Standing in the darkness, surrounded by chaos and the hustle and bustle of performers running on and off the stage. I stand in the offstage wing of the grand stage anxiously stretching my feet and cracking my toes against the wood floors to release only ounces of tension and adrenaline. The smell of hairspray and sweat heavily lingers through the air as dancers sprint off the stage past me to the dressing rooms to change into their next costume. I can feel the radiation of the heat from the lights beaming onstage. Suddenly, the music stops, the lights go down, and a loud roar of the audience fills the whole entire auditorium. The applauding stops. That’s my cue to go on stage.

I walk into the darkness of the stage. More like the darkness of the unknown. The unknown of the perfection that I’ve been striving for, but doesn’t exist. I have spent months preparing for this moment. Hours of dedication, struggle, sweat, tears, and passion. Just for this one moment to be on stage. A moment that lasts only three minutes. When the lights come up as I stand in the darkness, only then do I realize why I do this....something that people ask me all the time. They ask me why I put so much precious, valuable time and sacrifice into living one short moment on stage. Some dancers say they dance because they need to. I dance because I have to dance. I have to perform. It’s my passion, it’s my life, it’s my dream and I was born to do this. It’s something that I was meant to do and it’s the one thing I give myself up to. It’s the one thing I can call my True Love.

Dance has made me realize what love is. Not the love that you feel towards another person, but the type of love where you cannot live your life without doing it. This is the most passionate expression of love one can ever know. Every day I am thinking about going to dance, I count down the hours until I do so. When I am there I hope that the time does not move quickly. If there is something I cannot do one day, the next day I will make sure I have perfected that step or emotion. I never feel as though I am there for that long, in fact I would love to be there for longer.

The lights are shining bright and everything is clear to me. The music starts and I look up to see the many faces waiting to see what I'm going to do next. The rest is just natural instinct to me. I take my first step and immediately I go into an extension leading into a tilt. I continue the rest of the choreography without even thinking about it. My body is filled with adrenaline at this point, the years of technique and form ingrained into my muscles making them function the way the average non-dancer’s body would never understand. Living in the moment and savoring every bit of it with a smile on my face gives me the ultimate satisfaction in my soul in that very moment. In that moment, do I feel as though anything is possible and that I can be whatever and whoever I want to be. As I leap into the air, I feel as though I'm flying in the sky being that much closer to my dream.

Without dance, I would never have been able to understand the beauty of our bodies, emotions, and the human spirit. Without dance I would never have been able to understand the beauty of life and how much I have yet to discover and live.
The legendary Martha Graham, the Mother of Modern Dance, once said;
“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action; and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it.”

As the music stops, the lights go down, and the audience starts applauding, the words of Martha echo through my mind as I walk off the stage with satisfaction remembering and living through those words, as I now begin counting down the hours until the next time I dance.