The reason dance is my favorite art project.

By: Miss Becky.

All eyes on me. When I was three years old, I discovered that there was nothing in the world more joyous than putting on a sparkly outfit, some blush and lipstick (essentially the ultimate game of dress up), and going out into the bright lights on a stage, only to twirl around while everyone took pictures of me and clapped and hollered my name. If I close my eyes, I can vividly remember the dressing rooms with their hustle and bustle; the sound of tap shoes on the concrete floor, the thick smell of hairspray lingering in the air, watching the older dancers put on their makeup and chat about teenage things as they casually sat in their splits, simultaneously bobbi pinning each other's perfect ballet buns into place. It was complete magic to me.

When I was 10, my fellow dancers were my best friends. We would spend our free time together with a cassette player boombox, choreographing dances in the yard to Paula Abdul songs and using the camcorder to capture our performances. Old dance costumes were given new life with each performance in the yard, and dance was all I wanted to do. Although I no longer danced solely to feel like a princess on stage in a sparkly tutu and lipstick, the magic remained. As long as I was dancing, there was a fire burning bright in my soul. It didn’t matter if it was on a stage. I could dance in the kitchen, at the bus stop, down a produce aisle at Cub Foods. It felt good.

During my high school years, as some of my friends began trying different sports and finding new hobbies aside from dance, I still couldn’t understand why. I tried out for the dance team at school, in addition to my rigorous competition schedule at the studio. I didn’t care if I had no free time at all because I had something that was so much more valuable to me. In high school, it would have been so easy to compare myself to others and develop low self-esteem. There were always dancers who were better than me, but I didn’t care. Dance was where my heart felt at home, and dance is what gave me confidence. Although I was never the best, the first place winner, the star, I knew no one could dance like me. God made me unique and confident and I would never stop.

In my anxiousness surrounding the uncertainty of dancing in college, I marched straight over to the West Bank of the U of M and demanded some dance classes my first semester of school. I could breathe again, and although I had absolutely no clue what I was going to study (let alone choose as a career), it was well with my soul. I danced my way through that first year of college, and transferred to the University of Wisconsin River Falls as a sophomore to pursue art and dance education. These two things are the same, although I didn't learn the parallels until this chapter of my life. I fell in love with movement all over again as I spent my days throwing pots, figure drawing, and splashing paint around, and spent my nights in the dance studio moving and creating. It was the most (expensive) fun I've ever had. If I had ever questioned my love affair with dance or art all those years prior, I certainly busted it wide open in school. I was given the gift of creativity. A mind and soul that dream together every second of every day, and a heart that aches to be fed with inspiration and lit up like the most magnificent Christmas tree in town. To create movement is to tell a story, create a work of art. And by doing that, it moves other people and just thinking about it sends goosebumps up my arms!

I had a professor in school that would always point me in the right direction when I was feeling uninspired. “Do whatever makes your heart go pitter-patter,” she would say, “If your heart is beating a little faster, you will know you’re on the right track.” Isn’t that true? Not just for art and dance, but for life?

These days, inspiration is everywhere for me. Late nights teaching dance when choreography is really coming together, there are moments when I think my heart might burst. I recently spent 6 months as a missionary in Haiti, and there, my lifelong ambition was confirmed: dance is really something to celebrate. Being given a body that can hear music and move and stomp and spin is something to celebrate. Being able to communicate without words is something to celebrate. Being able to express in any way you please is something to celebrate. Art is something to celebrate. Being made unique and creative like no one else on earth is something to celebrate.

It gives this life the goosebumps and the magic and all the whimsy we need to keep the fire burning bright.

Cheers to life, art, and dance!