This weekend we had the opportunity to watch the annual closing ceremony of a Portland dance academy. Our friends’ daughter is part of that school along with way over one hundred children and also some adults that take classes there. Some of the older kids – high school juniors and high school seniors – perform truly at a professional level and apparently also participate in dance competitions. The show took place in the theater of a local high school. The program was structured in a way that all members of the academy got to perform at least in one dance giving everyone the opportunity to demonstrate what they learned over the course of the last year. The audience is overwhelmingly filled with parents, grandparents, siblings and family friends. This was not our first time watching this show. The performances are truly inspiring – the passion, engagement and focus that the kids ages 5 to 18 demonstrate is amazing and contagious. The program was packed with many dances – because the school is that large. I did not think much of it when the announcer encouraged cheering and screaming at the beginning of the program by referring to the fact that the usual pauses between pieces, where the performers get to bow to the audience, would be skipped for the benefit of a more compact show. The school has a focus on hip-hop and modern music and there are pieces that have a group setting with short solos embedded into the dance, where the dancers showcase a particular skill or move. It seemed totally appropriate to applaud or cheer and scream then. But as the performance went on a different pattern emerged. Almost any time a new dance got underway a spectator would scream out the name of a person – “Go Megan!”, “Go Brady” – and often that would repeat itself through the dance. Initially we chalked that off – well there is always a person extra proud and excited but not long and it became a true disturbance, and in my opinion disruptive to the performance. Even when the seniors showcased very well crafted, expressive and graceful solo performances their names were regularly shouted out. “This is not a stadium” I wanted to shout back – we were in a theater and our experience from ballet performances is that one watches and listens and then applauds at the conclusion of the performance. Perhaps that was it – how difficult for parents used to drive their kids to games and practices to finally just watch, enjoy and observe in awe of what their kids can do without a real or in this case imaginary pursuit of a victory!