You’ve Never Met An Athlete Until You Meet A Dancer

Throughout my fifteen years on this planet, I have noticed that a stereotypical athlete trains everyday and devotes their life to their sport. Yet, when I’d explain to a person that my sport is dance, I’m overrun with many comments and accusations such as dance isn’t a sport, dance isn’t athletic, it isn’t competitive, a sport has to have a ball. Really? I wonder what swimmers and runners think about that. What naive little football and soccer players don’t understand is that no, dance doesn’t involve a ball, but is sure is athletic, difficult, and VERY competitive, so why doesn’t it qualify as a sport? This is because many people think that dance is feminine, which is wrong. Even though many dancers are girls, some of the best dancers that I’ve ever met are male. A little under half of the dancers at Ballet West are male, which is very important. In ballet especially, our lives are in the hands of male dancers. When you are lifted over the head of another human,  you can’t help but think that you will fall on your head. This means that male dancers have to be very buff.

Gross feet courtesy of Faith

Dancers, in general, are some of the most muscular people that I’ve ever seen. It’s necessary to have massive leg muscles if you want to survive life as a dancer. Imagine jumping around a stage about half the size of a football field for four minutes, yeah, it’s torture. When other athletes complain about sore muscles, we know your pain. It’s essential for us to be flexible, which isn’t really needed for other sports, besides gymnastics. Real pain is having your middle splits, then your teacher forces your hips to the floor. It doesn’t feel good, along with your teacher bending your foot in half so you reach your toes and heel to the floor at the same time. On the topic of pain, let’s go back to ballet. Pointe isn’t too painful after a while, but as soon as blisters form, your foot rubbing inside a box of pure agony isn’t the best experience.

Dancers are some of the most competitive people that I’ve ever met, myself included. The girls in my group are my best friends and my biggest rivals. We are always trying to one-up each other to get the better roles and catch the attention of our teachers. Last season, my teammates, Savannah, Taylor, Faith, and I, all competed solos. Even though we were all spread throughout three different categories, except for Savannah and Faith, we still had a stiff competition, always trying to get better scores than the next girl. Although we are all competitive, we are all super supportive of each other. The girls on my team are my sisters and I don’t know what I’d do without them. Faith, Savannah, Taylor, Mikelle, Holly, Jenna, Sophie, Sami, Val, Bella, Megan, Mia T, Mia S, Eve, Allie, Ali, Lucie, Maddie, Claire, Alicia, and Alex, I love you all so much! Thank you for pushing me to the best of my ability.

Now that I got that out of my system, my challenge for y’all this week is to be more open to people’s opinions and what they like to do. Have fun this Halloween weekend and watch out for zombies, ghosts, and axe murderers. I’ll leave you with a quote. “Let’s face it, a nice creamy chocolate cake does a lot for a lot of people, it does for me,”- Audrey Hepburn

~Rachael