Personal Narrative: The Greenwood College School Dance Team

It seems like I have been waiting years for my letter to come in the mail. Just last month I sent out my application to see if I can get into Juilliard School of Dance, in New York. I live in Springfield, Massachusetts. Juilliard is where only pro dancers, the best of the best, the real shining stars can get into. Ballet has been my passion since I could walk. If I don’t get in, my life is over! All I want to do in life is perform, not sitting down having to fill out paperwork the whole day in a crowded office, or stuck behind a fryer, serving greasy, crusty food to ungrateful customers. Ballet is my escape from that.

Hi, I am Arabella, a junior in high school and a varsity cheerleader at Siesta Key High School. I am four feet and eight inches tall and a flyer on the cheer team. I often dress like a nerd, and do not care what other people think. I am dating the star football player at SKHS his name is Tom. Tom was not only a star football player, but he is also very good at soccer, basketball, baseball and volleyball. He is a liar and a cheater too. Anyways, people just call me Bella. I love sports and love spending my days off at the beach. I especially love Major League Baseball; Tampa Bay Devil Rays is my favorite team. I am a happy person most of the time. Who’s dedicated to my cheerleading career; and I want to get a scholarship for Northwestern

During this season I was given the opportunity to coach one of the younger teams in the gym. I loved it! I was hesitant at first because I doubted my abilities not only as an athlete but as a coach. In my senior season and ninth year of cheer I finally made it onto a restricted level 5 team. I was also blessed with the opportunity to be a junior staff member and coach a team I fell in love with. During this season my team got a paid bid to compete at the Summit Championship, this is the highest level of world competition for levels 1 through restricted 5. I never got to compete at the actual World Championships, but I was satisfied with what I had accomplished in my last season. I also got to watch the team I coached finish out their season strong. This team gave me a passion for coaching. I now had a new goal and that was to become a cheerleading coach as my

On the Saturday morning that the team was announced, I was wracked with fear. I was participating in a rehearsal for a dance competition with another team during the hours leading up to the time that the list was going to be posted. Trying to get through that rehearsal was nearly impossible as my attention was more focused on what color nail polish would best match my new Chiefettes shirt that I would be wearing to school on Monday. Once my mother and sister arrived to pick me up from the studio, I shook nervously in the back seat, sending messages to my other friends, waiting to find out the news. Both my mother and my sister remained silent, but I knew that they were praying just like I was that I would see my number on that list. As we

For the past six years, I have been dancing at Shirley Matta Dance Academy. I have been taught many dances of different variety such as jazz, tap, ballet, lyrical, contemporary, etc. The studio has recently begun offering Pointe classes, which I also attend. In addition to attending the studio, I also assist in teaching dance and gymnastics classes there. This has been an experience that I will never forget, especially since I spend most of my time at the dance studio. It has helped me in so many ways. Not only have I improved immensely as a dancer, my communication and leadership skills have skyrocketed as well. In fact, every Tuesday, I currently teach ballet to a group of about fifteen girls between the ages of 7-10 year all by myself. In

The year is 1923. There is this very small, quiet, and amazing town in Ohio called Otway. In this town there is a small white two story house with a beautiful garden as a backyard. In this house lives a 12 year old brunette haired girl named Myronetta June.

This weekend I will be at school trying out for next year’s Foley Falconette Dance Team. This consists of girls in grades seventh through twelfth,you do not have to have any experience of dance. It will last seven hours, it starts at nine in the morning and will end at four in the afternoon. We will work on a lot of dance moves, we will stretch, learn our tryout routine and work on our splits, kicks, turns, jumps and a lot more dance moves. Once we do all of the stretches and learn everything, we will move on to the actual tryout part. Our coach will put us into groups of three to five and we will perform everything that we learned that day. While our coach “grades” us on our moves and our flexibility that we have, our coach will tell us where she thinks we should be placed for next year’s team, the Varsity team, the Junior Varsity, or the C-Squad, Varsity is for the advanced dancers who can do anything without a problem, junior varsity is made up of dancers who have experience, but they are not at the varsity level yet, and the c-squad is for new dancers or for people who need help with their moves and everything else.

