I started taking ballet when I was five, and attended dance classes until I was finished high school. As a teenager, every week I would take the bus downtown to the YMCA with my tights and ballet shoes and practice at the barre. This for me was the high moments of a young girl's life, the dedication and resilience needed to be graceful on stage, in the studio, and in person. It spills over into every part of life if you are a dancer, if you are meant to dance. The dance captured me as a ten year old, and I wanted to be part of the National Ballet at a young age. I read books about Anna Pavlova, the young ballerina, and tried to copy difficult dance moves. To master them I would practice in the swimming pool, which slows down movement and articulates the motions, and it worked magic. The older girls I knew who could do ballet moves that I could not, I copied underwater until I could do them also.
I was part of a performing dance troupe in high school, and we practiced and performed locally and did dance numbers at churches, schools and fairs. I also did several summer intensive performing arts trips, and travelled across Europe doing song & dance in 1992. I spent a week in Spain during the '92 Olympics and three weeks in Germany, doing three performances a day. Back then, I was adventurous and it gained me a solo role, so I opened each performance singing the opening song.
By the time I was in university, I had leaned a fair amount of Israeli dancing and taught Israeli dancing to a small team of TWU dancers to perform for the school and at a few other venues. Dance has and will always be my choice instead of group sports or other exercise: it is beautiful, expressive, cathartic, and brings discipline with a measured practiced result.
When in doubt, dance to liberate the soul in every dimension.
Emily
