I wish I could remember the first time I danced.
Growing up, my mom always told me, “you’ve been dancing since the moment you had legs.” That felt like a lie until the first moment I stepped onto a stage to perform. I remember it so clearly, my first recital.
Our preschool dance class featured a ballet, tap and hip-hop piece. In the ballet piece, there was a partnering moment where we held hands and lifted our legs into arabesque. The stage lights came on and I turned to face my partner, but she was gone. I had no idea why.
Strangely enough, this was when I fell in love with the art of dance. In live dance, you never know what could possibly happen. My partner not showing up inadvertently gave me the confidence to go through the rest of the show. I survived without her. I overcame that challenge and I absolutely loved the thrill of it.
I’ve been dancing since I was 5, but I grew up in a competition studio. There isn’t much creation going on there as a mini 6-year-old competitive dancer – yes, like the kind on “Dance Moms.”
In time, I got to teach younger students, but it wasn’t really my own creation; instead, it was a mosaic of how the teachers I grew up with taught. I wanted to be my own teacher, but I didn’t have enough experience to do so. I needed to learn and explore who I was as a dancer first.
Eventually, a former dancer at the studio who later became my teacher and choreographer, Sammie Byrne, planted the idea of improv —, of creating movement as you go. It sounded fun, “creating.” I had never been given that torch before. It was so thrilling to know that someone I looked up to my entire life thought I could benefit from creating on my own. Yet, at the same time, I felt this pressure to make her proud, as I owe her my beginning of love for creating.
Moving came naturally to me, but improvisation did not. I learned a lot by observing, so that’s how I began. I watched the strongest dancers at my studio, both at competitions and online. Seeing what they did, I tried tirelessly to replicate it. Any chance I got, I would purposefully stand next to the strongest dancers and dance alongside them. I would watch them in the mirrors and try to match their lines and movement quality. It didn’t work for me in the same way it did for them: I wasn’t naturally flexible, my leaps were not great and my movement quality – while improving slowly – was poor.
So what to do? I couldn’t replicate their movement and had no clue where to even begin. I was stuck in this improv rut for years. I didn’t know myself as a dancer or a person, which made it impossible to authentically dance as myself.
I gave up and paused my improvisation journey.
As the older dancers graduated, I kept watching dance slowly fade from their lives and I knew I didn’t want that to happen to me. I loved dancing, it felt like my safe place. I allowed myself to feel any and everything when I was dancing. I never wanted to lose that connection with myself, my body and my emotions.
I decided to research college dance programs. I went to dozens of dance team clinics to try and become the dancers I’ve admired, but it wasn’t me. I no longer wanted to fit myself into the mold of competitive dance. But if my future was not in dance teams, where?
For some reason, I felt a pull to look into becoming a dance major. From my home studio, the pipeline was always dance teams, rarely ever dance majors. Because of this, I was anxious. Was there a reason no one else has done this? Should I just deal with dance teams like everyone else before me? No, I needed to find my own path. I needed to see what else was out there, where else I could go.
So, for three years, I went to intensives offered at Lindenwood and Webster universities. I was immediately drawn in by these programs because everyone brought themselves into the dancing. Every dancer didn’t have to be the exact same as the others. It was beautiful and life-changing to watch.
I rarely felt that way with competitive dance. Competitive dance felt like a place where I stood out only for negative reasons. My leg was too low. My foot was sickled. I couldn’t land the flip correctly. It always felt like I was in the wrong, even when I tried so hard to conform. Seeing those college-level dancers perform, I realized I could be on those stages dancing, while still feeling authentically me. I decided to audition for these dance programs, which both required solos.
For the first time ever, I took on creating the solo on my own. It was make or break, it could mean the difference between getting accepted or denied from these programs, and I didn’t know if I had it in me.
I’ve never been confident in my dancing, even when other choreographers created the pieces. How could I create if I couldn’t even perform others’ pieces well? I walked into the empty studio with nothing except a playlist of 20 possible songs and my unyielding perfectionism in hand.
I struggled. I laid on the floor in between every run, questioning if I should have just asked the studio head to choreograph the audition piece for me. But something stopped me: I needed to prove that I could do this for myself. I wanted to feel confident and return to that joyous feeling that made me fall in love with the art all those years ago.
Within a month, I did it: I created a two-minute solo showcasing what felt authentic to the dance training I had up to that point, as well as demonstrating the type of dancer I wished to be.
When I went to my first audition to perform the solo, the judges were immediately impressed with the choreography and gave me a compliment that followed me through the rest of the audition process. I knew if these professionals in the dance world thought my choreography had potential, it truly did. I had searched for this validation growing up and I finally got it by creating, entirely on my own.
I got back into improvisation and started to explore different things that inspired me. Last fall, I began my first semester as a BFA in dance with an emphasis in modern.
I continue to create, forever inspired by my fellow classmates, as well as by nature and human connection. Creating is how I found myself as a person and a dancer, and how I discovered what I want to do for the rest of my life: I live to create. I create to live.
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