Personal Narrative Essay Example for Free

Personal Narrative Essay I began dancing at the age of three. First I took simple jazz and tap classes, but as I grew older I took more advanced classes such as ballet, pointe, modern, barre, and technique classes. From the first moment that I stepped onto the stage, any career possibility that involved something other than dancing didn’t seem like a plausible one for me. It wasn’t until I was about fourteen that I really took to the idea of living in New York City, the dance capital of the world. As a freshman in high school, it seemed that everyday brought with it some conversation or lecture about college possibilities. With each month it seemed that more of my friends had figured out what they were going to do after high school. Each had narrowed their choices down to a few colleges or universities, one or two majors or degrees of study, and an ending career. I knew that the only thing I wanted to do was dance, whether it would be as an instructor, a student, or as a professional in a ballet or dance company. It wasn’t until I saw Save the Last Dance, a movie about a young girl with aspirations to dance at The Julliard School in New York City, that I finally grasped what I wanted to do. The Julliard School is a world-renowned dance, drama, and music conservatory in Lincoln Center, New York City. Being perhaps the most selective school in the country, The Julliard School admits about 7% of its applicants and is home to just under one thousand undergraduate and graduate students. Some of the world’s most accomplished choreographers and dancers are Julliard alumni. When I first understood the exclusivity of this dance conservatory, I was immediately discouraged. I thought that the fact that I came from a small town and danced in a small studio was disadvantageous, and that I couldn’t possibly fit the criteria that Julliard searched for. I didn’t begin seeing The Julliard School as a potential college until my junior year in high school. Natale Harter was my instructor from the time I began dancing until the time I graduated. She was a certified instructor by the Dance Master of America teacher-training program, and was a well-learned dancer and instructor. Natale took a few of the most advanced students from our studio to a Dance Master workshop at the Hyatt Convention Center in Rochester in January of 2008. Taking into consideration that our studio wasn’t by any means a competitive studio, walking into a room full of a hundred or so competitive dancers came as a complete culture shock to each of us. This coupled with the amazingly challenging choreography each of our workshop teachers threw at us was enough to discourage most of the girls from participating. I soon found that I was the only dancer left from my studio left on the dance floor. The choreography was at that point in my life the most demanding and tricky combination of turns, leaps, rhythms and movements that I had experienced. Although I felt that I had made a fool of myself in front of some of the Rochester area’s best choreographers, I felt exhilarated. Fighting the urge to succumb to pain of my aching legs, my shaking arms, and the immense amount of adrenaline surging though my veins, I finished all three hours of the workshop. Not thinking that I had placed or had won any awards from the judges, I began changing and packing my dance shoes into my bag. As my team and myself began walking out the dance floor doors, my name was called. I had won the best overall dancer! Still to this day I cannot forget the joy and pride that overcame me. It was then that I knew that Julliard wasn’t as far out of my reach as I had thought. On top of my eight dance classes, I began training with Natale for four hours a day, six days a week. I signed up for an audition for late fall of 2008 to attempt admission to Julliard for the fall of 2009. There was never a day that passed that I wasn’t fantasizing about dancing in the Julliard conservatory; it consumed me. I had never pushed myself so such lengths before, I dedicated every ounce of my energy into perfecting my technique, increasing my stamina and flexibility, and exuding grace and poise into every motion I made. I was ready. When it finally came time for the audition, I was full of confidence. My audition was on a Saturday morning and was the last admission audition to be accepted into the 2009 fall semester. I arrived into Lincoln center an hour before my audition was to begin. I changed into the required plain black leotard and pink-footed tights, and began to stretch. Over the next hour about forty young girls slowly entered into the room and stretched beside me. As I took notice of each of them, I began to feel sharp pangs of nervousness and uncertainty poke at my confidence. Each girl seemed taller and skinnier than the last. As the room reached capacity, I was surrounded by a total of forty-three girls. Many of the girls looked so thin that I began realizing that the number of girls with eating disorders far outnumbered the girls of a healthy weight. Each girl was taller than me by at last half a foot. I never thought that I could feel so out of place doing something that had been as normal to me as breathing. The audition was comprised of five components. After each section the instructors in the room would dismiss a handful of girls and regretfully tell them that they would no longer be considered for admission. The first section was barre, or rhythmic ballet stretching and warm ups. Barre exercises showcase each dancer’s technique†¦ or lack thereof. I began each class in my studio with a twenty-minute barre warm-up, so I breezed through it. The first cuts were made, bringing the number of girls in the room down by ten. The next section was a ballet floor movement. An instructor dictated the counts and the motions for each six count, totaling twelve six-counts. We split into groups of five and performed the instructor’s dictated counts. This time five girls were cut, leaving us to only twenty-nine girls. Next came my weakest style: modern. Modern or contemporary dancing could almost be considered as interpretive dance due to its loose counts and generalized movements. To my amazement, I wasn’t included in the group of fourteen dismissals, leaving our group still smaller with a total of fifteen girls. Next came pointe. Pointe shoes worn by professional ballerinas are comprised of wood, glue, leather and silk, and are able to support the arch of the foot and toes just enough so that the ballerina wearing them is able to stand on the tips of her toes. By the end of the thirty-minute long pointe movement that our instructor had given us, I had suffered a later confirmed three broken toes. Eight cuts were made this time. Trying my best to hide the pain from reaching my face, I soldiered onto the final stage. The pianist sitting in the corner of the room behind a beautiful grand piano was to play one minute of improvised classical music. Each of us seven dancers left were to improvise for the full movement in an attempt to prove ourselves more worthy and qualified than the others. Dancing with every last ounce of energy my body had left to spare, I nailed it. Two more cuts were made, bringing the room to just four dancers, two instructors, and the pianist. The silence was deafening when the instructors left the room to converse with one another. When the instructors came back into the room, their faces had the faintest hint of hesitant uncertainty. The head instructor explained to us that since we were auditioning at the last possible chance and since there is a certain amount of dancers that the conservatory could admit each year, only three girls could be accepted. At this point my heart was beating so loudly I was sure that half of New York City could hear it, but I kept my composure. The second instructor then went on to explain to us that the way in which our fates would be determined was simple: we would each hold out our right leg in grande bottemont. To perform a grande bottemont means to hold the leg out as high as possible while maintaining a pointed toe and a proper turnout. The head instructor was to then come by and slap the top of our leg firmly and quickly. The dancer whose leg â€Å"jiggled† the most was to be cut. The anger that rose up from inside of me was too much to comprehend. All of the months of broken toes, relentless exercise, and devoted training seemed to all be wasted for such a vain and conceited factor as the amount of â€Å"jiggle† from a thigh. I now understood that this was not a place that I would ever want to be a part of. I was appalled by my newfound comprehension that arguably the world’s best dance school was more concerned with a dancer’s body composition than the amount of raw talent he or she possessed. By the time I graduated high school, I decided that I wanted to be a dance teacher. I wanted to teach young girls the skills that I had learned, but more importantly to help each young girl realize that she is a beautiful, strong, and unique dancer who should never try to change herself to fit into a cookie-cutter appearance.