I started dancing before I can remember, but I have been told that I was just about three. I started out at a studio that I cannot remember, doing ballet and tap. Yet, because my entire class would have been so young it can hardly be considered dance, but rather a general physical activity with friends. When I was about to turn six my entire family moved, so I changed studios to the one I am at. I still only did tap and ballet for about three years, when I started to fall behind because everyone else was taking jazz and contemporary. So when I was going to be turning nine I started jazz and contemporary.
They were all so different, but they all were quite similar (except for tap, that was pretty different). When I was asked which was my favorite I could not decide because I liked them all for different reasons. I liked jazz because I now had the chance to work on being faster and I was able to learn more leaps. I also liked contemporary because I did not have to worry so much about ballet technique, but it was still the softness and fluidity of ballet. I liked tap because you could make specific sounds and change the sounds and how the sounds could interact with the music if done right.
I liked ballet because it seemed to be the basis of my childhood and it is the basis of dance. A year later my flexibility was falling short so| began to do an acro class, and because of how my schedule ended up I added a hip hop class because why not? Hip hop liked just because it was something new. I liked finding things that were based on ballet and changed to the instructor’s personality. I enjoyed acro because I was able to learn and perfect new tricks, and I could still work with other people because we did a routine. Unfortunately, that was the last year of doing a dance because people never showed up.
I also was in a prepointe class, which was fun, but it was really more of just an extra ballet class, which made me happy anyways. The year after, I did not have a prepointe class, but I did have an extra harder tap class, which also made me happy. This was also the year that I began to be happier in dance because I did not move up a level (that is not why I was happy), and I was able to work with people who were more my level of dancing, and I learned what it was like to actually understand what I was doing and I could improve. I assume l improved a lot because at the end of the year I was told that I could start pointe.
I was not expecting that at all, but I am pretty sure that at some point in the year before I was asked if I could come certain days of the week for pointe class, but I probably did not even think about that. I was afraid I was going to be behind in pointe because everyone else was getting their pointe shoes that month, but I had to go on vacation to my grandparent’s house ten hours away for nearly three months with about a week at home in July because I had a dance summer camp. That summer I faced the worst, “dance deprivation” that I have ever felt.
Dance deprivation is when a dancer is unable to dance, and these things that normally do not happen, start to happen. For me, I began to stretch more, but there were some days where I could not even think of doing anything dance related. There was a lot of watching dance videos and longing to be back in a studio that was ten hours away. I got my first pair of pointe shoes on July 25th, I am not sure why or how I remember the date, but I do. This pair of shoes was the most important thing in my life at that time. This pair of shoes was also the first thing in my life to cause me unbelievable pain that I enjoyed.
I constantly had bad blisters, six on each foot, twelve at a time, constantly. It did not really bother me, I just dealt with it. What I now realize is that everyone else either did not get any blisters, or they only got a few in the beginning and then their feet were all calloused. I lived with blisters for about five months, and when five months came around my toes had enough and they bled. I ended up having to sit out of class for a good forty-five minutes. I got newer thicker gel toe pads, and I did not have another blister ever again.
Or, until December when I was told I had to get new shoes, and the toe pads were ripping. I got my second pair of shoes, which also died, right before our competition. I danced my first pointe dance on dead shoes. Around this time, I started writing down all my dance experiences. It started out as just pointe, but it changed to all ballet, then just anything that I did with dance. To date, I have slightly over 150 pages and that takes up what time I have after dance. I also started modern this year, which I liked because it was something that was kind of new, but at the same time, it felt incredibly familiar.
I was given the opportunity to be the Snow Queen in my studio’s contemporary Nutcracker, which was an amazing experience which I took a lot of lessons from. Now I find myself auditioning here, trying my best to be able to have more dance experiences in new environments because it is what I love to do and I want to be the best I can be. But physicality is not the only thing to dance. There is another entire part, emotional mentality. I previously mentioned that there was a year where I started being happier in dance because I was with people who were more my level and I could work and still have fun.
I was with one group of people for whom knows how many years, and I just stopped improving as fast as they were. I was really frustrated because I could not do any of the things that everyone else could. I seriously considered quitting dance. Fortunately, I was a shy child and would never in a million years vocalize that. There was an older dancer, who is probably a senior by now, but I looked up to her a lot. There was a year where she decided she was quitting. That lasted until Christmas, where she could not take having a break from dancing anymore and came back.
Since then, she has quit, and so has her sister, but I think about that a lot. If I would quit, how long would it be before I realized I hated not dancing and I really did love dancing. Maybe a week, maybe a class, maybe months, years even. But if I had one thing to say to the small, shy child it would be that they did the right thing by not quitting. Whenever someone asks me what I would do without dance, I usually say I do not know. But I have the privilege of participating in dance classes, and I have some mysterious something that keeps me in the studio whether I like it or not.
