College Essay About Dance

When people think “Ballerina”, they often think of bright pink tutus and four year-olds joking around on a stage. In reality, Ballet is a serious commitment that, with the right amount of effort, can be terrifically fun.

I need goals. You can’t just put on a pair of pointe shoes and walk on stage, then perform perfectly (as seen on T.V.). In fact, media representations of ballet are almost always false, which misleads some people I have danced with to think that they aren’t getting it fast enough; they can’t do it. Dancing lessons, in my case, started when I was two. When I set a goal and stuck to it, I stayed in dance, and consequently, when I was twelve I reached that goal of earning pointe shoes. That idea didn’t come to my head, though, until I was a little older and realized that my dream was possible if I worked persistently enough.

Everything takes time. Presently, I go to dance class about seven hours a week, not including the times when there are dress rehearsals or recitals. Like quite a bit of subjects in life, once you learn something, you must practice to keep it. I’m required to actually attend classes, if I don’t want to miss learning choreography, and lose my technique.

People might count a pirouette or a grande jete as a recognizable word, but I’m the only one of the few that I know that would be able to do a rond de jambe on the spot if asked. Of course, it is not necessary to be perfect; sometimes my classmates and I refer to the steps we can’t remember as “that squiggle thing”. I also need to know the proper way to do the steps. Mrs. Denise, my dance teacher calls it “muscle memory”; learn it right the first time, otherwise I will memorize the steps wrong, and it’s difficult to escape lousy habits. Also an immensely important factor is choreography; I must memorize 2-3 minute dances, often multiple per show. To be precise, this winter recital, I dance on stage for about thirty minutes; all