There’s a lot of important lessons you learn when you grow up as a dancer. You learn a lot about discipline, friendships, and how to make a pair of jazz shoes look like they were put through a shredder before they even hit the stage.
Coming from a girl who loves to claim she’s officially “retired” from dancing, you never realize how much the little habits you pick up as a dancer stick with you until you try to get rid of them.
To make sure all my dancer girls feel heard, here are some of my favorite dancer habits I just can’t quite seem to shake.
Eight Counts
Before I could spell my name, I had the rhythm of eight counts in my head anywhere I went. I can guarantee any dancer will understand when I say, the way I count to eight has a specific rhythm that I never catch until it’s too late.
And it’s not just the rhythm, but EVERYTHING I do seems to be in eight counts. Everything is scaled in eights, my workouts, how I time myself, even how I organize things. I just can’t seem to escape the eight.
Tapping everywhere
This is pretty self-explanatory and I’m pretty positive it’s a universal experience for any tap dancer. My feet just feel so heavy if they aren’t making enough noise to irritate everyone around me. Tap is embedded in my brain, and I don’t think I care enough to stop.
Daydreaming choreography
I physically cannot listen to a song without imagining how it would play out as a dance. Would it look good on stage? Should I send it to my dance teacher? Which dancer do I know can do the tricks I could never pull off but still choreograph in my head?
It’s a never-ending cycle, and if I can’t choreograph a dance to it? Skip.
toes. pointed. always.
It doesn’t matter what I’m doing, if my feet are off the floor, you can count on the fact that they are most likely pointed. It also doesn’t matter that my feet are cramping 24/7, it’s built into my brain to make sure my I never get caught slacking with a sickled foot.
“I did a dance to this song”
I know no one cares, but I couldn’t stop the words from coming out of my mouth if I tried. As a girl who could perform a dance from sixth grade like I learned it yesterday, there’s an immediate excitement (and sometimes fear response depending on the song) that comes from hearing a beat that makes me relive my glory days.
I wish I could say that it’s just “I did a dance to this,” that comes out of my mouth, but it usually follows with a ten-minute background story that leaves everyone wondering when I’ll move on to literally anything else.
One more time… still means nothing
I can remember the long days of wondering when one more time would finally mean one more time. One more time across the floor, one more time running the dance, one more time, one more time, one more time…
I’d like to say it’s a strong work ethic or determination, but I think we all know it’s the dancer in me that will never rely on the words “one more time.” I catch myself falling short on my own promises, one more time practicing a hard chemistry concept, one more time doing the fun workouts instead of the hard ones, one more time, one more time, one more time…
And these are just the habits I’ve grown to notice.
So, to all my dancers out there, I promise you aren’t the only one pretending that you are on stage while you’re actually sitting in a boring lecture. And to all my friends of dancers, give them a pat on the back and listen to their 10-minute-long rants about when they messed up on a dance when they were six. It means they love you.
No matter where a dancer goes or what they do, the dancer in them will never leave.
You can take the girl out of dance, but you can never take dance out of the girl.