Dancing With Envy
I was mindlessly flipping through the Pennysaver one day, bored at my new kitchen table in my new house. It was 2000, I was 11, and in-between the want ads for pizza makers and dog grooming coupons, I had found my future. A dance studio nearby was accepting registration for the new school year, offering a variety of classes to kids ages 3–18. I studied the color photo in the center: 30-plus girls matched identically in shiny costumes, their smiles lined in bright red lipstick. It was one of those posed shots that requires each head to be tiled in just the right way, arms folding neatly, tall girls in the back. They were beautiful. They were called the Competition Line. They dance at nationals in Disney World. My heart started racing. I ripped the ad out and ran upstairs.
“Mom!” I yelled. “I want to go here!”
“Here” was a nearby dance studio, one of dozens in the area populating the strip malls and plazas that surrounded my suburban world. Every studio offered aspiring dancers (and aspiring dance moms!) the same deal: You sign up, take a class in the dance style of your (or mom’s!) choice once a week, learn a routine and then perform it for an audience of family and friends in a sweltering high school auditorium (otherwise known as a recital).
But this studio was different. This one competed. My tween brain never realized there could be winners and losers in dance, and I wanted to win. From the moment I started taking the class, I had one goal: Get on the competition line. Inside the walls of the studio, the competition line girls were The Coolest. They had effortless messy buns, stylish leotards and made every trick look easy. You had to be invited to join by the studio owner, and jealousy poured out of me the second I peered into their private rehearsal from the lobby’s tinted viewing window.
I watched in awe as the competition line girls skipped gracefully into perfectly spaced lines, nailing fouette turns and straddle jumps in unison. I burned to be one of them: talented. Idolized by a novice like me. They were 30 dancing versions of the big sister I never had. I knew if I was good enough, they had to pay attention. One year later, I was center stage at the studio’s annual recital in the 8–12 Beginner Jazz group.
Recital Theme: Millennium Madness (Duh.)
Song: Britney’s “(You Drive Me) Crazy” (Double duh.)
Costume: Silver long sleeve jumpsuit (with attached chain belt and permanent baggy crotch)
Hair: Half-up, half-down ponytail (I heard this was making a comeback!)
Eyeshadow: Blue (…Why?)
I danced my heart out, but felt embarrassed to be showcasing such basic choreography. I was the best of the worst, and therefore refused to smile the entire time I was on stage.
Soon after, I accomplished the impossible. I was invited the join the competition team’s junior line, and would start dance camp that July: four hour days of ballet, jazz, lyrical and everything in between. I was so excited, I almost hurt myself celebrating in the car while my dad reviewed the next steps (read: tuition money) with the teacher. I was winning.
My excitement was replaced with a debilitating fear when I stepped noiselessly into my first competition line class: ballet. I had never taken it before, and saw blurry spots in my vision as I gravitated to the corner spot at the barre. I took a cue from the imagined New Girl rulebook: Follow along like you’ve done this 100 times, don’t ask for help and fake it ’til you make it. By jazz class, my anxiety peaked when I realized the warm up was actually a choreographed set of movements that everyone already knew. Everyone but me, of course. I was mad at myself, and jealous of everyone else’s comfortable routine.
I realized that when you dance, you put your body and the way it moves into the world for judgement. There is no hiding. At first it was terrifying, but soon I found it thrilling. The harder I worked, the better my body moved. I dared everyone to judge me, and I began to judge everyone else. If you were a good dancer, I liked you. If you were bad, you weren’t worth my time. Healthy right?
My newness wore off slowly, and as years passed by, I grew up in that studio. I became a good dancer with a magnetic stage presence, and perfected all the tricks. I made friends, and just as many enemies. One year, my smiling face appeared in the Pennysaver ad. I performed in three dances my first season and jumped to seven the next. Then 13. Then 20. I competed at nationals in Las Vegas, The Bahamas and the dreamed-about Disney World. I was finally the dancer little girls looked up to, but played the villain happily from the perspective of some peers. It was fun, but it was also toxic.
What you don’t realize when you’re constantly stressed over who got what solo, who won the special award and why that girl is center stage the entire routine, is that the dance studio culture is rampant with egotistical, jealous mean girls (and moms!) that make every single stretch, turn and smile into a competition. At one point, I was Example A. The infighting was exhausting, and the rivalry between other local studios spanned decades.
By age 17, I worked up to the senior line and earned a coveted company spot. And then I aged out. I won, but I lost. At my last recital, I found myself jealous of the beginners. They had time. I moved away to college, and watched from a distance as the little girls who used to look up to me grow into amazing dancers, history repeating itself.
Nine years passed until I worked up the nerve to take class at a dance studio again. In my new city in my new adult life, I signed up for a theatre jazz class (ages 9 and up!) and the second I walked into the lobby, I felt old habits coming back. I got an icy welcome from the receptionist, and the gaggle of moms gave me the judge-y once-over from their glued position near the tinted viewing windows. I peered over their shoulders at the Maddie and Chole wannabes executing flawless tricks across the floor, not a strand of hair out-of-place. I was no longer the best, but I was still jealous.
I laughed with nostalgia as memories of my time in the dance world came rushing back, and then I realized something: You can’t win at dance. No one was going to hand me an award for coming in today. For the first time ever, I was content in my movement. I wasn’t winning, but I was dancing. And I smiled the entire time.
