How dancing helped my friend

How my friend got rid of her health problems and the benefits she got when she took up dancing.

"Every frustration indeed, leads us to another triumph and success. Something comes across our path
and becomes a turning point! And we will never be the same again!"

I have a friend named Roxy.
She is always a busy woman who is into furniture business and is doing very well.
Years ago,she had a shoulder surgery and had a recovery rehab for six months.
She was also suffering from chronic headaches and complicated migraine.
She had stomach issues as well.
She was taking maintenance pills for her migraine and acid reflux medicine for her stomach.
For ten years,roxy was taking proton pump inhibitors for her stomach and for three years she
was taking neurontine for her migraine. For all those years, all she can think of is how to get better.
The doctors adviced her to start with finding an exercise that she likes and enjoys because this will
help with her health issues.From then on she started looking around for an exercise.
One day, she randomly went to a dance studio and signed herself up for a jazz class.She didn't
have any idea what a jazz dance class is because she didn't have any backround in dance.But she
signed up anyway,and ended up really loving it.She enjoyed it very much despite having zero dance background
and surrounded by ballerinas as her classmates. She felt like she's in another world everytime she's in the
class.At first she felt intimidated because of course she was a newby and her classmates danced better than her.
But she just carried on.She discovered that she is happier when she danced,she feels very good with doing simple
things in the class like turning and jumping....it sounded simple but for some reason it made her smile and she felt so
good that she just danced her best and she goes.."Yeeehhhaawh!"

It really didn't have any drastic change in her health at first but soon she noticed that when she stopped
dancing, her headache would come back. After six months,Roxy decided to go full out with her exercise and so she signed up
for Pilates class as an addition to her exercise regime. With Pilates, she noticed that she became more flexible and stronger.
Everytime she is in class she became more and more enthusiastic and enjoys it more.
She was thrilled and she thought that her exercise routine was enough for to help her get better.
During that time, I was invited in that dance studio where Roxy was taking dancing lessons.I was a guest ballet,jazz and
contemporary dance teacher.When she heard about me, she wanted to take a one-on-one jazz lesson with me to further her knowledge
in jazz.But then I ended up teaching her ballroom dance lessons because I remember her saying that she wanted to learn to
dance Argentine tango someday. She thought that it's a very hard and challenging dance to learn but it looks so good
and very interesting. So i taught her Argentine tango. Roxy just fell in love with it and became a bit obsessed with it.
And she coped up very well and learned very quickly. She never expected that she would love it.
Every week,Roxy kept improving getting more into learning it together with her jazz and Pilates lessons as well.
Until one day, I told them in the dance school that I am going overseas with my wife to live and dance in a ballet company.
Roxy and the rest of the staff in the dance school was a bit sad about my news to them. But I have to move on because
I also have my own plans with my wife.

After a few months I was living and working overseas and carried on with my plans.Roxy did stop dancing Argentine tango.
She continued to take class from other ballroom dance tutors and to my surprise,she discovered ballet and went for it! She
found it hard because she was a "Newby" but continued to do it and added it to her whole dance exercise regime.
She filled her whole week with dance and Pilates because she kept her goal to get better and well.
After two years of dancing and a year of doing Pilates,she weaned herself from her medicines. She still have occassional
headaches due to food triggers but she has not had any major migraine attacks ever since. Her stomach was back to normal,
she still managed her diet, her water intake and sleep very well to keep her healthy.
Roxy became very happy, active and healthy. She said that she was very happy that "Dance" discovered her!
And she thanked me and my wife for being a part of her quest to get better.
She said that she was very fortunate to have
met us!
Good on you Roxy! Keep it up! "Yeeeeehhaaaaawh!"

chapter 1: and so the journey begins.....

Sometimes, something comes across your path and you will never be the same again!

                             One day my friends and I decided to watch a movie about ballet. The movie called "Center Stage". At first I was skeptic about it as I was a well known hip-hop dancer, my hip-hop group earned lots of money and is very successful. Everyone thought that for sure ballet is only for girls! But my friends said " let's just watch it anyway, there's no other interesting movies that are showing today!" And so we ended up watching it.

                             Normally, my friends and I are the type of people that walk out of the movie if we find it a bit boring or uninteresting. But with this one, we finished it....and watched the whole movie again. After we finished watching it the second time, right after we got out of the movie house, I was silent for a while. The whole time I was watching I couldn't take my eyes of every scene of the movie. I didn't even want to blink. I fell in love with it! I said to my friends " I didn't know that ballet is also for boys!" And then suddenly A part of me was regretting that I didn't take ballet training before because years ago, when I was younger about 12 or 14, I was already dancing hip-hop and contemporary. My mum wanted me to take up ballet training since she saw that I love to dance. But I didn't want to because I'm a boy! I think and everyone thought that only girls do ballet! And at that moment when I saw that movie about ballet, I said to myself "This is what I want to do for the rest of my life!" I want to be a ballet dancer! And so after that I felt sad, like I felt this pain inside me lingering for a while. I kept telling myself "So this is what ballet is all about! If only I knew about this form of art a long time ago, I would have done it already!"

