The Dance Saga- Part 1

I took dance for about 7 years at 4 different schools, and I must say that while part of it was absolutely wonderful part of it was absolutely horrible. So here are some of my experiences with dance....

I started at a dance school back where we used to live, which was my absolute favorite school. I loved the teachers, the other students, and there was a good balance of fun and seriousness. The recitals were huge and lasted forever (but were still awesome), and the Nutcracker was always an experience. My last recital was absolutely insane because I had to appear on stage 10 different times. I had to keep running back and forth and changing costumes and hoping my hair would stay up and at the same time attempt to do it all in a period of just a few minutes. It was a miracle that I didn't do the wrong dances at the wrong times, but I remembered which was a good thing or my teacher might have killed me. (Only because she cared of course =])

When we moved I had the option of either getting heavily involved in dance competitions (definitely out since they didn't focus a whole lot on ballet), driving 40 something minutes to a large dance studio, or going to a very small studio five minutes away. Let's just say we settled with option 3. I very much enjoyed the classes and all, but it was all a bit of a let down compared to the last school I was at. I was used to classes with 12 or more, and here we were lucky to have 2 people in the older class. I was the only person on pointe in the entire school, so I did get private lessons with that. However, I just wasn't....satisfied. There were no other really good people to push me, no Nutcracker, okay let's just face it; I was spoiled. So when I finally started getting over this feeling the school shut down. I tried to act all sad about it, but inwardly I was thrilled. Now I could go to the big dance school 40 minutes away that had a Nutcracker and everything. Soon my parents signed me up, and before I knew it I was heading there for my first class. I should have known it was all too good to be true...

For one thing all my classmates were snobs. They looked down their noses at you like you were some insignificant clump of dirt while they were the stars of the universe or something....By the end of the first class I wasn't sure I could stand another class with any of them again. Secondly the teacher was extremely annoying. She had broken her leg doing something retarded in her house (fulfilling her life long dream of sliding down the banister maybe?) and so she sat in a chair the whole class and yelled at us. I'll admit dance teachers have to be somewhat strict, but it was a little bit annoying to have her yelling at us like that when she wasn't expending a bit of effort herself.

The pointe work hit me real hard simply because I hadn't really been pushed a whole lot in my last school. While we were finishing up our pointe at the end of the first class there was another class that came after us (hip-hop I think) watching us through the window while they waited. I could have sworn they were laughing right at me. By this time I was so annoyed I wanted to tell them to get in here and start doing pointe work and see how much they liked it. (I didn't have too much sympathy for the sport of hip-hop at the time). To top it all off I discovered that they weren't even having auditions for the Nutcracker. Instead all the parts had been cast before classes had even started for the year, and I had been cast as a mouse which I had already been twice previously in my first dance school. Well this was about the last straw, and my parents and I decided that if I really truly didn't love this school then it wasn't worth driving 40 minutes for. I didn't even last three classes there...

After much searching around, we decided to try a place which looked a bit more serious, (that is the biggest understatement ever recorded), had actual auditions for performances, and was even a little bit closer than the last place. So we decided to give it a try. I desperately hoped that I would really love this place (even as much as my old one) and that I would get back up to speed on pointe and all that. Sometimes hoping can be a pointless endeavor....

To be continued.....=]