Letter to a Location

Letter to a location

Dear Dance room,

Oh how I wish you didn’t smell like a wresting locker room but since you are the wresting room too I guess it is an occupational hazard.  You poor abused mirrors you not only get kicked by some of our turns and leaps but a few wrestlers have been known to do you in too.  To the floor, we have a love hate relationship.  You are really painful when gravity takes in and during drops, but you also support my turns and let me fly.  Oh the countless hours of dancing and bounding that you have provided.  Long days full of zero periods and the occasional after school practice have allowed me to memorize your every corner without even being awake.   You have seen the good the bad, the highs and the lows of our team and practices.  You have taken our abuse; from drops, kicks, leaps, to “living” moments.  You have provided a safe creative environment to grow new bounds, and new styles.  You have taken abuse from the thousands of dancers that have passed through your doors to the actually crack in the floor (that we currently have duck taped) from a rally day where the bleachers weren’t too nice to you.  I will always remember all of the falls that have come from your slippery floor.  There is a feeling of home that comes simply from walking through your doors, any four of them.  To the speakers you have played countless beats of music, many I have even edited.  You provide some of the soundtrack of my life.  When you grow up and more of your alumni have become wealthy dancers I hope you will be blessed with air conditioning.  You are the hottest room on campus, especially when PE classes are in the gym on 100-degree days.  Please dear dance room do not take my constructive criticism as a whiners tirade.  I feel so blessed to attend Los Osos High School where not only academics and sports are valued but the fine arts are valued as well.  I do wish that dance was considered a fine art and a sport, but you’re just the room you don’t make the policy.  I hope you will continue to be there for many more generations for aspiring dancers and students who are just exploring the amazing world of dance.  If your walls could talk they would reveal the hopes, the dreams, and the sorrows of many.  You can take pride in the fact that you have given thousands of Los Osos students a chance to explore and excel in the fine arts.  I will not miss your 120 degree temperatures during the summer months but I will miss the people, the teachers, the choreographers, the team mates that you have housed for the four years I have been a Grizzly.   You were the first to witness my recovery from a hamstring injury as a JV dancer and the first to witness my fouettes, floats and turns that I have worked for years to perfect.

Love and sometimes hate,

Aimee Ermel