Parental advice: At what age should dance lessons start?

You wrote recently about the appropriate age to start music lessons. What about dance? Most classes seem to end with a recital, and I don't want to traumatize my daughter by making her perform in front of an audience before she's ready.

At age 4 to 5, children are capable of learning basic coordination in dance studios, says Maurice Brandon Curry, chairman of the dance department at the Usdan Center for the Creative and Performing Arts in Wheatley Heights, a renowned summer arts camp. "They're not learning dance technique, they're getting the tools to learn dance technique," he says. "You can do a plié with a kid at 5 years old, but it's not going to be a fully focused plié."

Before age 4, a dance class is really "movement for the sake of movement," which is a good thing and exposes the child to music. But most children aren't yet able to grasp serious technique, he says.

As far as the performance question, "that part of the question is the real tricky part," Curry says. A dance recital teaches children the ability to work with others, to achieve the goal of getting onstage, to make them confident in front of a group. "Dance is a performing art," he says. "No one knows your child better than you. If they're not ready to perform, then by all means don't force them to perform."