Ryann's Story, Spring 2025

Ryann shares how her early love for dance was overshadowed by a highly competitive studio environment where favoritism and pressure made her feel inadequate and disconnected from her passion. Over time, this experience diminished her confidence and enjoyment, leading her to step away from dance after high school. However, upon joining a more supportive and inclusive dance program in college, a teacher helped her rediscover her confidence and love for dance. This renewed encouragement allowed her to see her potential and inspired her to pursue dance more seriously as a future career.

Well, I started dancing like most people in, like, a small, little silly dance studio in my town, where I was like three, and it was fun. We didn't really learn a lot of dance, but we just played around mostly, and I met a lot of my friends that I still know today from there. But one friend, specifically, her name is Emma, she decided to go to another studio, and it was a much more strict and professional studio. So, when she decided to go there, her mom persuaded my mom to go there, as well. And, um, so I started going to that studio, but it was a much different environment than the dance studio I went to before when I was younger. I remember the director of the studio sometimes she would, like, come into the studio where we were having classes, and, like, we'd all be so scared of her because she was such a strict and scary person.

And I remember it was, like, I had fun in the beginning, and I started having classes with the director, that's when I just started disconnecting my love for dance with my time at the studio. And, I would only really go because I wanted to see my friends there. I wasn't one of her favorites, so I would like rarely get corrections on things that I was doing, and I wouldn't really get good parts in recital pieces. And it made me feel so bad because all my friends who, like, were a favorite or had someone on the board would be getting these good parts. And I thought that I was, like, so much worse than them and, like, just a bad dancer, and that made me not wanna try anymore.

I graduated high school, and that summer before college, I wasn't dancing, and I, like, realized that I really missed dancing. So, I wanted to see if they had classes at UMass that I could take. And I was interested in taking classes, but I didn't really want to, like, get a dance degree because I thought I was bad, and I didn't wanna continue with something that I was bad in. And to do that, like, I had to submit an audition video basically. I sent in a video from my last recital. And honestly, I was expecting to, like, for them to say “No,” and not in the major, but then, they immediately respond, and they were like, "Yes, you're admitted!” I was like, oh wow, they actually, like, appreciated me as a dancer.

And then when I started taking classes at UMass, my ballet teacher, Tom, he gave me a different view of ballet than what I grew up in, and he didn't pick favorites. He made sure to look at everyone in the room and, like, give corrections to everyone and show attention to everyone regardless of their, like, technical ability in ballet, and I never saw that before. I think he was, like, the first dance teacher to, like, actually appreciate me and, like, give me corrections and make me think that I was a good dancer.

I really started to love dance and want to pursue it professionally. I felt proud of the way I danced, and I can see myself improving, which I, like, didn't really see before. And now, I actually see, like, having a career and dance as my future, which I, I, like, always wanted as a kid, but I never actually believed would happen. In doing that made me love dance, and dance became fun for me again.