Aspire to greatness without fear

“Aspire to greatness without fear”

Fear comes in many shapes and forms, being afraid, having nerves, and worrying about the smallest things. In the dance world you fear a lot, your teachers at times, your performances capability, and whether you’re able to always get through and do something. My biggest fear would have to be getting nervous about performances or competitions, It’s all a mental game that you have to defeat to be able to perform at your best. For me this is a 50/50 situation where sometimes I could be the most confident boy there is, or I could be a nervous wreck and it will mess up your whole mind set with what you are about to perform.

The worst nerves I have ever had were at the Irish Dance World Championships 2012 in Belfast, Ireland. A few days before I danced at the biggest, hardest, most insane Irish Dance competition there is, I caught the flu. Having a 102 temperature, and not being able to practice the week before really impacted my performance and mental mind set for the day of competition.  I had worked harder than ever so I could achieve greatness and make my Academy and USA proud. The worlds contains over 46 different countries and has over 6,000 dancers a year who had to qualify at their regionals to attend this massive competition. Not being in the best health really messed with my mind as I was waiting backstage with the other 141 dancers, I keep thinking to myself if I was going to be able to pull it off with being in such a bad condition. The previous year I ranked 17^th out of 139 dancers, this year my goal was to get top ten, but with my health I knew it wouldn’t happen. After dancing, I ended up recalling, which is only 50 of the dancers in your competition place and the rest don’t. I ended up doing worse than the year before but it was bound with my condition, but I was able to get over my fear of not being able to place with my health by just sucking it up and pushing through my dances. I thought to myself before I went on stage that I need to just do it because I worked too hard to not do well, just because of the flu. But being able to still place over 101 dancers was a great feeling even though I wasn’t feeling to well.