The Show Must Go On
I have always been a performer. I was one of those kids who loved attention, so would come up with little musical numbers for my family to enjoy. If the music was loud enough for me to hear, I would run over to the source and start dancing. Even though I would basically throw myself around and sing obnoxiously, my family always cheered me on. This feeling is so gratifying, and I think from then on, I became addicted.
My mom loves to tell the story of when I came home one day from first grade with a yellow flyer in my hand. It was for the talent show. “But what are you going to do?,” she asked, thinking about how I had not had any proper training in anything since the dance lessons when I was four years old which resulted in me picking up sequins from the stage during the whole performance in the Selena Auditorium. “I’m going to sing,” I told her like this was a ridiculous question. “By yourself?” By myself. If I think back hard enough, I can place myself back on that little stage in that super cute dress I remember my mom got for me singing “Rainy Day” from Bratz: The Movie, a classic. I remember the feeling of absolute bliss walking up the stage in front of everyone to accept my trophy, which I’m pretty sure was for participation, but as far as I was concerned, I had just won an Oscar. This began my streak with Galvan Elementary School talent shows.
I kind of became known for them at school which I absolutely loved. Teachers would ask if I wanted to show the class a little bit of what to expect at the show. The answer was always yes. Second grade was “This is Me” from the movie Camp Rock, third grade was “Popular” from the musical Wicked (shoutout to my older sister Nikki for letting us paint her green), fourth grade was a Grease Medley with my first ever duet partner Jacoby (1st place!), fifth grade, a Glee Medley with Jacoby that is still sitting somewhere on Youtube.
I had a small crisis after elementary school, knowing that Tom Browne Middle School did not host annual talent shows. What was this rising star going to do? After a year in the pep squad, I convinced my mom to sign me up for dance classes at Munro Ballet Studios again, promising to not even think about picking up a single sequin. While I was known for talent shows, my cousin Tara lived at Munro Ballet, performing in the Nutcracker and other classical ballets every year. I decided I would give this a try.
To my shock and disappointment, they did not place me in classes with my age group. In the ballet world, you are expected to begin your dance career at five years old, so I was twelve years old in a class full of nine- and ten-year-olds. It was embarrassing at first, but after I began dancing, I didn’t care how noticeably older I was than my classmates, I just wanted to perform. I fell in love. Just like in regular school, I quickly became the teacher’s pet, offering demonstrations to the class on how to properly execute a dance step and receiving special little solo moments in our spring recital routines.
The rite of passage for a dancer is when you receive your first pair of pointe shoes. This is no easy feat however, as you must have completed all the necessary prerequisite ballet classes, dance a certain amount of hours every week, and be at least eleven years old so your feet are considered fully developed. They don’t just let anyone dance on the very tops of their toes! You can imagine my pride when I entered my pre-pointe class that was dedicated to strengthening the feet and ankles, hearing that by the winter I would be fitted for my first pair of pointe shoes. Like a match made in heaven the first pair I tried on were the perfect fit, not comfortable though, there’s not supposed to be anything comfortable about putting all of your body weight onto the very tops of your toes. But to a dedicated dancer this moment is everything, regardless of the number of foot cramps and blisters in store, you have worked so hard for this moment and have received the respect and approval from your ballet teachers to put you where you are today.
The problem was that I was now about to enter high school and Carroll High School is the home of the Tigerettes. Dance drill teams are a very big thing in Texas and the Tigerettes were the first team created in my hometown, Corpus Christi. My eldest sister, Stacey, who I have always looked up to like an A-list celebrity, was a Tigerette when she was in high school. Tara and my older sister Brianna were currently on the team, both holding prestigious officer positions. The pressure was real. I had admired all of these ladies all of my life and naturally wanted to follow in their footsteps, but I had also just received my first pair of pointe shoes and hadn’t even had the chance to really break them in. I felt so torn, I could not do both. School came first and I was an honor roll student who could not live with herself if her grades dropped any lower than a B, even that was pushing it, so dedicating more time to dance on top of hours of homework was not an option. Unless…
I found a loophole. I told myself that I would stay at the studio one more year, enjoy dancing “en pointe” for a little bit longer, while being a manager for the Tigerettes my freshmen year. This meant I was still technically part of the team, albeit the way the dishwasher is still a member of a restaurant. As a manager I ran around making sure all of the dancers and our director had everything they needed. This looked like preparing and distributing ice packs, adjusting costumes, holding doors, finding bandaids, pressing play on the iPod, you name it. Being manager left me plenty of time to be a dancer on the team and even have time to try for officer positions like my relatives. The rule bending did not end there though. During competition season the Tigerette director Ms. Perry, knowing me fairly well at this time, asked if I would like to perform a solo at the dance competition the team was being entered in. This was a big deal. Not all of the team members got to participate in competition, they had to try out for the routines, and not all of the members had the means or the courage to take a solo performance in addition to any other numbers. “But I’m not technically on the team, I’m just a manager”. Ms. Perry said that she would enter me as an independent, she was willing to go through that extra process just for me. Naturally, I said yes.
