Wednesday, August 26, 2009

My Early Dance Career

During my childhood I was a social outcast.
My glasses looked like the bottoms of two coke bottles, my freckles covered every inch of my face, and I was one of the smallest, scrawniest kids in my class. And worst of all- I was really bad in any kind of sport- baseball, basket ball, football, hockey etc'.
I tried to avoid gym classes, because the teachers and the kids would yell at me for being slow and clumsy. I was a weak child, afraid of the class bullies. I was the stereotype of the nerdy kid in the high school sitcoms.

Having trouble fitting in to my school's ideal of masculinity, I befriended mostly girls.
So when they started studying modern dance in the local community center, I joined them.
I was eight years old when I first attended a modern dance class. I was the only boy in the class, wearing a male's ballet uniform. It seemed natural to me, until the boys started calling me names such as "fagot".

My first years of adolescence were very tough. When I was about 16 years old, things started to change for me. I finally became taller and also muscular after years of dancing. "Popular" is not the right word to define what I became, since my class mates matured and stopped looking for popular guys to worship- but I was more confident, and girls started noticing me. I received more encouragements for my passion for modern dance. I was asked to demonstrate my dancing skills in our high school prom, and people started asking me if I'm intending to turn my passion in to a life-long career.

By the end of high school, when my friends were applying to various colleges in the U.S, I decided I want to study modern dance abroad. I spent months practicing on my auditions for modern dance troupes worldwide. I sent my dance clips and resumes to more than 30 modern dance schools, and got accepted to six. I chose to study modern dance in Israel and joined the KCDC dance troupe.

When I turned 18, two weeks before I was about to fly to Israel, I got in touch with my old modern dance teacher who taught me during childhood. She asked me to come over to her dance studio in the community center and tell her students what I'm doing now.
I went there, and as I told them I got accepted to an Israeli modern dance troupe, and felt so proud of myself!

When I was there, I noticed a third of her class were boys! I guess things have changed since I was a kid….

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