure, by my sophomore year I had gotten myself a gig as a superintendent for the City Opera. My confidence level for refined theatre wasn’t yet strong enough during my freshman year, however I had full confidence in my hip-shaking, body-rolling, chest-bearing ability, because I’d had so many months of that training in high school at my dance studio.

Mothers: Do you want your little boy (or girl) to grow up to be a stripper in college? No? Then LET THEM WEAR TIGHTS!

Back to Dolly’s grand opportunity having me head up this new competition team: soon came the matter of the boys’ class uniform. Now, because the girls were in leotards and tights, and we had exactly two boys - one in third grade, the other a high school student of mine whose mother signed him up at every studio I was teaching at - it seemed the most natural thing in the world that the boys would wear a white t-shirt and black tights. I mean, my resume includes top ballet and dance higher educational institutions, for heaven’s sake. In what world would I put a boy in anything but tights for ballet?

It’s the same principle as girls in sports -  we don’t hand them a ruffled skirt and heels to dribble the ball down the court or pitch from the mound. Girls in sports wear the same uniform, pads and protections as the boys, save for the support cup. The uniform is functional. It’s for the work.

But one day, mid-class, Dolly Dinkle herself waltzed in. I’d just put the kids on a break to change from ballet shoes into their taps (always shuffle after tendus, in my opinion) when she announced - in front of the boys, mind you - that boys at her studio would not  be wearing tights.

I was livid. Enthralled with anger. But, of course, I had to stay professional. The children didn’t deserve a front-row seat to my fury.

I asked her why. She looked me dead in the eye and said, “The fathers would take issue.”

“Send those fathers to me,” I replied, cool as a cucumber ready to explain the scientific reasons why dancers wear tights in ballet.

“Absolutely not,” she shot back. “I’m not going to make them do that.”

And there it was - the first real red flag, being waved furiously in the hands of every male dancer who’d come before me, gay, straight, trans, or otherwise. This was not going to be the place to turn out great male dancers.

I’d brought boys into that studio - students who’d followed me from other schools. And how did the studio view them? As bonus features. Boys there danced for free as long as their sisters were enrolled and never the other way around. Which, let’s be honest, should have been the first real red flag. Boys in dance are not an “appendage” to their sisters. That’s not a compliment; it’s an afterthought.

Men often make up half the ballet companies in the world. In Broadway shows - unless the staging is specific - men often make up half the cast. So why on earth would being male disqualify a dancer from wearing the same essential support as his female counterpart?

Tights wick away sweat. They promote circulation. They keep the muscles supported for the jumps, leaps, and lifts. They pull you up, not down. So much of ballet is in the air - literally. I’d wager if you calculated the amount of time a professional ballet dancer spends airborne in a single year, it would add up to days - if not weeks - spent suspended. And tights are part of what makes it possible to dance in the air.

There is no great resolution to my time spent at Dolly’s complex. I didn’t even finish the year - my first in this so-called ‘leadership’ role.

By the seventh month my mornings were spent personal training and my afternoons began white-knuckling my steering wheel, sobbing hysterically in my 2006 Ford Focus before I could force myself inside the dance studio.

It also seemed to me that every day was filled with conflict and designed disruption from leadership. They were so thrilled to have a male dance teacher with New York credits, though my perspective was never considered. For instance, we had marched in the city parade and my suggestions were met with furrowed brows and silence. After all, what did I know about parades, darlings - I’d only performed in THE Thanksgiving Parade in New York sponsored by that very large long-standing department store on 34th Street? I wasn’t seen for my credibility, or the fact that I held certifications from the most elite ballet school in North America they’d not set foot in. I was reduced to my gender, nothing more.

The reason why I didn’t make it to the end of that year? I mean, it was March and the season was essentially over by mid-May with only the recital the first week of June (though they charged the parents full month tuition). I had experienced a medical event and was seeking medical help. I could ‘t work.  No more bulletin boards or invoices for this ‘kingdom kid.’ While I was in the hospital, Dolly’s little court of jesters tried to reach me. After my parents had told them where I was, I began receiving text messages from her staff: telling me, essentially, what I needed to do to make Dolly feel better.

Here I was, trying to find energy to brush my teeth and change my socks - and all they could think about was that I checked in with her. As if I owed her anything at that moment. As if she somehow controlled my narrative beyond filling out her time sheets. As if!

One gem came from a coworker I’ll affectionately refer to as Ms. Clownface - because frankly, no other name will do. She wore makeup so heavy it could have its own gravitational pull, and like many dance parents, her marital history was local currency. Ms., formerly Mrs., Clownface texted me to say that as my friend she wanted me to contact Mrs. Dinkle to explain myself. The next day, she sent the exact same copy-pasted text message again. Some friend.

I must be firmly clear - this was a part-time job with no health insurance. I was sick snd needed time off. There were no flowers, no get-well card, no check-in to see how I was doing - just orders for what I needed to do for Dolly dang-nab Dinkle.

We only get so many pirouettes in life, my turtledoves… so make each turn count.

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Every word in this book was written by the author; AI was utilized strictly as a technical tool for historical research and grammatical refinement. While the events described are rooted in lived experience and public record, certain names and identifying details have been modified to protect the guilty from the immediate fallout of their own history. This narrative remains an unfiltered account of systemic failure and the high cost of survival in the wings.