Welcome to Dance Mania!

In today's culture you'll find the music lovers, the computer freaks, and the video game nerds. Today however, they will not be mentioned, instead, I want to talk about the dancers. You'll find this group at their studio twenty to thirty hours a week, but many ask "why do you keep going?" and " you must be really tired?". The truth is in your culture we like to be in front of something, to have someone do something for us, but dancers we just want to move. So we might get tired and we might just cry because we're injured, but everyday we wake up hoping that the first class was dance class. Not to say that we don't ever have our bad days when we get angry because our triples aren't perfect, but that's what makes it challenging, you can never be perfect at it. Dance can sometimes be a negative part of our culture because it can distort your image of beauty. You can watch a dancer like me who doesn't have a ballet body, but I dance from my heart and hope that I can portray the story the music is telling me. Then you can see a dancer who is the typical ballet body, but her heart is not in it. The dancer with no heart has an easy task to fix, put your heart in your dancing. The other dancer has a task that can eat her up inside, her body type. This flaw in dance can bring about the worst in people, but if you dance for you, you'll find that no one can take away your passion and heart for this athletic art form. Dance can also give a child confidence, make them feel all special inside. If you start at a very young age, like me for example I started when I was 2 and a half. I loved to be the kid who did something different. When other kids went home to play outside, I was at dance class learning discipline and structure. When people asked me what I was doing everyday I'd proudly say, I go to dance class. That's the other thing about dance, like any other sport or art it takes a lot of sacrifice. I've gone to only two of the middle school dances, I've never been to one cafe or diner night, and I rarely hangout with my friends on the weekends or after school. So maybe you don't get to see your out dance friends a lot, but if you ask any dancer about their friends at dance, they'll say their like their family. You can tell them your secrets; you get them Christmas gifts, stuff like that. You probably sped as much time with your dance family as you do your real family. If you were to ask a dancer "why do you keep going?" They'll sigh and say..." I don't know what to do without dance it's my heart, my soul, and my life."

- Ashley