The traffic on this humble and quiet blog has suddenly exploded in the wake of the arrest of Grant Davies of RG Dance. I'm not surprised as the topics I discussed in a couple of my posts - the first one in particular - go to the heart of much of the discussion that has been happening in social media since the news broke on Saturday, and many people are scouring the internet looking for answers to what now seems like an obvious question - how can this have happened without anyone knowing, it seems so obvious.
Grant Davies is not yet convicted. It is possible - like a few are still hoping - that he is not in fact guilty of the crimes laid at his door. I don't have enough information personally to make that call so I will leave it to the courts to decide. But his arrest has got many many people talking, and looking at everything that RGDance did and stood for. Many of those people are from outside the dance community, seeing it all for the first time. Others are from within the dance community and seeing it with fresh eyes.
And there is a lot to see. Even after the RGDance website, Facebook page and other social media sites were disabled, this particular dance school had chosen to be extremely highly connected on the internet. It was a specific tactic. Their children were photographed like no others and those photos shared, cross-posted, tagged and shared again in every possible forum. There were blog posts and emails and videos and books and TV shows and a lot of persistent marketing. There were several websites under different names. They wanted to make money, for sure. To many of us the sales tactics came across like those of a snake oil fraudster, but lots of people - especially young girls - loved the hype of it all. Certainly RGDance wanted to be seen and they wanted a fan base. To make money or to get famous or for some other purpose that was the clear goal - to build a fan base.
Many of us seeing those photos constantly, everywhere, without even trying very hard, found them difficult to look at with approval. Lots of shots with crotches faced directly to camera, very little covering them. Legs hyperflexed so all the musculature and all other pubic structures were easy to discern. Often in a costume on a stage, but just as often in underwear or pyjamas, 'goofing' around the studio. Anyone daring to comment 'I'm not sure it's appropriate to post that' was ignored or dismissed - obviously we are supposed to be looking at the skill and artistry, 'it's no worse than you would see on a beach', to see anything else just showed we were either prudes or dirty minded.
Well lots of us did report those photos to Facebook or elsewhere as inappropriate. I'm not sure Facebook ever did anything with that. But guess what - there were people looking at those photos who were in fact dirty minded. There was evidence of it! A couple of times I saw it come up in my newsfeed that men were befriending some of these children. I thought that odd and went to look at their profiles, and lo and behold their pages were filled with dancer photos, along with photos of what can only be described as sexually provocative pictures of children. I went on to report those individuals who were in fact blocked on FB (I'm sure they turned up again with new names a day later). Occasionally a ripple would go through the dance community when someone was aware of a suspicious person befriending kids on Facebook, and suddenly everyone was outraged and concerned. But the obvious steps - stop posting these kinds of photos, remove the kids from Facebook and Instagram - it seems these options were never considered much to the befuddlement of many. Even in the wake of the weekend's events many of those pages are still active, all the photos still there, even when we know the whole world is scouring through them right now.
In the light of the last few days many people are speculating about this whole situation in a new light now. There was a clear campaign for as many children as possible to have personal and fan pages on Facebook. There was a clear campaign for the children - with the aid of their parents - to collect as many followers as possible. The constant posting, re-posting and cross posting of photos encouraged more and more likes. What was the true motive here in retrospect? To make these children famous in the showbusiness industry? That was certainly the public position, although it seems like a ridiculous way to achieve it to anyone doing any analysis. To gather followers so that a pedophile could create a network of willing, young, impressionable, eager, 'stars-in-their-eyes' potential subjects? That's starting to look like a real possibility. Friends of friends received friendship requests from Grant. My own daughter did, but she quickly chose to block. How many others - very young children who should certainly not have been on Facebook in the first place - would be so excited to receive a friend request from this 'famous' dance guru who was the teacher of their idols? I'm sure the tactic worked plenty.
And then workshops and concerts and appearances which were increasing in scope and frequency. The travel made it all seem exciting and exotic to those dancers and their fans and fed the idea that they were, in fact, superstars. To many in the Sydney dance scene we assumed RG had chosen to go further afield for their adoration because they weren't too much respected within Sydney - too many stories from ex-RG students floating around to have them be universally embraced here. (The RG community no doubt dismissed this as sour grapes from competing schools). Girls attending these workshops were encouraged to post their own photos as they worked on the tricks they had learned - and many duly and excitedly complied. The adoration of abs began - more and more photos where girls were literally lifting their tops up to be photographed showing their abs, to much admiration (a trend that prompted my last blog post). This of course encouraged their fans to start doing the same or at least trying to emulate. To many eyes now this focus on thin helped to keep the girls looking young - pre-pubescent for as long as possible - and fragile. A desirable trait in dancers possibly, but an even more desirable trait to a certain subset of the pedophile community. More and more fodder for the dirty minded followers, incredibly dangerous for the young girls involved.
