The majority of students come to us at the University of Chichester in the United Kingdom, where I am a dance lecturer, because they want to develop careers as dancers, choreographers, or dance teachers. They are usually attracted by the opportunity to improve their dance technique and/or to be creative rather than to align themselves with the more conventional avenues of academia, and for most writing will never be a career contender.

A few family snapshots:

1. 1. One day, my father and I stood, chatting, in a bank lobby. “I just don't get it,” he said. “You've got more brains in your head than you have in your feet.”

2. 2. My husband sings in an a cappella chorus, and for one Mother's Day concert we all wore necklaces emblazoned with words our mothers had never said. “Choreography and dance,” mine proclaimed. “What a wonderful career choice!”

3. 3. After watching me perform some years ago, one of my children offered the following critical précis: “Your bra was sticking out.”

I could go on with tales of familial, as well as fraternal and collegial, disinterest and disappointment, not to mention resentment and the occasional frisson linked to artist children and parents, associated with a career that seemingly joins the extremes of narcissism, the temporal and physical limitations mandated by the life cycle of the human body, and the apparent separation from the left-brain activities supported by other fields and disciplines.