Dance

I started taking dance classes at a local dance studio when I was in kindergarten. My first dance class was a ballet/tap combination class and we did a tap dance at the end of the year recital to a song called "Be My Little Baby Bumblebee," complete with bumblebee themed costume. I went on to take dance classes all the way through senior year of high school (13 years), learning the styles of ballet (including dancing on pointe), tap, jazz, and lyrical. Ballet and lyrical were my favorites because I found I preferred graceful, elegant, and expressive forms of dance the best.

From kindergarten through 5th grade I only took 1-2 dance classes a week and only performed at the studio's end-of-the-year recital. But by 4th grade I started to get an itch to do more with my dancing. A few of my friends had joined one of the studio's competition groups and I was interested in trying that too. In 4th grade I was also placed in my first ballet class that performed its recital routine as part of the studio's ballet production. The ballet productions were a sequence of several ballet dances all set to music from the same movie or stage show, telling a story or expressing a theme through all of the dances. I loved the feeling of performing my dance as one part of a larger story of many dances. The ballet production from 5th grade, set to music from Cirque du Soleil's "Quidam," remains one my favorite dances to this day.

In 6th grade I joined a competitive dance group for the first time. As part of this group I learned a tap dance and a jazz dance to perform at 3 competitions during the winter and spring months, as well as the studio recital. I also started learning to dance on pointe and taking classes in the Cecchetti method of ballet technique. Cecchetti ballet classes teach specific ballet technique exercises at the barre and in the center, along with classical ballet theory and terminology. The classes are organized into 6 grades of increasing difficulty and dancers must pass an examination before a panel of judges to move on to the next grade. I made it up through Grade 4 in Cecchetti. In 7th and 8th grade I also added classes in lyrical/modern dance and was part of the studio's competitive production routine. (This was similar to the ballet productions but shorter and featured more than one style of dance.) Eventually I was taking up to 7 dance classes a week.

I loved being a part of a competition group, even though it was a much more intense dance learning environment than I had experienced before. I was expected to learn dances at a higher level and much faster than I had before in order to be ready to perform at the first competition in late January. For the first time I also began to understand what it really meant to perform a dance. This was more than executing a set of steps exactly as taught, but putting strength and energy into every body movement and expressing emotions through facial expressions and body language. It wasn't easy at first, but soon I realized how much more powerful and exciting it felt to dance with true performance quality. Being in a competition group was an exciting social experience too. I became close friends with many of the girls in my group and enjoyed hanging out with them between classes and at hotels when we had to travel and stay overnight for competition weekends. I loved the camaraderie at the competitions - preparing our hair, makeup, and costumes together, warming up together, watching other dances and cheering on other groups from our studio, and celebrating the award results. I only won a few major awards at dance competitions - a 3rd place overall for a tap dance in 7th grade and some 1st places for production routines - but that wasn't important to me. I just loved performing, watching other dances, and spending time with my group.

The summer between 7th and 8th grade I experienced a national dance competition for the first time. Now this isn't quite as big of a deal as it sounds. There are hundreds of dance competition companies that hold events at high schools and convention centers around the country during the winter and spring months. Then each of these companies has 1-3 "national" competition events during the summer, usually held in popular vacation destinations (ex: Las Vegas, Orlando, New York, Chicago, Atlantic City, Myrtle Beach, Los Angeles, etc.). Nationals aren't that different from regular competitions, but the judging is a little harder and there might be some more specialized categories. My studio went to nationals every other summer, since it tends to be expensive and time consuming. The first nationals I went to was in Biloxi, MS. I remember having some of the most fun there I ever had in all of my 13 years of dance. Best of all our production routine from that year, "Mary Poppins," won 1st place and got a huge response from the audience. Because we won that award we got to perform it again at a special exhibition showcase for dances that won top awards. I went to another nationals two years later in Myrtle Beach, which was also pretty fun, but I'll always remember the Biloxi nationals as being my favorite.

When I got to high school I found myself in the position of having to make some tough choices about my dancing. At the start of 9th grade I was placed in the studio's Junior Company, the second highest competition group. Unfortunately the classes for that group conflicted with marching band rehearsals, which I had recently joined at my school. I had made a commitment to band so I couldn't back out of it, and I enjoyed so it didn't want to. Not to mention I realized it was probably best to focus on extracurricular activities that were school affiliated now that I was only four years away from college. But it was tough to realize that I had to either be in a lower level competition group or not do a competition group altogether. In the end, as hard as it was, I chose to not do the competition group. I still took ballet with Junior Company and was in the studio's "Scooby-Doo" production that year, but it definitely wasn't the same.

But when one door shuts, another always opens. For the first time I was able to pursue dance outside of the studio. This started with performing in a local community theater stage play production of "The Nutcracker" in the fall of 9th grade. This wasn't the actual ballet, but instead was a drama version with speaking, but there was some dancing. I was cast as the Sugar Plum Fairy because I had the most dance training of anyone who tried out. I performed in two dance numbers and even got to be on pointe. I had done a couple plays before but this was the biggest role I ever had in one. I loved being able to dance and act in the same show and I had always dreamed of being in "The Nutcracker." (What little girl who takes dance classes doesn't dream about that?)

Through the rest of high school I still kept my dance classes to a minimum, taking just a ballet class and maybe one other class. Senior year I only did a solo. Through much of freshman and sophomore year I missed the dancing I used to do in middle school. The other activities I did were fun but they didn't fulfill me in the way that dance did. That changed junior year when I decided to join the color guard section of the marching band. Here I got to dance again, albeit with a flag/sabre/rifle and on a football field or gym floor, but I got the same feeling of joy of performance I had in dance. Not to mention my years of dance training meant I already had many of necessary skills for color guard and I excelled quickly. I won't get into much more of this now since I'll give more detail in my post about color guard. Senior year my school started a dance program and I got involved with the after school dance company.

After high school the only dancing I did was in conjunction with color guard, performing in college guard and then coaching middle school guard. I love watching dance TV shows like "Dancing with the Stars" and "So You Think You Can Dance" and movies with a dance theme. I'd like to learn to ballroom dance someday and I enjoy exercise DVDs that are dance inspired. It's something that got into my blood a long time ago and will always be a part of me.

I never had the technique or the body type to be a professional dancer and I knew this from a young age. I never wanted to pursue that route in life either. I had other life passions that interested me more as career paths. However, dance played a huge role in developing my musical interests. Around 4th grade I started listening to music very much from a dancer's perspective, imagining what style of dance, choreography, and costume would fit with any music I heard. I was especially drawn to music that told some sort of story or had a clear theme. In my 13 years of dance I learned more than 30 different dance routines and the ones that are the most memorable had a clear story or theme as well. This is why I loved the productions so much. I loved being part of a story told through dance and how the music could express the emotions and events of the story. The music of the productions I was part of included "Home Alone," Cirque du Soleil's "Quidam," "Chicken Run," "Mary Poppins," "The Little Mermaid," "Cinderella," "Scooby-Doo," "Alice in Wonderland," and "Peter Pan." I even got to play some interesting characters. I was a painter in "Mary Poppins," one of Ursula the Sea Witch's evil minions in "The Little Mermaid," a fairy of Spring accompanying the Fairy Godmother in "Cinderella," and even Tweedle Dum in "Alice in Wonderland." Through all of these dances I learned about how music, choreography, costumes, and props could all work together to tell a beautiful and powerful story with no words at all. Dance has definitely made me very sensitive to how music can express emotions and tell a story.