A young journalist captured with outside eyes what the concerts were actually for in an article written scarily just a few weeks before the arrest. It was creepy before, it is truly creepy seen in retrospect. It now seems the point of the concerts was to solicit likes on Facebook. The kids were groomed to solicit. And the parents - with stars in their eyes - completely enabled all this, excited about the opportunities their kids were getting to travel and perform. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, we start to think that maybe this was in fact a tactic to increase that 'network' ultimately for the purpose of serving a pedophile's actual motive. (If you haven't read the excellent article it's here (and I'm sure her traffic has increased a lot too!): http://www.honisoit.com/2013/03/seymour/?fb_comment_id=fbc_547047605318489_6361552_569483166408266#
Many people have started commenting on and questioning the inappropriate choreography and costuming that has been pervading the dance scene in Australia, undoubtedly originating in Sydney. Recently an eisteddfod in Queensland introduced very controversially tight new rules on this topic even though many thought it wasn't a problem in Queensland. It seems the Sunshine Coast community felt that trends from the south were starting to head north and they wanted to take a stand against it.
If the trend started in Sydney many people are connecting that to RGDance and their relative dominance in the local dance community. They are technically strong and certainly flashy - lots of impressive acrobatic tricks from strong, well groomed and thin girls. They won lots of sections and often deserved to. Consequently they had a position of power in setting trends and set them they did. Gradually other schools started to copy or emulate in different ways, either getting caught up in the 'trend' or seeing it as the only way to 'compete'. And again, criticism was dismissed - as well demonstrated in the events that led to my first blog. I'm so glad the subject is coming up again and many are asking for change - if nothing else good comes of this tragedy that might be at least one small win. Did the small costumes encourage pedophiles? Well yes...suspicious men were caught on more than one occasion attending eisteddfods to enjoy the show. But with fresh eyes I now suspect the small costumes that RG Dance were a reflection of the preferences of the co-owner of the studio - he dressed his kids how he liked to look at them.
Why were they so strong technically? What was it about the teaching methods at RGDance that created such a stable of very thin, extremely flexible children? Well partly they were selected for body type and skill - there is certainly evidence of poaching and the audition process could have removed any hopefuls that didn't fit the bill. I'm starting to wonder if children were also selected based on their parent's willingness to join the fame seeking atmosphere of the studio. There have been pervasive stories for many years about food diaries and fat shaming, strongly denied by RG many times and seen to be 'proven wrong' by regular photos of their kids sharing cakes, ice cream and other junk food for birthdays and other celebrations. Still the stories persisted along with those of parents questioning things being ostracised overtly or subtley. Although they were self proclaimed as dance technique gurus, others who are more qualified than I question their both their methods and their credentials. Recent events certainly make you wonder about that.
There were so many things that have happened along the way that one can only look back at now and re-evaluate. Grant Davies started a community page on Facebook called 'Dance Parents Connect' - ostensibly as a way to bring the dance community together. How very noble of him, given the controversial nature of his school. Within a day or so of that group starting, once a number of parents flocked to join it (and it wasn't obvious that Grant was the administrator), he start posing conversation starters such as 'how do you keep your dancing child's younger siblings busy during eisteddfods?' Parents - easily identified as to name and studio - quickly responded, explaining how the little brother would play his Nintendo in the corner all day, or the young girls might play outside. Friendly conversation, or information gathering for the pedophile community? It looked wrong to me then, and I amongst others reported it. It looks frightening in the light of new events.
There are so many angles to this story. I don't know what really happened at RGDance. I don't know who knew what or what their real motives were. I suspect we will learn more as time goes on. I do know that many many people are hurting right now, especially the children and families involved and my heart is bleeding for them. I know that many - often young children and teens - are feeling betrayed and let down by people they looked up to. I do know that many people are looking at the situation with new eyes and wondering how it could have happened. We need to harness those critical thinking skills and remember to apply them every single day from now on. We have to learn from this whole hideous episode. We have to seize the moment and say as a community that we won't ever enable this again. We have to question everything we see and the motives of people who tell us to do things we aren't comfortable about. We have to recognise our gut feelings and report, report, report things that don't look right. We can't let this happen again.