Before I knew it, I was officially a dancer on the team! The first year just being a regular team member was the most fun. All I had to worry about was remembering to pack my full uniform and remember the routine(s). I still remember putting on my blue sequined uniform for the first time. It so closely resembled Stacey’s that I would try on as a little girl, but this one fit like a glove and was all mine. It was Brianna’s senior year and her second year as a captain on the team. As she was experiencing all of her last milestones on the team, I was experiencing my first. It was sentimental when we weren’t getting on each other’s nerves.
That year our team went to perform in Disney World. On the first day Bri and I hugged and cried in front of Cinderella’s castle. By day three we were fighting about me not wanting to buy a jacket in the 40-degree Florida spring break weather. I was convinced that it was bound to warm up and more so, when Bri tells me I need to do something, I get this funny urge to do the
exact opposite. Once we got back from our trip to the “Happiest Place on Earth”, it was time to announce next year’s new officers.
I had auditioned for the highest officer position on the team, colonel, because it is a strategy that you aim higher than you expect to receive so the judges will be impressed with your ambition and confidence. My sister was decorating a poster the night before that said, “Congratulations Captain of Platoon 7” and I couldn’t help but feel a pang in my chest. Bri had been captain of that platoon for two years and I had seen her dedicate her all to her group of girls. I stared and wondered who would be going home with that poster. Excitement, relief, and shock took over me as the poster entered my hands the next day at the reveal and Bri wrapped me up in a big hug, sobbing.
Junior year is a fast blur. Notoriously known for being the most difficult year in a high school student’s life, it did not disappoint. The responsibility was heightened as I was now captain of platoon seven, but I loved leading the small group of girls I was in charge of. Apparently, you’re supposed to “figure life out” in your third year of high school and start hearing about a bunch of different colleges. Being the angsty teen that you are, living away from Corpus doesn’t sound too bad.
This year, the team was going to perform on high school drill team night with the Kilgore College Rangerettes in Kilgore, Texas. Bri always talked about the Rangerettes, but in a distant kind of way that I never paid much attention to. One of the girls in her graduating class who talked about them all the time and wore their shirts and posed like them at practice, tried out for them and didn’t make it. It was a kind of shock to the team; this girl didn’t ever not get what she wanted.
Once I learned that the Rangerettes were kind of like the Marvel Cinematic Universe of the drill team world (making the team meant immediately gaining 1000 Instagram followers, having amazing skin, and 32 new best friends) , I became interested in wanting to try out myself. I knew it was going to be hard work, but once I was there on their campus, in their Rangerette museum seeing the woman who started it all, and saw the team perform there was no way that I wasn’t going to try to be a Rangerette. On the bus home from that trip, I officially became a “hopeful”.
The mindset after that was, ‘what can I do now to prepare myself for auditions?’. The summer before Senior year my mom surprised me and enrolled me into Rangerette Camp where they teach high school age dancers how to dance like them. I took dance classes at dance studios in town where I could squeeze them in while being a Senior in high school, top ten of my class, colonel of my school’s drill team, unknowingly battling OCD and depression, and doing random acts of kindness where I could (hoping for some good karma). When people asked, I told them that I was going to try out for the Rangerettes after graduation. I had a couple of their team shirts that I would wear. In dance practice, I paid special attention to making sure that I was dancing in a pristine way that was the Rangerettes’s standard. I started drinking chocolate milk, something that the team is sponsored by. I applied to Kilgore Junior College and got accepted. I attended another Rangerette summer camp weeks after graduating from high school, I was so close, I could taste it.
The actual audition process was hands down the most physically difficult thing I have ever done in my life. With a number five pinned to my chest I danced all day every day for about four days, each day more painful than the other as the bruises and overworked muscles accumulated. Any audition is mentally challenging, so the pressure of this life changing audition and the physical pain was overwhelming. I prayed and thanked God for every hour that passed that I was still moving. I was hopeful.
