Growing Up Dancer

“People have asked me why I chose to be a dancer. I did not choose. I was chosen to be a dancer, and with that, you live all your life. ”

― Martha Graham, Blood Memory

Growing up dancer is strangely different than any other childhood. You act, hear and learn things differently than others. People ask why you behave, listen and perceive differently than them, and it can be a challenging obstacle to understand.

I have not known a life without dance. I grew up finding the counts to every song my family listened to in the car, pointing my feet to fall asleep, dancing around the grocery store, tap dancing under my desk and having a fast, long term memory.

Having to grow up dancer can be a challenge. Dancing becomes habit, and life learns that it needs dance to survive, serious dancers quickly begin to eat, breathe, sleep and live as a dance. This is because growing up dancer, you have no idea what a world without dance at your center is.

There is a certain fascination about growing up dancer. Some ask, how do they do, what they do? With the response being, what do you mean? Dancers come into a habitual state where all they do, and want to do is be out dancing. The effect being as I said earlier, finding counts in any type of music, pointing feet whenever given the chance, dancing around endlessly wherever you may be and making it the number one priority.

Growing up dancer is strangely different than any other childhood, and a childhood that no serious dancer could ever give up. It is a love and passion that others sometimes don’t understand. To a dancer a life without dance is a life of misery. I know personally I could never go a day without dancing. It makes me so incredibly happy and positive on how I want to live my life through dance. Although growing up dancer is different than other childhoods, it is one that gives a new perspective on behaving, hearing and learning that a serious dancer wouldn’t know how to live without.
 

 

~Julia Brewer