Just a month away from Mount Gambier’s annual Eisteddfod, Maxine Challinor, Secretary of the Association of Eisteddfod Societies of Australia (AESA) said she was becoming increasingly concerned about children wearing skimpy costumes and performing provocative routines in front of adjudicators at events.
“It’s becoming a child protection issue,” she said.
“This isn’t just happening in Mount Gambier – it’s Australia-wide.”
Mrs Challinor said dance teachers across the country were emulating routines made popular by reality television shows like So You Think You Can Dance, but were not taking into account the age of performers.
“You don’t want a 10-year-old dressed like an 18-year-old,” she said.
“A little girl should look like a little girl.”
Also the President of Backstage Incorporated which runs the Mount Gambier event, Mrs Challinor said there had been several incidents of note in recent years, including a young girl who came on stage and pole danced.
In another year, a main sponsor of the event threatened to pull out, after seeing a particularly risquperformance by a young child.
“He said ‘this is a family event’,” she said.
“I have my children and elderly parents here and he said ‘you should do something’, he was disgusted.”
With over three decades in the eisteddfod scene, Mrs Challinor said she had seen a definitive shift in dance culture in the last decade, saying events were becoming increasingly competitive.
Backstage, parents and teachers were bringing in hairdressers and makeup artists, continually trying to ‘one-up’ each other with more elaborate costumes, said Mrs Challinor.
She said adjudicators at AESA events were becoming so concerned by more risquperformance, they were marking routines down and rebuking dance teachers afterwards.
“We’re not talking older adjudicators here, these are modern, up-to-date women in their thirties.”
The problem was two-fold, said Mrs Challinor, as organisers fought to control mobile phone images taken of children at events appearing on the internet.
Although cameras have been banned from eisteddfods for over a decade, Mrs Challinor said the smaller mobile phone camera was harder to police.
Originally a rule designed to protect the copyright of routines or so as not to distract performers, she said it was now designed to protect children from predators.
“We as organisers cannot police it – we don’t know who are parents and who are not.”
“Who wants to see their kid pop up on a website they don’t know?”
Mrs Challinor said AESA was investigating legal rulings relating to where the duty of care lay should an incident occur.
“If some of these photos come up on a website, does the duty of care lie with the teacher, the school, or the parents?
She said a recent incident at a Victorian eisteddfod had shown the importance of such a rule, with adjudicators asking a man with a camera at the front of the theatre to politely leave.
When he wouldn’t, an astute usher noticed the man was taking shots only at certain times during performances.
Police were called and the man was arrested and charged.
Last year in NSW, a Sydney dance instructor was charged with almost 50 counts of sexually assaulting, grooming and taking naked photographs of a number of students.
The man’s arrest brought the issue of age-appropriate choreography to international attention, as internet forums ran hot with parents expressing their horror at the sexual nature of some of the school’s costuming and routines.
Mrs Challinor said children were the innocent party and she wanted to see parents take greater responsibility over what appeared on stage.
Organisers hands were tied, she said, as they did not see dance routines or costumes before the actual performance.
“It has to come back to the parents.
“They should be stepping in and saying to the teachers, ‘I’m not comfortable with my child looking like that’.
“I think kids have the right to a childhood – they’re making kids grow up too soon.”
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