There's something about dancing that just hits me at the core of who I am. I've tried for so many years to try and figure out why dance has become such an integral part of who I am and why it's so important in my life but I can never figure out why, I just know that it is. From ballet, jazz, merengue, salsa, pointe, tap, lyrical, mambo, and more I can't seem to stop performing year in and year out.
There's something in the act of performing and getting that step just perfect that makes me feel so much more fulfilled in life. I use practices as my study breaks and stress relievers. The practices and hundreds of people I've danced with over my 15 years of dancing have kept me sane and motivated to strive for more technique, seek more experiences, and learn new styles.** I no longer get nervous and jittery before I go on stage, but instead I feel anxious and ready to let my body take over. The feeling of being before hundreds of people who paid to see your show, executing a move perfectly, and performing for all to see motivates me every day to go to practices, extra rehearsals, or even dance in my room to a song all alone. It's not something I do just because, it's a part of who I am. When I try and explain this to people who don't understand, it's almost impossible to have them grasp the experience of being on stage after hours and hours of practice, sweat dripping down your face, eyeshadow and glitter shining on your eyes, and just letting your body take over the music. When I'm on stage, I don't even think about the moves - somehow they just come... I think about "performing", looking out to the audience, and enjoying my precious and limited 4 minutes of time to be on stage.
The funny part is that this feeling of adrenaline, excitement, and self-fulfillment extends far beyond the stage as I've realized - it goes into social dancing and clubbing as well. You know when you have a great salsa or mambo dance if you're not trying to follow, but if you're thoroughly enjoying the dance. The dance itself becomes a performance sans stage. The crowd is the audience and your partner is your co-choreographer for those 4-5 minutes of bliss that constitutes a social dance. And somehow a connection is always fabricated with this stranger who you've just spent the last 4 minutes with dancing - it's a connection that doesn't last longer than the dance itself, but a connection that makes you able to transcend the dance floor and make the moves mean more than what they are. I think that's one thing that distinctly separates amazing dancers from good ones - for me, they not only execute moves with precision, accuracy, and technique, but they genuinely enjoy every time they step, every hand styling, every drop of sweat, every turn, and every pattern that comes their way as they move to the rhythms that are played. It's their way of expressing themselves and their smiles and "performance" faces on-stage and off-stage show it. I can only hope that I have shown and continue to show my love and passion for dancing the same way it shows for these performers. Because in the end, we aren't really "performing"- we are just dancing from our hearts, doing what we love, and showing the world how much dance means to us.
** Shout out to my mother who took me to endless practices every week as child and pushed me to further continue my passion. Surprisingly, I wanted to quit dance when I first started, it was because of my mother that I didn't. She and the rest of my family still support me 100% in shows and they never missed a show before college. Even now, as long as I ask them, they make it out to support me in another state - the support is unyielding, noticed, and appreciated.
