College Admissions Essay: My Pursuit Of Dance

My love for music has always been coupled with an interest in dancing. At the age of four, I learnt to dance from Shakira; I watched her videos and imitated her till I felt like we were doing the same thing. I kept getting better, and soon, I would go to birthday parties just for the purpose of thrashing everyone else in dance competitions. My love for dance has only seemed to intensify over the years. Looking at me now, I still do almost the same thing: download dance videos and learn the choreographies.

Dance is one of the major things that defines my identity and it is an interest that had become so meaningful, that without it my application would be incomplete. This has been able to shape me throughout the years, from discipline and maturity all the way yo leadership and teamwork. I find dance as an art work, that it is easy to make mistakes and fall, you just have to learn from those mistakes and get up twice as strong as from where you started. Dance is to look above and beyond and just let everything fall into place without hesitation.

Of all the values that dancing instilled within me, I believe I learned the greatest lesson when I forfeited my first love. In my mind, I rationalized that school’s importance outweighed my devotion to dance. In my eighth grade year, my studio encouraged me to join their dance company, while my school implemented an academic plan for me that met my educational needs, which included placing me in ninth grade honors courses. Faced with the truth of the difficulty of balancing schoolwork with a demanding practice schedule, I reluctantly withdrew from my dance

At a very young age my mother asked me “do you want to do dance or gymnastics?” and I remember my reply was instantly “dance!”. From that moment forward I completely fell in love with ballet, and a couple of years ago I decided I would like to see myself grow up to become a professional ballerina.

I was a dancer for fourteen years, beginning at the age of four and ending at the age of 18. I participated in basically every type of dance including ballet, tap, jazz, hip hop, modern, lyrical, and contemporary. Each year, I would participate in more classes than the last, and it eventually got to the point where I would be attending dance classes five or six days of my week. It definitely got tiring, but I still loved it. Dance is a great way to be able to portray emotions through movement, and I think that is very unique and special to participate in. It was a very huge part of my life, and so were the people teaching me. Dance and everything that came with it was a huge influence on my life, and it helped shaped me into the person I am today.

I have never desired to be the center of attention. From a young age, I have done everything possible to stay under the radar and out of the spotlight. I am the definition of a wallflower: shy, awkward, and excluded at parties. Or I would be, if I was ever invited to one. Even if I do get invited to one, I rarely attend. When my friends do manage to convince me to go to a school dance, I am that person that hides in the bathroom to avoid unwanted interactions. Taking all of this into consideration, I am probably the last person one would expect to stand up in front of a church full of people and sing a solo rendition of Ave Verum. And yet, that is exactly what I do.

Dance has always played a huge role in my life. I have learned many life lessons and gained many experiences that dance has been able offer to me. Ever since I was a little girl, my mom told me that I was always prancing on my toes and started moving, I wouldn’t call it dancing, as soon as I heard music. It could have been anywhere; the grocery store, the mall, or even at church, I was just always dancing.

Although it is not listed above in number 3,4,5 due to limited space, I have danced hula throughout entire high school. I am a member of local hula studio since 2013, I participated in school polynesian class and May Day celebration during 10th grade. I was welcomed into Island Breeze studio as a beginner, I worked my way up to the front role throughout the year. Dancing hula has taught me to be a persistent worker, has gifted me a beautiful ability of expressing

I love dancing, I have such a deep passion for this activity. Although there was a time that I was not sure of my passion and love. I have danced since I was able to walk and my parents put me into classes when I was eight. I was ecstatic and overjoyed everyday I could go to the dance studio. However, in eighth grade my dance studio did not do too well at the competitions we attended. At nationals we didn't place top ten for any of the dances we preformed, I felt so defeated and unsure of my love for the sport anymore. Since we did so bad that year my mother refused to re enroll me in classes the following season.  I gave up on my dream of becoming a dancer and started to doubt my talent all together. That year one of my best friends introduced

Dance has been apart of my life ever since I can remember. When I was young, before I officially started my dance training, I was always up on my feet and moving. No matter what hobby I took interest in (whether it was cheerleading, musical theatre, or jump rope), I would always find a way to choreograph little routines a show them to my friends and family. Even when my parents tried to put me in sports, I would do cartwheels and dance on the playing fields, completely oblivious to what was going on during the games. When I look back at how I started my dance training, I just smile and laugh because I was so naïve and unaware that it would become such a huge part of my life. In 5th grade I was put into my first dance class as a hobby. It happened because I watched the Disney Channel movie High School Musical and immediately fell in love with it. I showed the movie to my parents and told them, “This is what I want to do.” At the time I thought I excelled in both signing and acting and that all I needed were dance classes. So in 4th grade I was put into my first dance class and I began to scratch the surface of the basics of dance. What I didn’t know then is that dance would slowly but surely influence my entire life and

A community is a group of people that share a common or similar characteristic with each other. Some communities can also consist of people living together or practice worship. My essay will include the communities that I am part of which are my dance, school and church communities.

I could not get enough of dance. “Mommy is today a ballet day?” became a daily question every afternoon when I got picked up from kindergarten. It was something I became so infatuated with. I yearned to be around dance as much as I could. I would beg my parents to take me to class beforehand so I was the first one in class. And I would ask them to linger around after so I could glimpse into the “big girls” classes.

When I first thought of technique, the first thing that came to my mind was ballet and jazz technique. Ever since I started dancing, ballet and jazz were the main styles that I trained in. In my younger years, I attended studios and was around teachers who stressed clean technique in jazz. While I learned more about moving and picking up combinations in other styles like tap and contemporary, ballet and jazz always consisted of straight forward barre work, across the floor sequences of turns and leaps, and center floor combinations practicing variations and tricks. Every move had a specific placement and every step had a precise count. This is what I always used to think of as technique. As I grew up and became exposed to other styles of dance, however, I realized that technique is more diverse than what I have learned all those years in ballet shoes. Technique includes more than ballet and is versatile, showing that technique has more than one meaning. Technique varies.

Whenever I hear someone say the word dance I automatically think of choreographed performances with elaborate sets and beautifully designed costumes. I started taking ballet classes when I was three years old and I would go to class all decked out in my leotard and tights and learn the fundamental positions of ballet. Throughout my youth I continued to attend a variety of dance classes that included jazz, tap, hip-hop, and modern. I had always been taught that the art of dance were choreographed works typically performed in a unified group, duet, or trio. The company at my dance studio was composed of kids who had been training for competitive dance competitions and were looked upon as the real dancers of the dance studio. What annoyed be about

I attended DancePlus show On Friday December 2, 2011 at 7:30pm at night. It was performed in the Victoria K. Mastrobounno Theater in New Brunswick, New Jersey. There were four different parts that I saw that day. All of the dances were very interesting and very different from each other. All of the dances had its own unique key factor that separated it from each other. I enjoyed the entire show very well. Out of all the dances I had strong reaction to “Lapa’s Lament”. I believe this specific dance stood out to me compared to the other dances from the show. This show had many different factors that stood out from other shows in the entire performance.