As a dancer and a black dancer at that, Misty Copeland is our idol, heroine and flat out #GOALS all wrapped up in one petite frame, so when it was announced that she was coming to Jamaica to perform, the dance community (and even the non-dance community) was thrilled.
Plié for the Arts is a local organisation that has been staging shows and bringing international dancers to Jamaica to perform and host workshops while offering scholarships to Jamaican dancers. When tickets for this show were announced in April both nights sold out almost immediately, however I was excited about the show for other reasons. I’d been selected as one of the 14 dancers who were going to be featured in the Jamaican segment that would open the Gala show on Friday Night before Complexions Contemporary Ballet and Misty Copeland performed.
If you know me well, you know that when it comes to dancing I’ll never be as good as I would like to be, and that becomes an even bigger concern as I get older and my body gets more and more decrepit lol. And then especially after badly spraining my right ankle last year (days before my final ballet exam) and having to recover and build back from that, I didn’t go into the February auditions hoping for much.
Fast forward to August 31, after months of classes, choreography and rehearsals, dancing with some of the best dancers I know, we killed it, leaving everything on the stage. When you come off the stage crying, you’ve either just done the best performance of your life, or the worst (I’ve now experienced both in my life) and in this case, we executed Renee McDonald’s choreography flawlessly. Everything came together, the dancers, the dance, the music, the lighting, for a magical moment.
The Plié Dance Collective, Complexions Contemporary Ballet and Misty Copeland
by Gabbie 
Pingback: Amalgamation 2019 | by Gabbie