Tiny Dancer by Savannah Pressley

I was 12 years old. I had been dancing for eight years, and it was my first year of competitive dancing. It was my first competition and it was located in Washington D.C. at a convention called Tremaine.  My dad and I rushed out of the hotel like a bunch of banshees after seeing the time was already 7:30 am. The doors for the scholarship auditions closed at 8 am. We rushed to get a cab, and of course the traffic was awful. My heart was racing as fast as lightning and I was sweating bullets. Finally when the cab got there, my dad and I sprinted out and down the steps to try to get me to the auditions in time. It was seven fifty-nine when we got to the door. The guard said we were too late. I was devastated. That was all I was looking forward too, and I had missed my first scholarship audition. “I’m sorry we didn’t make it in time honey, there will be plenty more experiences,” my dad said. “I know thank you daddy,” I said. I didn’t care at that point though, I just wanted to be in that audition room. That night, my dance team competed against the other groups. We got first overall and the highest score of the night. It was one of the most exciting things I have ever experienced.

About two months later, my dance team and I went to another competition. It was in Reston Virginia and the competition was called West Coast Dance Explosion. It was twice as hard, as far as skill level, than Tremaine had been. The dancers we were competing against practice maybe 30 hours a week, whereas my dance team only practices around 10 to 12 hours a week.  As my family and I arrived, the hotel was already filled with different dancers. I didn’t let them overwhelm me though. My family and I got up to our room and I had to go to sleep immediately because I had to be up at six-thirty for my scholarship audition.

 I woke up that morning and jumped out of bed, knowing I had to at least be in the audition room ten minutes before the auditions started.

 The teacher called us out to the dance floor and taught us the dance. I was in the back of the room, so I had more space. After the teacher was done instructing, she said “Y’all put yourselves in groups of eight.”

 I couldn’t think straight. Out of the 200 girls that were in here, we had to split into groups of eight! She called group one out on the floor to go first. As the groups were going I was on the side going over the dance to myself, hoping I wouldn’t forget it.

Finally she called my group, and I walked to the center of the floor. My heart jumped to the sound of the music. I was tensing up, but I just took deep breaths. I started doing the dance and a wave of excitement went through my body and I was really getting into the movements. I felt like I was performing on a stage, it was so extraordinarily fun. When the dance was over she told us to stand in a straight line so she could see our numbers.

A couple more groups went and then they called a handful of people to perform the dance again. One of them was me! I was kind of scared, although I didn’t know if that was a good thing or a bad thing. I preformed it again and I felt just as good as the first time I preformed it. It finally came time for scholarship calls and we all sat in front of the stage. If they called our names we had to go sit on the stage.

The host was saying number, after number, after number, and then finally I heard my number! I was in shock! I went on the stage shocked, and full of surprise considering my number was called. Me, out of the hundreds of girls who auditioned! I just didn’t think that my first audition would be that great. All I needed was confidence, and to believe in myself. If I would have had that to begin with, I wouldn’t have doubted myself so horribly.