Oh god, I love “So You Think You Can Dance.”
With every season of the show, my love grows greater and more absurd. The first season I watched it, two years ago, I enjoyed the hell out of it. Last year, I actually voted a couple of times for my favorite dancers, and I drove two hours in order to go see the tour.
This season, I have apparently turned into a crazed fangirl who votes dozens of times for my favorite dancer, the fantastic Evan Kasprzak, and who feels Very Strongly that Evan must at least make it into the top 10, because my life requires the opportunity to go see him on tour. Furthermore, I am pre-fangirling for season 6, when I have high hopes that Evan’s insanely talented and, frankly, kind of dreamy brother Ryan will be in the top 20.
Things in my life have been so hectic and stressful lately that by the time Wednesday night rolls around, I am praising all manner of deities that I don’t believe in for the arrival of SYTYCD and the blessed, blessed escapism that it provides.
The biggest reason that I am so grateful for SYTYCD, though, is that it really was the inspiration for me to start dancing again. It made me miss dancing. It reminded me of how much I love to perform. And so, around the end of the summer last year, I happened to notice an advertisement for adult hip hop classes near my house. As soon as the concrete idea of taking dance classes again was put into my head, I decided that it really had to happen.
I didn’t think my old dance studio offered any adult classes, but I decided to call just to check. It turned out that, yes, my dance teacher does have adult classes. My sister and I spent a few months last fall in that adult class, before my dance teacher asked us if we might want to go back to the class we were in before we stopped dancing, the class that is sometimes called the “senior class” at that studio. Of course we did.
In less than a year, I went from sitting on the couch admiring, and occasionally sarcastically criticizing, other people’s dancing to being challenged to work hard and improve as a dancer myself. I’ve spent the past few months actively trying to get in better physical shape and practicing tap in my kitchen so that I would be ready for the dance recital, so that I would just be better. I’m spending every Monday night of this summer in a conditioning class because I don’t want to lose what I’m just now getting back.
Going back to dance has been one of the best decisions I have made since graduating from college, because it has given me a goal to work toward, which I am realizing is critical to my feeling content. If I don’t have something to try and achieve, I am pretty useless. But not now. Now, I get to experience the triumph of dance competency.
As you can see, I’ve got the trophy to prove it.
