Who lets a ten-year-old dress like this? Dione's mum has no qualms - and spends thousands on her daughter’s dance outfits.

By Helen Weathers


'It's only a costume': Kim says she has no qualms about her daughter's revealing outfits because it's part of the dance competition and not what she would wear in every day life


Blue eyes heavily made up with glitter shadow and fringed with false eye-lashes stare confidently into the camera. The lips are ultra glossy and her skin has the unnaturally golden-brown hue of fake tan.

Big hair, teased and backcombed into an elaborate ‘do’ is set off by a sparkly head-dress, while her £900 costume in a lurid eye-catching neon colour is studded with hundreds of Swarovski crystals which glitter and catch the light.

The pose and appearance is that of a young adult, dolled up like a Las Vegas showgirl, but the girl in the picture is just ten years old. And Dione Blackwell has been dressing like this since she was six.

These are the pictures Dione’s parents, Kim Priestman, 33, and Lee Blackwell, also 33, have on the walls of their home in Hull, instead of the kind of snaps most parents have on display of their kids; casually dressed, unadorned, the way nature intended.


But then Dione is a disco freestyle dance champion and these days being a talented dancer isn’t enough on its own. It seems you have to gild the lily — to an extreme degree — to have any chance of beating the competition.

When I meet her, Dione is free of make-up and wearing ordinary clothes. She is a beautiful, delightful, unspoilt child with long naturally-blonde hair and a sweet nature. But it’s the images on the wall of her painted and preened like an American beauty pageant contestant that are utterly mesmerising. And not for the right reasons.

Yet perhaps the most disturbing aspect of all is that her mother, Kim, a dinner lady, thinks they are simply lovely. She looks completely baffled when I suggest to her that the heavy make-up and skimpy carnival costumes with cutaway sections might be rather inappropriate for such a young child.

‘Everyone knows the more glam the girls look, the better they will do. Plain girls don’t get noticed by the judges,’ says Kim, who spends every penny of her £6,000-a-year pay on Dione’s hobby and elaborate custom-made outfits.

‘It’s only a costume, a form of dressing up. It’s not as if Dione wears these clothes every day of the week.’

As for the potentially damaging trend of making little girls look like miniature adults, encouraging them to focus on and celebrate how they look, rather than what they can do, Kim just doesn’t understand it.

‘I can’t see any harm in it,’ says Kim, ‘There is nothing sexual about it. It’s just about being glam, athletic and having some fun. Dione loves it and if she didn’t, we wouldn’t let her do it.’

Dione, who, it must be said, seems a completely unprecocious child, free from vanity, adds: ‘I love everything about disco freestyle. I enjoy having my hair and make-up done. Of course the dancing, and how talented you are, is the most important thing, but you have to catch the judges’ attention in the first place so their eyes watch you dance.

Too much? Kim applies her daughter's make-up which Dione says she loves being able to wear


‘At competitions, younger girls come up to me and say, “I love your costume,” and ask to have their photographs taken with me. I don’t look at other girls and think, “She’s got a better costume than me”. I just think, “She has a lovely costume.” We are all friends.’

With the parents, however, it is a different story. They take a keen note of what the other girls are wearing. Immersed in a highly-competitive world — which seems to be a cross between Strictly Come Dancing and My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding with it’s ridiculously over-the-top fashion confections — Kim is inordinately proud of Dione, who is now ranked second best in the UK in the under-12 category.

Dione is undoubtedly a talented gymnast and dancer, as videos of her performances affirm. Her routines are athletic and acrobatic, similar to rhythmic gymnastics, and there is nothing overtly raunchy or suggestive in her disco moves.

Dione trains for ten hours a week, on a mixture of gymnastics and dance, and every Saturday Kim makes the two-and-a-half-hour round-trip drive from Hull to Rotherham so Dione can attend one of the best dance studios in the north of England and receive private lessons. So, given Dione’s talent, why the need to dress up like an overblown showgirl?

In one respect her mother seems right: you don’t get to this level of success in disco freestyle these days without looking like this.

Just as the costumes on Strictly have become racier, more revealing, and sexier with each new season, so the trend is filtering through to grass-roots dancers — at an ever-younger age. A trend, in many cases, driven by parents determined to give their child the edge.

Not that Kim could be remotely described as your archetypal pushy stage mum. She is certainly not the type to seek recognition and plaudits vicariously through her pretty daughter.

To her, disco freestyle is a healthy sport and the competitions provide a small taste of glamour and fun to liven up what might otherwise be a rather drab existence.

Kim says: ‘When you go to the competitions, you see the other girls and some of their costumes really catch your eye. People talk to each other about different designers, where they got their outfits from.

‘Some girls wear home-made costumes, but some spend up to £1,800. Dione’s cost around £900 and she needs around four a year, but two of those she receives free because she is sponsored by a designer. We have to sell on her costumes second hand to be able to afford the next one.’

On top of the costumes, Kim has to fork out for dance classes, entry fees for competitions, travel and accommodation for which the only return is a silver trophy, as there is no prize money in what is an amateur sport.

Dione’s father Lee, a civil engineer, wanders into the room. He has the bemused look of a dad who doesn’t quite understand the whole glittery world of freestyle disco and is staggered by the massive cost of his daughter having to look the part.

