Passion for Dance

“It’s what I’ve always wanted to do, to show the fun, the joy of dance.” -Martha GrahamThese words are words to live by in the world of dance.  A famous dancer herself, Martha Graham certainly succeeded in doing this.  What is so sad to me is that I love dancing so much, and I do it every day, but other people have never been able to truly see the real purpose of dancing: to inspire, to entertain, to become someone or something else, and to connect with an audience.  It’s an art, the art of movement.  Dance isn’t all about fun and glamour, however.  In fact, dance is mainly about work, and lots of it.  This includes master classes, daily training, and painful shoes in addition to muscle pain and common injuries among dancers such as tendonitis, jumper’s knee, and over-rotated hip joints.  The amazing thing about this is that no matter how difficult the work is, I will always love to dance more than anything else in the world.  That’s what makes it a passion.Once you get past all the pain and hardship though, dance is the most beautiful thing in the world to watch.  A lot of the time people don’t give dancing a chance, especially ballet dancing.  Young people don’t like the music and when they look at the movement, they don’t really see what they are supposed to be seeing.  If you never open yourself up and embrace what is right there in front of you, you cannot be truly inspired.  Dance is the only thing that takes you on a journey to someone else’s life without using words.  To express the emotions of oneself and others and to prove to an audience that you have become another person and to transmit those emotions beyond the people in the front row.  This is the most important thing to me as far as becoming a better dancer- not only making sure that the people that do care feel inspired, but that the people with the worst attitude towards dance feel the most inspired.Even if the audience is far from being inspired, another goal of dance is to illustrate a story through the series of movement, or choreography.  Each step is necessary to the combination of elements to make the story run through the minds of the people in the audience.  In this case, dancers become three things in one: artists, athletes, and actors.  When all three things are put together, more than dance is seen on the stage- there is also magic.All in all, don’t ever think that dance is boring or pointless.  Above everything else, dance teaches you to have compassion, both on and off the stage.