At the high school, people see the Railiners dance team. Students see us perform hip-hop routines at pep rallies, jazz and pom routines at football and basketball games and watch our annual state performances. However, that is just what students see on the surface. The dancers on the Railiners dance team spend every day of the week training and performing at local dance studios.
I have spent just about my entire life dancing at a local dance studio, Newton Performing Arts Center. Though dance started as more of a hobby to me, within a few years of taking classes, I was fully committed to a life filled with dance. When I was seven years old, I joined the studio’s competitive dance team, which required a lot of dedication and time from all of the members. As I have danced throughout the years, I have found that competitive dance is truly a world of its own and most people just don’t understand what it’s like unless they have experienced it themselves.
One thing that I have found very interesting about competitive dance is that everyone in this world knows everyone. My studio typically goes to about five or six competitions every year, depending on whether or not it’s a year we go to dance nationals, and everyone knows exactly what to expect. We typically go to competitions around the Wichita area, and for every competition, we know which studios are the best and who we should anticipate being our biggest competition. All of the older kids at my studio know the local dance studios by name, know the names of the majority of people on said teams, and even know which dances have been placing well for other studios. It’s so crazy to me that everyone my age at the studio knows all of these people and as soon as I try and talk to my family or people at school about dance competitions, they have no idea who they are. Sometimes I feel like there is such a divide between my dance life and my personal life because so few people can relate to some of my experiences.
Another thing I don’t think many people realize about dance is how much time we commit. Just for competitive dance alone, every Saturday, the entire studio spends about as much time at the studio as we do for a normal school day. Saturdays don’t even cover all of our dances either. This is just the day that we rehearse our group dances, however, the majority of us typically also do a combination of solos, duets, and trios as well, which is more time we have to commit outside of the Saturday rehearsals. For most of the year, we don’t ever have time off or get an “off-season.” Throughout the year, we either practice for Railiner performances and events, take our normal weekly classes, or prepare our company dances for local dance competitions.
Because dance is such a substantial time commitment, we often don’t have time to do anything else. On the weekends we have dance competitions, which is a full weekend commitment, especially for me, since my sister dances as well. We don’t know the schedule for the competition until a week or two in advance, so there isn’t a point in planning anything during a competition weekend. Sometimes the schedule is quite bad for the older teenagers at dance competitions. I know there were two competitions this year where all of our dances were on one day. We had to wake up around 5 a.m. to do our hair and makeup and leave early enough to arrive in Wichita when the competition’s doors opened. Those days, our dances were spread out throughout the entire day, with our solos being the last thing we all had to do. My solo was scheduled at 9:59 p.m. on a Sunday, so of course, I anticipated being very tired for school the next day, as we still had to sit through an entire awards ceremony afterward. What makes these days so hard is how exhausted we all are and the inconvenience of being there so long. I know very few of us can eat fulfilling meals because all of our dances are so close together and we don’t want to feel sick. In turn, on top of being tired, the majority of us aren’t usually in the best moods and aren’t at our strongest physically or mentally.
However, though those long days are tolling, by the end of the night, it is so fun to be at a dance competition with your teammates. As I mentioned before, sometimes the awards start very late at night, so combining a team of tired dancers and a late-night awards ceremony is almost always crazy. During that final awards ceremony, everyone is going crazy, most likely because of sleep deprivation. Everyone is always super hype, we are all going so full-out during the line dance songs they play before the awards start and we always do some pretty funny stuff. Some of my favorite pictures and videos I have are with my teammates at those late-night award shows because they remind me of fun times and are genuinely hilarious. For me, this is my favorite part of the competition, and they make waking up at the crack of dawn so worth it. Honestly, this is one of the things I will miss most as a competitive dancer.
The world of competitive dance can be difficult to understand if you haven’t experienced it yourself. It is a huge time commitment and requires a lot of individual strength and effort, but it has been one of my most memorable experiences. The competition practices may be long and tiring, but being at competitions makes up for it. I love being on stage, performing with my teammates, and celebrating with them after. Competitive dance has introduced me to my closest friends and taught me to trust and rely on my teammates. I wouldn’t be the person I am today without dance and going to competitions with my studio is one of the things I will miss most when I go off to college next year.
