Dance

I started dancing when I was five at Pinewood School of Dance. It was a huge part of my life until I graduated from HS. I took classes in all different styles; ballet, tap, jazz, lyrical, pointe. My favorite was probably lyrical. It's similar to ballet but you use more modern and popular music. You don't have to be as stiff or structured eigther, I found it a lot more fun. Ballet is much stricter. It's all about discipline and really makes you work hard. You pretty much have to squeeze every muscle in your body at the same time in order to keep your balance and to control your movements so you look graceful. It may seem easy, but its not. Pointe is even harder but its a major thrill. Not many people can say they can turn around on their toes. Pointe shoes actually don't hurt as much as you'd think they would. There's a solid plaster that lines the inside of the shoe from the ball of the foot to the tips of the toes to create support. The hardest part is keeping the satin ribbons from coming untied. At the dance studio I studied we'd get in a lot of trouble if a ribbon fell out so we had to do things like hairspray the ribbons to our tights and even crazy glue them. My studio was so strict because we had a dance company. The director chose a group of girls from each age group to practice extra each week and learn a lot of dances to go to competitions with. We had to buy costumes, a certain kind of make up, certain brand of shoes, and even certain tights. It was expensive but well worth the rush of performing on stage. Our typical competition season went from January through May. But from May to December we spent every Saturday learning new dances and cleaning them to make them perfect. It was hard work but it paid off. My company won a lot of awards for the dances we performed and took home a lot of platinum and grand champion trophies. It was so much fun to be a part of and some days I wish I was still doing it.