                              I should have listened to my mum! Then after a few moments that day I looked at my friends. They were also dancers,members of our school's dance troupe. We looked at each other with sigh, and smiled.They too felt sad and regretful..... they looked at me and knew what I was feeling as they feel the same way too. We went to a fast food place to eat. We talked about the movie. How good it was and how great the dancers were and just talked and raved about it the whole time. Then I said " Well, I want to take up ballet class starting tomorrow! If anyone of you guys want to come with me." They all wanted to go and are thinking the same thing! Then I said " But don't you think that I am too old and too late to take up ballet training?.....I'm already 19 years old! Gosh I'm too late!...I've waisted my time, those years of searching,trying to find that one thing that I want to do for the rest of my life! Now I found it.....but I'm too late to start! Why is life so ironic?" We were silent again for a bit. And they said " Well, we are too old for it as well and that's a fact, but don't you think that it wouldn't matter? The real question is...do you love it? Do you want to do it?" And I said " That movie has changed the way I see Dance! And yes I love it!"

They said " So your age wouldn't matter. Let's just do it and give it a try. Let's do it so we will know about it and because we want it!" Then we agreed to go for it.

the life of a dancer

                I started dancing when I was ten years old. My uncle invited me to join a dance theater production. As a little child, I am willing to do anything just to have fun. So I did, and everyday I started to get more into it until it became my passion. From then on I loved to dance! In that production, the kind of dance style that is being taught to me was contemporary. Contemporary is a kind of dance style that makes use of the body's natural movement. When I reached high school, I became interested with hip-hop. One day, I met this group of people in the new subdivision that my family lived in. I became friends with them and they asked me if I am interested to join in their hip-hop group, I said, "yes". And so we practiced everyday except on Sundays. In the afternoon we go to a hill just 5 minutes away from the subdivision to practice acrobatics. We do all sorts of back flips and somersaults and just about everything we could think of that would feel good doing. Until after a few months we became interested with gymnastics. So we decided to join a gymnastics club in our city's sports center. The good thing about it is that it's free and all we have to do is learn it and compete by representing our city's name. 
                      It was a great experience, then after a while we discovered that we could combine gymnastics with hip-hop! It became a really cool combination. It sort of had it's own identity. and so we danced everywhere, until we joined our first competition. A few months before that hip-hop competition, we spent 3-5 hours of non-stop rehearsals and we did it 4 times a week. It made us become very fit. On the day of the competition we were very nervous and at the same time very excited. There were 20 groups competing and every group was very good. But we lost in that competition, it was our first time to join a dance competition. We were sad but more of challenged and grateful. That experience made us want to dance more, and so from then on we joined more competitions and became known in our city, then we started to get offered to dance in promotional shows, productions and concerts. We became famous and had lots of managers chasing after us wanting to promote our hip-hop group. And so it went on for about 5 years. Everything was going great and we have made quite a lot of money with our dancing and we were sort of living in the lime light until at some point, my group mates started to become very comfortable with our situation and they became a bit laid back. We started to have less rehearsals and sometimes everyone in the group arrives late for practice. Soon I started to notice that we don't dance that well as we used to. And some of us become more interested with drinking alcohol rather that practicing. Until there came a point that we started to lose managers and invitations to dance and we started to run out of money as well. Then I started thinking about how to revive the group. I still want to dance so I have to look for other ways to keep my passion going.


                    Then i decided that i should look for other job or I could even teach dance. Slowly, I moved on. One day, my mum told me that I should try ballet because it can be a good career path and that there are very few male ballet dancers and they're in demand in ballet companies everywhere. Ballet is unique and is a great training if one wants to be really fit. The first thing that came out of my mouth was "ballet is only for girls and male dancers that do ballet are effeminate!" Mum and I had a short argument with that idea and finally she stopped convincing me. When I reached fourth year in high school, I was still dancing hip-hop until I graduated. When I was in college, I joined our school's dance troupe and dance organization that does cultural and theatrical productions. I also joined this group called "circulo de arte", a group of visual artists that does art exhibits as i also love to paint. One day our group went to a ballet school to study the dancers. We practiced sketching them as they are doing class. I looked and observed how they move and sketched them. I remembered my mum when she tried convincing me to do ballet. Then after the class I became friends with the ballet teacher, he used to be a professional dancer before. After a few weeks, I went out to the movies with my friends. When we arrived to the movies, we didn't know what to watch so we randomly chose to watch the movie called "Center stage." At first I thought that it's gonna be boring because it's about ballet and it might be a kind of a chick flick movie. My friends said that they think it might be a bit interesting as it's still a movie about dancing so we gave it a go after the discussion.