National Day of Dance 2012

Dance has always been a part of my life and so celebrating the joy and fun of it with a room full of people today was so awesome.  I started dancing as a small child – I started as many children do by taking ballet, tap and jazz.  I did that for a few years before narrowing my focus on just ballet and later pointe.  I continued to study ballet and pointe all through high school and even in my first year of college.  There were many years when I hoped and dreamed that I would make a living through dance and it was wonderful to have those dreams.  In high school I started driving to Macon to take classes from a more challenging studio and with instructors whom I could learn more from.  I was in the high school drama productions each of my three years of high school and was named “Best Dancer” in the production each year!  My highlight was probably dancing as the white cat in our school production of Cats.  After I moved to Tallahassee at the end of my freshman year of college, I shifted my focus from the strict and precise study of ballet to the crazy world of aerobics at the end of the 80s!  Women were still wearing leg warmers (or at the very least big thick socks) and many of us wore those awful thong leotards with our tights!  Despite the fashion disaster (which of course I didn’t realize was a disaster at the time) I was having so much fun and quickly traded in my ballet shoes for tennis shoes and in my early 20’s became a certified aerobics instructor and was teaching a number of different classes at two gyms.  After a number of years of doing that I got hooked on clogging and had fun with that for a few years.  My favorite thing about clogging was getting to perform on stage again (although teaching classes was much like being on stage as well  – with a microphone no less!!)

Currently, I am enjoying life back in the gym taking group fitness classes and one of my favorite classes right now is Zumba.  It is so much fun and a wonderful workout and incorporates many of the dance moves I have learned over the years.  I love the feeling of looking in the class mirror and seeing so many bodies all doing the same thing together.  It feels like home to me.

National Day of Dance is something that is promoted on the t.v. show that I love called So You Think You Can Dance.  They promote the day of dance in part to get people up and moving but also to raise money for the Dizzy Feet foundation.  Premier Gym organized an event for Zumba dancers in Tallahassee and we had a bunch of great instructors come out and we danced hard for two hours straight!

Here are some photos from the event…

My very favorite Zumba instructor – Kelly!

These were our amazing instructors!

This is the group of us that was left at the bitter end – I would say this is only about half of the people that showed up!