After going back and forth about wanting to and being dead-terrified to, around the end of May I finally put up my hand at a rehearsal to say that I wanted to perform this summer. I’m still oh-so-introverted. And I get nerves like you wouldn’t believe. But I wouldn’t call it stage fright. Performance days, what I feel is very like what I felt on a travel day, back when I was traveling all the time. It’s really just some butterflies and a kind of heightened awareness.

I’m still strugging with the question of whether I want or how much I want to perform in the future.

I have really enjoyed the performances this summer. There’s such a tremendous energy on stage and back stage. Opening night was so fantastic, the audience was really pumped, we were really pumped, the dancing was full of energy. I love the dancing.

First Performance Ever

There has also been a very steep learning curve to deal with. In addition to honing performance techniques and dance techniques and polishing choreographies, I’ve had to learn the ropes in costuming and makeup. Two areas where I still feel pretty amateur. And I think it’s that amateur feeling that’s mostly to blame for my feeling that maybe performing is not my thing.

But, I think just these three performances this summer have improved my dancing immeasurably. It would seem that some people dance in order to get good enough to perform. I feel like I’m performing in order to get good enough to dance.

And that, really, is why I think I am committed to the idea of continuing to perform. Even if I’m not ever invited to do so with this troupe again, and years pass before I have another opportunity, what these performances have added to my skills is enough of a payoff to be worth the nerves and insecurity. Ironically, weathering the insecurities of the stage means I am now more self-assured about my dancing than I have ever been. Where before I had some technique, I feel like I have now begun down the road to having some style.