Jodi's Dance Academy. Oh how I miss thee..

This weekend was the dance recital :) My favorite time of year. When dance gets crazy!! I got asked by Miss Jodi to perform and boy was it ever fun to be involved again. I choreographed my solo to the song Waiting for the End by Linkin Park and Letje Gibb did some AWESOME make up on my face and also a cool design to match on my leg. I also helped with Matlin's class backstage too which was super fun for me. I love those girls!

Although helping out and performing was fun, it was also kinda hard for me... I'm used to being in 10 numbers and having so many different quick changes. Finishing one dance and beginning to strip even before we got back to the dressing room. Ripping out our hair and having a mom put it into the next do while we were getting our next costume on and ready. Then as soon as we were ready it would be time for our next dance so we'd rush back on stage and start again. How we had enough energy I'll never know. The adrenaline definitely helped that's for sure.
I loved being the senior dancers every year.. keep in mind that our town is small and people like to think that once you reach a certain age you can't start dance because you are too old so since the studio here started when we were already 'too old' so we were just always the oldest class or at least most advanced. I loved having all the younger girls look up to us and think we were the most amazing dancers, when really we had a LOT to work on. I miss hanging out at the dance studio all day after school because we had classes throughout the evening. I miss dance competition which is weird because we lost a lot unfortunately. Those times when we won made it all worth it though. That was AWESOME! I miss being a part of a class and learning dances together and working together to get the ready for competition or the show. I miss when Jodi and my mom would get hyper and we'd think of these ridiculously crazy but cool ideas for our dances and try them out and just laughing together when we all got too tired to dance anymore. I miss walkin around school lookin like I had a pickle up my butt because I was so incredibly sore. I love being sore. That means I worked hard and I like having that feeling and being able to know that my hard work is paying off. I miss all the super super fun dances that we did.
I love being able to dance with Tessa at BYU. We've done tap duos together every year since I don't even know when. But dancing at BYU just isn't the same as belonging to a dance studio. There is no recital at the end. No dance competition.
 No costumes and make up. No dance pictures. No one dance number that you work so hard to perfect so you can perform it flawlessly at the end of the year. No dance awards at the end of the recital. No little girls that want to sit on your lap while listening to the awards. No finale number with everyone in it. No little sisters that you get to boss around haha I just miss the dance studio atmosphere. I think that's partly why I want to own my own studio one day.. So I can create all these wonderful memories for a bunch of other little dancers and help them grow and reach their full potential.