I Could Never Fully Move Like That - Tumblr Posts

Yes, as someone who has been dancing since they were 3 years old, I can confirm that a lot of people I’ve told I dance tap, jazz, and ballet are shocked. I think half of that comes from if you know me, someone who played basketball and hates skirts and dresses, it wouldn’t seem I’d like something like dance.

While jazz isn’t my favorite (ballet is), tap is definitely special. I think a lot of people do see tap as silly and old fashioned, but it’s not, not completely. The movements we do depends on the song, but most of the time it’s modernized and slightly draws from jazz movements—which is basically a little brother in a way to hip hop. (At least that’s how I see it.) In my most recent tap dance we danced to Sucker by the Jonas Brothers, compared to another year when I danced to Jail House Rock by Elvis Presley…or when I was 8 and danced to green eggs and ham while wearing a striped red and white hat as part of my costume lol. I even did an Irish dance one year, maybe when I was 13, and that was a tricky year for us because learning to Irish dance and remembering to move certain ways was hard for my class.

That’s the beauty of tap though, it can be classic old or new and modernized and it all looks amazing. It’s such a tricky thing to do, besides pointe, because not only are you learning these moves that have to line up with the music at the perfect time, but you’re doing it with 20 other people, and if one person is off you can hear the difference. I don’t think people appreciate dancing enough and how hard it really is. I do tap, jazz, and ballet for 30 minutes each on one day—an hour and a half—and I walk out of the dance studio as tired as I do if I walked out of basketball practice.

I’m not going to lie, that’s why I get slightly annoyed/upset when people say it’s just dance. Like, you don’t know how many people have told me, because I refused to dance at dances for schools because I don’t like to, that I take dance, it’s the same thing; you know how to dance. Guys, it’s not the same thing. Not to me at least.

Please, appreciate people who do ballet, jazz, tap, pointe, hip hop, any form of dancing, because a lot of hard work and practice goes into it, as you can see with the amazing ladies above and even the Nicholas brothers.

They DID that!!!