Who all can say that they have danced on national television at Walt Disney World? Well now, I can say that I did. I have been on many trips to Disney World but this one was by far the best because I got to be there with my dance team. In a small town like Saltillo it is very rare that any type of athletic team goes and wins state competitions or makes it all the way to a national level but we did. The Saltillo High School dance team of 2014 was the first team to ever go beyond a state competition and do anything on a national level. It was a huge honor for all of us to represent our school in the way we did. From arriving to Disney’s ESPN Resort, to getting ready then preforming was an overall great experience for all of us.

For these past two years in high school, I have been taking Cleo Mack’s dance program that is provided for us at MCVTS. Starting the program freshman year I did not know what to expect at all but I am glad my mom pushed me to come to this school. I have been dancing since I was three at a competition studio who is very strict about almost everything especially performance quality, but as I have learned from Ms. Mack it’s good to tone down the face and make your dancing more authentic and real.

Our team sat in the hallway of our school, waiting for our name to be called to enter the gym. The pregame jitters were everywhere. Girls were bouncing up and down, fanning themselves and skittering around. I had a flood of emotions inside me. I was mostly excited but also quite nervous. What if my parents didn’t like the dance? What if my peers don’t like the dance? What if it looks bad? I couldn’t help but doubt the routine in a time of such nervousness. Our coach gave us each her routine good-luck shoulder shakes, and I knew the time had come. I heard the crowded gym fall quiet.

Since the early age of four, I have been mesmerized by classical ballet. Every week, I watched my dance teacher display her beautiful skills during class, and I hoped that I could dance as well as her someday. As my love for ballet continued to grow, my opportunities widened. In the fall of 2013, I became a member of the dance ensemble at the dance studio I attend. When I joined the Pointe Academy Dance Ensemble, my position at the dance studio shifted from being a student dancing in the back of the room, to a dancer who learned how to teach others and set a good example for younger students. To me, being a role model and using acquired experience to inspire and guide others is leadership. My dance ensemble has been my most meaningful leadership experience because it is the source of where I have become a leader.

“The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, not arrogant, have humor, but without folly.” Implementing leadership is not hard with a good leader, who conveys the qualities of mental strength, self-motivation, and confidence. As head cheerleader, I will be able to exhibit these qualities while implementing a structured leadership program with some of the three major factors in leading a successful team: communication, bonding, and organization.

I’m a ballet dancer at Williston School of Dance. it’s my biggest passion in life. However when I first started I hated it so much! I’ve always been a quitter, I’ve tried so many different hobbies and quit all of them : piano, violin, Archery, guitar, sewing, flute, jewelry making and knitting, as you can see from my list I was a huge quitter, as soon as something got hard I would give up.

A challenge i faced was the night of the Sadie Hawkins dance. My best friend at the time had asked me to the dance instead of her boyfriend because we were just really close. The night started off pretty well and didn’t seem like it was going to to go badly, but little did i know that the night would just go to complete crap in a short span of time.

The dance was held at my high school. The school would be an institution, everyone who went, went for the same reason, everyone there had something in common and they were all in the same location under the power of the same person. In a way, the school itself would be a small society. The principle being the leader and then the students her subjects. The event had its own economy and rules. The economy would come from the students like myself what set up booths and the rules would be something more spoken than instilled. For example, my booth was indeed a raffle, but, it was against the rules to call it that. We were still able to host the “Prize” table, just under a different name. The problem would lie in the meaning of the words. certain words are Taboo because they have negative connotation. the word Raffle is connected to the idea of gambling, therefor, it isn’t allowed. more or less the same principle goes for the fact that they didn’t name the dance a “Halloween Dance” and instead they called it a “Harvest Festival.” Even though they still had the haunted houses and the cobwebs, they were allowed to host the event because it was under another name. They can’t be held accountable for any religious conflict if they don’t call the black sheep black. There was the social environment, the dance, that would house a peer group, the students attending. The dance would be a peer group because it was a group of people getting together with the same interests. The students