His salary goes on all the family’s normal living costs, while Kim’s earnings are completely ring-fenced for Dione. Both admit that if they had a second child, they’d never be able to afford their daughter’s hobby.

‘To be honest, I’d prefer it if all the girls just wore plain black leotards and had their hair tied back in ponytails, because it’s supposed to be about the dancing isn’t it?’ says Lee, surveying the row upon row of dance trophies on display in the living room. (There are, Kim says, another 400 in the loft because they haven’t got the space for all of them.)

‘I mean, if we had a son, we’d only be paying £3.50 a week subs for rugby or football. We’ve had to make huge sacrifices so Dione can compete at this level. This is the first year we’ve had a holiday abroad for a couple of years. We could do with a new car, but that’s out of the question.’

Indeed, Kim, who met and fell in love with Lee while on holiday in Ibiza 12 years ago, dreads to think how much she has spent on her only child over the years. ‘I can’t bear to think of it,’ she shudders.

‘No, I can’t put a figure on it, but we’ve had to make a lot of sacrifices. Every penny I earn goes on Dione. I buy my clothes from Primark. My idea of splashing out on myself is to get something from Topshop. But I can’t afford to do that.’

Like many young girls, Dione started dancing at four with ballet lessons, but switched to disco freestyle aged five. Kim’s cousins — now in their 20s — had taken classes when they were younger and enjoyed them hugely, and Dione loved the high-energy routines from the start.

The era of disco dancing was born in 1978 following the huge success of Saturday Night Fever, starring John Travolta, and it is today recognised in the UK as a dance sport, just as ballroom dancing is.

The English Amateur Dancesport Association (EADA), which has an NSPCC-approved child protection policy, has strict rules on children’s costumes. Beginners are allowed to wear costumes only in a plain design without any decoration.

The next level is ‘Starter’, which allows children to wear outfits made of any fabric or design, but without sequins, beads, rhinestones or any other form of glitter. Only dancers of Intermediate or Championship level can wear costumes elaborately decorated and in any design. Or as Kim puts it: ‘They have to earn their stones.’

Talented: Dione has won a number of dance competitions but did she need all that adornment to do it?


The EADA website advises parents to be ‘sensible’ about make-up and accessories and to be careful about posting pictures online; the subtext clearly being that they may be sought out by the unsavoury and perverse members of our society.

No unlined see-through materials are permitted on juvenile’s costumes, except on sleeves, and there is a list of permitted necklines for dresses. No straps are allowed and skirts can be no higher than 5cm above the knee. Stretch lace is permitted, as is netting, but not lurex or glitter patterns.

Dione was a ‘Champ’ by the age of six, so since then she’s been wearing the full war-paint and spangles for competitions. Kim concedes the costumes have become decidedly more elaborate in recent years Recently, however, stricter rules have been imposed, perhaps in response to the increasingly heavily made-up appearance of the contestants, more appropriate for adults than children.

Kim tells me: ‘Fake tan has been banned for under-eights, and the under-12s aren’t allowed to wear false eye-lashes or other face adornments, like stick-on rhinestones.’

Could this be because it was all this competitive dressing was becoming a little out of hand? ‘I don’t know’, replies Kim, who genuinely doesn’t seem to have given it much thought.

Certainly, Kim didn’t think twice about smothering Dione in fake tan and sticking on the false lashes before it was outlawed. Indeed, it was this look which won Dione the title of ‘Face of Feva Magazine’ (for people who compete in freestyle disco) in 2008. Kim proudly pulls out a portfolio of photographs of Dione, togged up to the nines and in various hand-on-hip poses, which might make many parents pale.

Supportive: But father Lee admits he wishes the competitions were more about the dancing than the costumes


But in the world of freestyle disco (there are more than 400 girls competing in the under-12 categories in the UK) this is seen as completely normal and really no different from young children dressing up in their mum’s clothes and make-up and prancing in front of the bedroom mirror. To them it’s charming, adding a bit of pizzazz to the performance.

‘Dione is in a secure and safe location when she dances at these competitions,’ says Kim, who insists she is not obsessive about either the competitions or the way Dione looks, nor concerned about child protection issues.

‘No one can walk in off the street to watch these children dancing. You have to apply for tickets through your dance club and you have to be registered. Parents are only allowed to video their own children performing.

‘Sometimes when we nip out of a competition to get something to eat from the fish-and-chip shop, people will look at the children in the make-up and do a double take, thinking, “What the heck?” But it’s just for the competitions. It isn’t real life.

When Dione grows older, she may not want to spend so much time training. I’d have no problem if she wanted to give it up. She’s just a normal kid, who wants to be a fashion designer. We are doing this for her, because she enjoys it, not us.’

Dione is now gearing up for the Disco Kid championship held in Blackpool this December. It is the biggest event on the disco freestyle calendar and Dione is already dreaming of her new costume, which will come courtesy of her sponsor.

No doubt it will be even more eye-catching than the last. Trends change quickly in disco freestyle and netting is big this year, says Kim, and big, big shoulders.

Headbands with butterfly motifs, which were all the rage a couple of years ago are out and ‘visor headgear’ is in.

But as the video of Dione dancing plays on the television in the background, the costumes act as a gaudy distraction from the acrobatic, grace of a beautiful, talented child who needs no adornment.


source:dailymail