I may not have been the best dancer in the room, I had started dancing later than the norm after all, but I felt like good people made Rangerettes and I was a good person, so that had to count for something. They let people know who made the team by getting all the girls together on a stage and displaying a sign with the audition numbers of the people who made the team. The sign came down. Girls screamed. Girls cried. It was honestly kind of scary, you would’ve thought someone died. The combination of excitement and disappointment in the air was overwhelming. I braced myself and looked up. Number five was not on the sign.
Not going to lie, it stung a bit, but I wasn’t completely devastated. Rangerettes wasn’t a dream that I was working towards all of my life. I was still accepted into college in my hometown and thought if I really wanted to, I still had one more chance to try out for Rangerettes (being that Kilgore College is a Junior College they only let you try out twice). Before I knew it, I was starting my first week of college at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi. Tara was co-captain of the Islander Dance Team, so like I had all my life, I considered following in her footsteps and try out for the Islander dance team too. Respectively, compared to the “world famous” Kilgore College Rangerettes, the Islander Dance team would not be as impressive an accomplishment, but I would still be on a team, and I would be dancing. In my first semester as a freshman, I had the chance to audition for the dance team. I was a little rusty since trying out for Rangerettes considering I had been so focused on school for a few months, but Tara told me that the coach liked the way I danced.
Once I got thinking, I could not imagine adding anything more to my plate. I was taking six classes and many of them required hours of reading, studying, and completing homework assignments. I barely had time to sleep at night, what would happen if I added practices and performances to my schedule? On the day of the final part of the audition I emailed the coach letting her know that I unfortunately would not be trying out for the team after all as I was still getting used to college. That was the first time I had ever not completed an audition.
I finished my first semester of college strong with As in all my classes, but I remember driving home with my mom from my last final feeling off. For years around the holidays, I would fall into this funk, I didn’t know why, but figured that it was since I always had a winter break and was not busy with school. Whenever I wasn’t busy with school I got consumed by my own thoughts and did not feel like myself. I felt like I was my own worst enemy trying to do whatever it took to make myself feel bad. This phenomenon that would usually end once school started again. It only got worse as I entered the Spring Semester of my freshman year of college. I felt physically sick from the anxiety and stress I experienced every day, from the moment I woke up to the moment I went to sleep. I sat in all my classes with tears in my eyes feeling so uncomfortable. I just wanted to feel like I used to. It was as if there was a cloud that loomed over me that made me feel hopeless and helpless. I couldn’t stand it anymore. I needed help. I began seeing my school counselor and she told me that she thought I had Generalized Anxiety Disorder and so would work with me to learn coping strategies that would hopefully help me feel better. Shortly after, a pandemic added to the rest of the uncertainties in my life at that moment causing the nation to have to quarantine at home. At least I didn’t have to put on a fake smile in class anymore.
On Instagram I saw that the Islander Dance Team was hosting virtual auditions for next year’s team. I had officially given up on Rangerettes. With all the time I spent trying to get out of the mouse wheel that was my brain I couldn’t get out of bed some days let alone properly train in a studio like I needed to. Trying out for Islander Dance Team would not be as hard. I started stretching and practicing the dance routine we were supposed to record ourselves doing and submit. Like all college students, I waited until the day the audition videos were due to record them. I did my hair and makeup and saw a glimpse of the girl I knew in high school who was a leader on her dance team. I put on my sports bra and spandex shorts (the required outfit for the audition) and the girl I once knew disappeared leaving a disappointed and disgusted stranger instead. ‘Maybe I should’ve worked out some more before recording this audition video’.
I stepped into my family’s hot and stuffy garage ready to get the video over with and submitted. In high school this probably would’ve taken me 15 minutes. It took me hours. I would do the skills or the routine and watch the video back and tell Bri that we had to record it again. I wasn’t even completely satisfied with the one I ended up going with, but it was getting close to when the submission opportunity would close.
Days later, they upload the names or audition numbers of the girls who had made the team. I don’t remember. Mine wasn’t there.
Around a year later, things started opening up again. I had more in person classes than I had in a while due to COVID. I was taking more classes for my new major, Media Arts, and started seeing a psychiatrist in addition to the counselor I was still seeing (too many close calls with panic attacks pushed me over the edge). I contemplated both decisions for a long time worried of the outcome if they didn’t work out, but I think they were the two best decisions I could have made.
With the combination of starting an effective medication for OCD and occasional depression, continuing to see my counselor, finding my passion for all things media, having endless family support, keeping my faith in God, and slowly but surely making big girl milestones such as getting my driver’s license, my confidence slowly grew to somewhere it has never been before. All my life I felt like I wasn’t somebody unless I was doing something like performing. I’ve learned now that I am just as cool and entertaining being myself as I can be when I’m on stage.