Journal #15 The Semester so far

And so, as I come to the midterm of this semester, I want to pause and reflect on where I began this semester and where I see myself now!
When I first started out, I had high hopes of what I might learn and how my dancing would develop. Yet, as the semester drew on, I discovered that I was having more challenging than breaktroughs! I felt very distant from the dream that I had made for myself! I started to really wonder if there was any hope of really persuing this dream of becoming a dancer on stage! Yet, in these recent days and weeks I have discovered a few things. For one, struggles are a part of growing as a dancer (as a performer). Without them, perhaps the growth in dance would not be nearly as delightful! Let me say it another way. One would not appreciate the discovery of their growth without first enduring the pain and hardship of failure! I think those lowest times for me emotionally as I dancer were what really caused me to look at myself and really think about who I was and what I was trying to get out of what I was doing. Initially, I found myself constantly comparing myself with my fellow dancers. I would often feel very small in comparison to these grand performers, who seemed to glide across the floor with ease, and rarely seemed to have any real struggles with their dancing. Yet, over time, I came to realize that if all I did was focus on these other dancers and how much better they were than me and continued to be jealous of what they had, and what I was lacking in, I would never have gotten anywhere! At last, however, I came to the realization that I may never be as good as them, but then again I would never be them! I was in fact holding myself back from my own potential! And so, I strived to learn from the areas that they were good at, and pluck up courage at times and ask more questions when I truly didn't understand!
Today, I had a great breakthrough in my ballet class! I was finally started to get some of the steps down in one of the phrases we had worked on for a couple of weeks! Then, at the end, we were working on leaps across the floor and the steps in between, etc! I really wasn't quite getting it down. Then, as class was letting out, one of the older more experienced dancers pulled me aside and challenged me to try the move again! Then, she proceded to break it down for me and show me step by step how it went! In the end, I not only learned each part of it better, but started to combine the steps and see them develop as a phrase! It was then that I started to see, the importance of patience and perseverence in performance! That truly gave me hope of achieving even greater things in the future!
Practice without patience and perseverence gives no perspective to performance,
The Dancing Devil Dog