The Merriam-Webster dictionary describes dance as moving your body in a way that goes with the rhythm and style of the music that is being played, but a dancer knows that it is so much more.

“Dance is your pulse, your heartbeat, your breathing. It’s the rhythm of your life. It’s the expression in time and movement, in happiness, joy, sadness, and envy” -Jacques d'Amboise.

     When you dance, you put everything you are feeling into it. Dance is an escape from reality because when you dance you don’t have to think about anything. Dancing enables you to find yourself and lose yourself at the same time; it is an adrenaline rush and peace all at once.

“There’s a point when the movement and music grab hold of you and fill you so completely that you become more than a body moving through space; you become art” -Rhee gold

     A dancer’s favorite thing in the in the whole wide world to do (aside from dance) is perform. Dancers will take any opportunity to perform, whether it’s in the mall in front of ten people barely paying attention or on a stage in a theatre in front of 50,000 people staring at them for 3 hours. Dancers love performing because it’s how we communicate our story, how we show our hopes and heartbreak, dreams and dedication, solace and sorrow. There is this feeling you get when you get on stage, it’s not something that can be described as anything more than what we live for.

“You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel alive” -Merce Cunningham

     Dance and dedication go hand in hand. When we are little we watch the older girls dance and we think “I want to be like her someday”, that little girl is the one we dance for. One of the first things a dancer is told is that you’ve got what it takes but it’s going to take everything you’ve got. We work for endless hours and it all comes down to just three minutes on stage. Dance is in our blood, it’s not our hobby, it’s our life.

“Great dancers are not great because of their technique they are great because of their passion."

     In dance it’s not how good you are, it’s how good you want to be, and that is what defines you. It doesn’t matter what anybody else says or thinks because you know that you are working your hardest and if you aren’t then you know that you need to work harder or accept that you are not going to be as amazing as you want to be and know you can be.

“When you dance, your purpose is not to get to a certain place on the floor, it’s to enjoy each step along the way” -Wayne Dyer

     Dancers don’t dance because we want to, we dance because we have to. And it’s that feeling you get when you step into the studio and out on that stage that lets you know that you could not live without dance.

“Dance training is life training” -Joe Tremaine “Dance is a study in making pain look effortless”

     People underestimate the extreme athleticism it takes to be a dancer. Dancers have strength like football players, muscles like lifters, legs like soccer players, stunts like cheerleaders, tumbling like gymnasts, flexibility like contortionists and can handle the pain like no one else. You have not watched a real workout until you have seen a dancer warm up, and you should never make a dancer mad because no matter what height you are they can, and will, kick you in the face. The people you dance with are your family, and this family will do anything for you.

     Most people will never experience what it truly is to be a dancer, and they are missing out. Dance is a lot of hard work, but it is also the most amazing thing on earth.

I am proud to be a dancer.