The Oh Yeah Factor

 A Personal Essay By Coby Hunter 

In this dance world, haughty disdain emanates from talented masses glancing disapprovingly at those they view as outsiders

“What are your dance goals?” is a question that I am often asked. For a long time, I said that I wanted to get onto the BYU Tour Team. For the first 2 years of my dancing at BYU people would say “Oh that’s nice” They looked at me like one looks at a child who wants to be an astronaut or president. Not only do you have to be a great dancer, but you have to scratch the right backs, win the right competitions and be in the right place at the right time to get onto the team.

There are people who are on the Showcase Company (Backup tour team) who are better dancers than those on Tour Team but once you are on tour, you are there until you want to be done. There is the occasional person who is asked to leave the team due to moral actions, grades or work ethic but it is rare. I grew up doing ballet, hip hop, contemporary and jazz through school and when I got to BYU there weren’t any teams in those disciplines that I wanted to be on or could be on. I started doing ballroom from a recommendation of a family friend and I really enjoyed it. I knew that I wanted to be really good at ballroom. I was a good ballroom dancer considering how new I was to it, but I was not good in the landscape of high-level competitive dancers. I knew this but I was a hard-worker and I knew that I could improve. The challenge of getting to tour team was great there’s no doubt about that however the fact that no one seemed to believe that I could do what I said I would do made me furious. “I’ll show all of you” I thought.

Feeling doubted in dance was nothing new to me. I started doing what I refer to as traditional dance (ballet, contemporary, jazz, hip hop, etc) late compared to most dancers. I took my first dance class in middle school. Most dancers start between 5 and 8 years old. Adding to my handicap, I was not very flexible. A lack of flexibility in traditional dance puts a ceiling on your dancing. I knew that I had to become more flexible so I decided that I would stretch for 30 minutes a day while reading my scriptures. My body did not like to be stretched but through daily effort, I got to the point only two years later where I could do the splits on both legs. (the picture to the right is of me on my mission doing a split with my foot on a block to increase the stretch). I believed in myself then and didn’t let a little bit of pain stop me. I know that I can do anything if I work hard enough at it. By the time I had graduated high school, I had become a pretty good dancer, even though I could do quad turns and was an exceptional hip hop dancer, I still felt like I was an inferior dancer.

This feeling of inferiority plated a seed of a need to prove an invisible unknown person wrong. I can’t place my finger on who I want to prove myself too. This makes it much harder to do. This desire to prove these imaginary people wrong has driven me to work really hard to be a better dancer. For a long time, it was the desire to get onto tour team but now it’s just wanting to prove these prideful haters wrong. In this dance world, haughty disdain emanates from talented masses glancing disapprovingly at those they view as outsiders. Although it may be sinful, intense anger still bubbles up inside me towards many people in the dance world. I believe that this anger will eventually go away but until that moment the anger fuels me to practice longer than others and give up social activities to become great.

The two styles I compete in are standard and cabaret. Standard is when you dance connected to the lady the entire time and you compete dances such as waltz, tango, Viennese waltz, foxtrot and quickstep. Cabaret is a mix of contemporary, ballroom, and lifts. I have done well as a competitor thus far smiling as my partner and I are called up for 5th or 6th place for standard and grinning even larger the one time I place first in cabaret. However, I have not achieved the level of accomplishment that I want to. Those fifths and sixths will metamorphosize into 1sts through sweat, time, and grit.

I still am not where I want to be in my dance life journey. I am going to win pre-champ standard and win amateur cabaret at nationals. To most people these titles mean nothing however to me they mean everything. I will not stop until I win these events. I don’t want to continue feeling this insecurity and anger for the rest of my life. I hope that by winning these events I will be able to put these feelings behind me for good. The fire of spite still burns strongly in me fueled by every comment, look and action.

 

Having a good frame is crucial to being a good dancer. Looking at videos of when I started dancing, I saw how poor my frame had been. The right arm should go straight out and bend horizontally at the elbow to connect to the ladies back at her shoulder blade, the hand softly follows the contour of the ladies back while having more tone in the base of the hand to give support. The right arm extends out and bends up and towards the partner. The shoulders should be down with the lats activated. My frame was sloppy and poorly formed. Today it is clear, clean, and crisp in its appearance.

Two weeks from today, I audition for tour team, 6 months from today I’ll be competing for a national title in Florida, one year from today I’ll be competing for another national title this time in Utah. I’ll continue grinding it out until those comps arrive. Anything could happen at these competitions and I can’t control the outcome all I can do is prepare.