(16, CA, USA) Anonymous - The Class That Ended The Dream

Dance was hard, and tenth grade was one of the roughest years outside of dance that I ever experienced. Being at dance was very difficult for me. Every day after school for 2-3 hours, I would stand in a room full of people I had seen the day before, spacing out and thinking about everything but dance. As dance started to become repetitive—the same people, the same place, the same time, the same routine—I grew sick of the cycle. My teachers could tell I had other things on my mind, and they really didn't like it.

My breaking point came during a ballroom class on a Tuesday, while we were rehearsing our ballroom piece (this was before it became award-winning, so I guess my teacher was just anxious). Suddenly, she stopped the music, and everyone listened. Whenever my teacher stopped the music to talk, everyone would listen, but she was never the type to scold someone in front of everyone else. I could have sworn I felt the ground tremble beneath me as my name boomed from my teacher to the whole room. My stomach dropped, and everyone went completely silent. She then delivered an endearing speech about how amazing I was doing during my solo rehearsal and how impressed she was. However, that wasn't all; afterward, she explained in her furious British accent how terrible I looked in every other dance and that if I didn’t improve, she would remove me from all of them. The embarrassment of everyone hearing that and just staring silently as I held back tears was unbearable and humiliating. Feeling guilty about what she had done, she then left the room and told us all to rehearse. That's when I realized that the people I once idolized and wanted to become weren't really all that amazing.