Fun & Average or Serious & Perfect

I can think of many times where I laughed or had the inability to laugh but I am going to talk about a time or group of times where I could not laugh at the mistakes but once in awhile I can.  I have been taking dance at my studio (basically my second home), “The Art of Dance” for fifteen years and this year will make it sixteen years of dancing with and for two of the best dance teachers I could ask for; Mrs. Cel & Mrs. Cindy.  Thanks to them and my mom for signing me up, dance has basically become my whole life which can be bad for me at points but, I never lost sight that I am there because it is fun and it is what I love to do. Sometimes during classes, people don’t seem focused when they should be, for example, when it’s two to three weeks until the recital and they mess up but, they laugh and do not seem to care.  For other people, like me, if and when I mess up I can not just laugh or brush it off, I have to keep going over it in order to get right. There are only certain times where I let myself laugh for making a mistake because if I keep getting the same thing wrong, laughing is the only way to get me through the moves or dance without starting to cry and stress myself out. During my solos rehearsals are the only other time where I let myself laugh because it is just me and technically no one will know except me and my teachers if I mess up, not a whole class.  You usually hear your music or art teachers say “Practice makes Perfect” which is what my dance teachers say all the time and that is what I do; practice the dances every single night that I do not have dance, practicing certain moves with my Pointe shoes because I have not been on them in about two to three years. Practicing is what can help make the dances perfect but, in sophomore year, I sprained my MCL during ballet by doing a turn and my heel deciding not coming off the ground. I had a solo that year which ended up turning into a thirty minute practice period for my other classes, since I would not have had enough time to have my solo finished and fine-tuned in time for recital.  This was a time where I could not laugh because I was really looking forward to having a solo and even if I tried to laugh I probably would have ended up crying anyway. The biggest thing that is hard to laugh or joke about is most likely how hard I am on myself. Last year I had a solo which had a deep meaning to me and when I was dancing on stage at the recital, I actually started crying which made me wobbly and stumble. My dad ended up videotaping it and had sent to me and as I watched it, I was pointing out what went wrong instead of complimenting myself for something that I did in the dance. I am definitely the most hard on myself for dancing because I want everything to be perfect and if it’s not, I criticize and I feel like everyone is their own worst critic, especially dancer, musicians or any performers for that matter. Throughout the years of dancing, I think I have slowly started to come to the fact that dance does not always have to be serious, it can have times to fun and be silly.  There are basically two types of people in my dance classes, you have the ones who are just there to have fun and socialize with their friends and the ones who are serious that want the routines to be perfect. When I look back at these times where I could not laugh and then look to where I am now, I realize that I should have laughed more at the tiny mistakes that I made that, honestly, did not impact where I am today. Dance is still a big part of my life and I hope that I can continue dancing for the rest of my life. Photo by fingle on Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA