How Dancing Set Me Free

By Jennifer Hicks

Most of my life was spent in a box with minimal windows and doors. Not a bad box, though.

The purple color of the exterior made the metallic silver letters that said “Earle Cobb Dance Studio” stand out. Purple was the favorite color of Dena, the owner. The front wall was covered in mirrors, with a bench at the bottom to sit or store one’s things. Wrapped around rest of the room were barres with two levels. Many before me had danced on the old hardwood floors.

Here, I could escape reality. The floor’s polished surface was my starting place, where I could paint out an emotion with the swift movement of a foot or leg.

Having taking over the studio from her mother, Kendra, one of the kindest souls I had ever met, Dena helped me not only to hone my dancing skills, but also learn to realize my potential. Her old-fashioned, black-and-white tap shoes were something you would see in a Charlie Chaplin movie. Thinking about them now still brings a smile to my face.

I did not have much else to smile about while growing up. The hallway of my bedroom, lined with photos of my brother and me, was the place where I disappeared whenever I heard fighting or was upset about something. Sometimes, the yelling would be so loud that it would echo throughout the house and shake the photos on the wall. It always happened the same way: my mom would raise her voice and that would be followed by a sarcastic comment made by my dad. Then, their bedroom door would slam, followed by my dad grabbing his keys and walking out. Eventually, he moved out, but the divorce wasn’t final for another six years.

I would still see him whenever I went to my grandparents’ house. There, the faint smell of something cooking filled your nose as soon as you entered. One step into the kitchen, and I could see the walls covered in fruit photos, plastic fruit on the table. This was my happy place until the summer before my freshman year of high school, when my grandparents passed away within a month of each other. My dad moved in, but the house still felt empty; the love and life filling the hallways were now gone.

Dancing provided a more permanent escape. At 6, enrolled in Mrs. Cindy’s class, I started each lesson by sitting in a circle with other girls. Mrs. Cindy, who always wore a pink leotard, her blond hair in a bun, would tell us to pretend we were princesses getting ready for a ball. We would roll up our pretend white gloves to our elbows, then reach down to our feet, down on the hardwood floor, and pretend-paint our toe nails. Then, she would come around and put on our fake pink-and-diamond crowns.

From that moment, I was hooked. As the dance classes started getting harder, so did everything else.

“I was finally able to express all of my emotions without tears or yelling.”

My high school also had a dance team, and I joined as soon as I could. Our practice area, known as the “hot box,” was in the school’s deepest corner, covered in blue-and-gray connecting tiles, with mirrors surrounding the entirety of the room. Shelves filled with trophies from years past lined the top. In the middle, two doors opened up to the tennis courts, underneath our Silver Spurs Spectacular red-blue-and-white sign. The gym offered me yet another escapethis time from the hallways that held the awful place everyone calls high school.

This was also the time my mother remarried. With my step-dad came the worst step-family in the world. The silver lining was that every time I performed, my family re-united. The problems were set aside, and the focus was on me.

My most memorable performance was my senior-year dance, to Explosions by Ellie Golding. It was about a breakup, but I had never experienced one that provided the extent of emotion needed for this dance. Instead of taking the pain of breakups, I took the pain of my family’s past and turned it into movement. In a flowing, gray dress, with one lace sleeve I had to loop over my head, I was finally able to express all of my emotions without tears or yelling.

After this dance was over, I walked out and saw how proud my parents were. There was nothing more that I could have asked for. All the years of my putting my body through the labor of dance were worth it. All the countless hours in the purple-walled room and the “hot box” were worth it. All the stressful performances, from Spurs games to events at the Majestic Theater, were worth it.

In dance, I could be myself, without worries about someone yelling or something not being good enough. Little wonder that when I stopped dancing in college, I instead discovered the illegal emotional outlets shared by most 18-year-olds.

My happy place in the dance studio may be lost forever. But I have once again found the joy of escaping the world, this time through my writing.

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