1. Your dance studio is your home.
You grew up at your dance studio and with the people who went there. It became your second home and the dancers became your family.
2. Your drawers are filled with hair supplies and stage makeup.
We all know how much makeup you have to have on in order to not look like a ghost on stage. Therefore, you are an expert at doing makeup and every drawer is filled with it. Putting on bright red lipstick isn’t a big occasion like it may be for your friends because you have to wear it all the time. You have to put hairspray in your hair so often that you go through multiple bottles a month. You have too many bobby pins so you can get the perfect ballerina bun and you often wake up with bobby pins in your bed or find them scattered around the house.
3. You always wish you are between 5’6’ and 5’10.5.
Why this random height? That’s how tall you have to be to be a Rockette. As a kid, you were always eating enough fruits and vegetables because you wanted to be tall enough to be a Rockette.
4. However, you know that being short had it’s perks.
Being short or “vertically challenged” as my dance teacher would say actually had its pros. This is because you were able to be in the front line if you were shorter than the other dancers.
5. You hurt yourself regularly trying to practice your dance in your room.
There is never enough room for you to dance in your house but you try anyway and regularly hit your feet against chairs, desks, or anything that hurts.
6. You are always sore.
Being a dancer, something always hurts. Whether its from pointing your feet too hard, not stretching enough for that kick, getting blisters from your shoes, or just overworking it, you know something has to be sore the next day.
7. You have some sort of device that makes your muscles feel better.
As a dancer, I have a foot massager, back massager, and a foam roller. You must be thinking what is a foam roller? It looks like a log that is made of foam and you roll over the muscle group that is hurting to un-knot those sore spots. If you do not have something like one of these, you must be hurting even more than the usual.
8. You save all of your costumes.
You definitely have that storage place somewhere in you house filled with all your old dance costumes. You may have even worn one for Halloween.
9. You have enough flowers and trophies to fill a football field.
After every recital you may receive flowers from friends or family and if you ever saved them all they would probably take up a good chunk of land. You’d be lying to me if you said your childhood desk was not filled with dance trophies.
10. Your stage is your sanctuary.
You couldn’t wait to perform and the stage you danced on was your favorite place in the entire world.
11. You’ll out-dance anyone at a school dance.
You bust out those moves whenever you are given a chance. The worm looks amateur compared to the breakdancing and amount of turns you can do.
12. You are resilient.
As a dancer, you must take criticism well or you will not make it in the real world. You have to learn how to not take it personally and use it to improve.
13. You have discipline.
You grew up going to the studio more often than you would like to admit resulting in gaining discipline from the strict teachers and the focus required to dance.
