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What do I love?
I am a dancer, and dancing is what I love. When you think 'dancer', you may think of shows like 'So You Think You Can Dance' or 'Dancing With The Stars', or even 'Bunheads'. That's not at all what dancing is like. Dancing isn't all about who is the best, or who can do the most turns, or who can lift their leg the highest. Though once you get to a larger, more professional scale, dancing is competitive, at the level I'm at, dancing is all about camaraderie. Not only do I love the physical movement of dancing, but I love the people I do it with. Before I tell you about how much I absolutely adore the people I dance with, though, I'm going to tell you about why I fell in love with dancing in the first place.


Why did you do this in the first place!?
Like every stereotypical little girl, I wanted to be a ballerina when I grew up. When I told my mother this, she eagerly signed me up for classes, glad that I wanted to do something other than sit and read (one of my favorite kindergarten pastimes). I quickly grew to be an avid dancer - I ate, slept, and breathed dance, even though I didn't spend even five hours of my week at the studio. As other kids grew up, they enrolled in sports like soccer, football, basketball, and volleyball. When I told them the sport I did was dance, they scoffed at me and told me that dancing wasn't a sport, that you could never make any money in dancing. Like the stubborn third grader I was, I told them I would prove them wrong. There my dance career truly started.


The Movement of Dance
Dance class, for me, is an oasis. My body naturally does what dancers do - certainly not natural things. Dance makes me feel like I was made to do something special, made to do something im[injection]portant. I slouch all the time; in dance I'm not afraid to stand tall. I do all kinds of dancing - ballet (and its accompaniment, pointe), modern, musical theatre, hip hop, jazz, tap, contemporary, and even acrobatics. It taught me to be the person I am through its many styles. I have become a little bit of each of my dance styles, and they have become a bit of me. The movement of dance is natural and utterly perfect to me. I feel like I'm walking on air. It is my escape. But dancing also provides healthiness to me. I eat easily twenty thousand (almost 150% more than an average human) calories a week. I lose weight. Dance is healthful, and makes many lives better by letting people lose weight through something that isn't as strict as running on a treadmill - something they can fall in love with.


The People of Dance
This is the part that is going to be hard for me to type, and probably hard for you to read. The thing that really separates dance form any sport, to me, is the people who do it. Dance is a sport (and an art form), only for those resilient and adaptive enough to go through many changes - of character, of pace, of style, and make it feel smooth, and special. For this contest, one of the judging criteria is how the change in coding relates to our topic. My text in this is blue because it has to do with one of the people I danced (and hope to dance one again) with. My friend Katie has been dancing with me since I was 4 and she was 3. She was diagnosed last year with leukemia. She can't dance any more because of it, and that means that part of her, but of what made us friends, is taken away. I can't even explain how much this breaks my heart. I used to dance for myself, but now every dance I dance for her. Dancing for her is like dancing for the part of me that is not inside my body. She is the embodiment of why I dance now. I'm the writer, but she's my muse. Her favorite color is blue.

Now that I've taken you through the sad side of my dance career thus far, I am going to take you to the happy side; my dance teacher, Miss Lori. This woman means everything to me. She is my counselor, my friend, and like a second mother to me. I can always tell the truth to her without feeling like I'm being judged. She is the reason I kept dancing - even when I thought I wasn't good enough, she always had something that made me feel like it was worth it again. She made the words of Abba's 'Dancing Queen' come to life for me.


The End
I'm sorry if this wasn't what you're looking for in your contest, Sheta. But I hope that I showed you why I am willing to spend 20 hours a week away from home at the dance studio. I hope I showed you why I dance now, and why I never quit dancing. I might've made you laugh, I might've made you cry, but now I realize that this is for me. Now all of Res can see why I am in love with dance.



This is for Sheta's passion contest