Just Dance

Most of you probably know that I teach dance. Jazz, specifically. I teach tap also but my heart has always been in jazz. 

I started out in dance like most little girls. My mom put me in a tap/ballet/tumbling class at five years old. I took it for a year before my mom decided to put me in gymnastics instead. As a rambunctious child, I think she saw that my energy was best expelled in tumbling. I probably liked it more anyway at the time.

When I was seven, I remember my dad coming to me and asking if I wanted to take ballet. I loved dancing around the house and had natural rhythm so I think he thought it would be a good idea to put me in class. I said no.

In high school, I decided that I wanted to dance on danceline. At the time, I thought this was truly the best in dance. I remember seeing the danceline perform in middle school and thinking there was no better thing in the world. With the sequins flying, metallic pom poms shaking, and the girls high-kicking their faces, I knew that I had to do it. I tried out at the end of my freshman year and was crushed when I didn't make it. My mom enrolled me in a jazz class for my sophomore year at a local dance studio. She wisely saw that I needed a bit of technique training before attempting to try out the following year. At the end of my sophomore year I tried out again and made it. I was ecstatic, to say the least. Little did I know that you could be cut from routines once you made the team, if your dancing was not up to par. I was cut from the very FIRST dance that we learned. Talk about a blow to the ego. 

After high school, I missed dance (or rather, what I thought was dance) and went back to the dance studio that my mom enrolled me in as a sophomore. That is when my love affair with real dance began. I took as many classes as I could and had dreams of becoming a professional dancer. Of course, becoming a professional dancer when you start training at eighteen years old is quite unrealistic. I suffered a knee injury (which still gives me grief today) but thought at least I could own my own studio one day.

I think that life has a funny way of working out. I truly feel that God has led me to where I am today. Sometimes I look back on my life and wish that I would have started dancing as a kid and stuck with it. It makes me wonder where I would be now. Or if I had not had a knee injury, where would I be now? If I had opened my own studio, I know I would have been ill-equipped to take on such a large endeavor. I never opened my own studio but God led me to one that a friend owned and I have never been happier. In the past five years that I have taught, I have learned so much. I have learned how to teach better and more efficiently. I have loved watching my girls get better each year. I have even become a better dancer through teaching. Who knew that could happen at age 32?

Dance is such a big part of my life so I had to share it with you. I will never be perfect, especially now as I get older. But I can become wiser, and hopefully a better teacher for it.

All images via Giordano Dance

If you have the slightest interest in dance, contact a studio near you. It's never too late to learn to dance!