Schedules, planning, and events make up our lives, but when you are a dancer your life becomes so focused on classes and competitions. Many young dancers find that they don’t have a life outside of dance, they are always at the studio working on their craft. So what is the importance of having a balanced life of extracurriculars and a social life, and how does a person so young decide what they want to do?
I wrote in a different article, “A Dancer who DOESn't Dance”, about the decision to leave the dance. Many younger dancers choose to leave dance when they are in the middle to high school age range. Normally this decision is influenced by the fact that their friends are about to have more free time.
While dance teaches discipline it can be hard to stay disciplined when you see all your friends having sleepovers, going to birthday parties, or having “days off”. In a video released by Teen Vogue, we can see the daily routine of a teenage ballet dancer. From the very beginning, we are told that she dances five hours a day six days a week. Now depending on when her classes are she has five hours of the day dedicated to dancing already, plus any outside training she might do.
The video is all about a week in her life before she has a show, which will include extra rehearsals and adding more classes to her schedule. Young dancer Kayla Mac shares her 7:30 am to 11:30 pm schedule, for a dancer in school this would be considered a normal schedule. Throughout her schedule, we can see that she spends the majority of her time in the studio, whether it is because of her classes or her drive to continue working on herself.
The age-old excuse for a dancer is “I can’t I have dance”, after a while your friends have heard it so much they know that they can’t even ask you anymore because you most likely have dance. This is where a dancer faces the internal struggle of Do I want to dance or do I want a more active social life? On top of dance responsibilities, you also have to take care of school responsibilities.
It is very easy to have your life get very cluttered with different responsibilities but as a dancer it is a choice that you have to make, sticking to a very strict schedule is one thing that makes a dancer so disciplined. Having to continually think about your classes and focus on getting everything done is also what can make it very overwhelming. Dancers can often feel like they don’t have enough time in the day to actually get their work done, but they will inevitably get it finished.
Scheduling your life as a dancer can be very hard mainly because you can’t please everyone, as a dancer it is important to find time to rest. So utilize the excuse “I can’t I have dance”!
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