I have always loved dancing. My parents said I was doing it before I could walk, mostly bouncing to the rhythms my dad played on his guitar when he was in college. But I grew up in a small Midwestern town and children's dance classes were limited to the local YWCA ballet and tap lessons. I stuck with it until I was in 7th grade, though, when I asked my mom if I could quit. You see, the girls in my class were a couple years older than me and all went to a much larger school together. Puberty was not the right time to be the odd man (or girl) out. Less than two years later, I found a new dance school and started lessons again. It was still very basic ballet, tap, and jazz in another small town.
In college, I tried out for the pom pon squad and did that for a year, then I found the Contemporary Dance Theater dance company. Ball State was not know for its dance school so again I was limited in my exposure to good choreography and talented instructors.
When I moved to Phoenix, I dabbled in some adult jazz classes, but really found something when I stumbled upon the movie "Swingers." In the final scene, the lovable but goofy lead guy shocks his hilarious but deviant dude friends by asking a girl to dance and sweeping her off her feet -- literally. I was watching the movie with a male friend and we kept repeating that scene to see if we could learn the swing dance moves they were performing on the screen. Soon after, we convinced a larger group of friends to check out the local club that was offering swing dance lessons. It was great fun for all of us but especially me. I felt like I had rediscovered my first love, and it didn't hurt that I was pretty good at it because of all my previous dance training. (It really makes the evening when the best dancers keep asking you to dance.)
About a year later, a female friend asked me to accompany her to a club so that she could get credit for her salsa dance class. The instructor made all of her students attend a certain amount of club nights as they turned a typical bar into a Latin club one night a week. I had tried salsa at a ballroom dance lesson with an old boyfriend but hadn't thought much about it. From that night on I was hooked. I danced with people who introduced me to more people, who told me about a dance school and tryouts for a performance team. The next thing I knew I was dancing 5-6 nights every week. And I was loving life! I didn't get a whole lot of sleep in those years but I had some of the most amazing experiences with people that I still call friends today. And if that wasn't enough, I met my husband on the dance floor. We're still dancing today, teaching Latin dance lessons to beginners.
So, that's where my love of dance has brought me. But I will always wonder how much farther I could have taken it. You know how life happens. You meet Mr. Right, get married, have a baby, move to a foreign country, yadda yadda.
My wish would be this, Fairy God Mother: If I could not work for a year (all my family's expenses would be magically paid), I would like to spend that year learning, practicing and dancing full time with the goal of competing and performing on the pro level. A year is probably not long enough, but if I was actually good at it, the money would sustain me for as long as I wanted to continue. If I wasn't, I'd be ready to say I tried it and now I'm done.
Now, are you ready to wave that wand?
Thank you! I wouldn't have guessed that wish... I'll start looking for that wand :0)
ReplyDeleteI had other thoughts but that was fun to write so I went with it. Can't wait to read everyone else's.
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