Undergraduate / UC Personal Statement #2 - My Dance Experience [3]

hey all. this is my personal statement for the second UC question. How can i make this better?

i also need to figure out a way to shorten this essay

thanks

Tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment, contribution or experience that is important to you. What about this quality or accomplishment makes you proud and how does it relate to the person you are?

The lights are out on the stage, signifying the transition... The only senses we can use in our endeavor to get into formation are our ears to hear the shuffling of feet and our noses to smell the musty odor of sweaty chest-fused clothes. We dare not speak, because to hear dancers speak during a performance is unprofessional and inappropriate. Once we are in position, the lights flash back on... The crowd cheers and we begin flaunting our choreography...

At least that is the way I imagined it when I was a kid. Since I saw that goal, the path to reach it has been nothing but one roadblock after another. While I was sure that I could replicate the movements of other dancers easily, when it came to actual attempts none of my movements felt or looked right. The truth was that at the time, my body was too limited to move as I wanted it to. I just was not physically prepared for any kind of performance. As a result of my physical incapability I became frustrated and gave up for a long while. I would not give up for long, however, because my entire mind has always been centered on dancing.

As I entered high school, I began to stay around more dancers, and I slowly lost my fear of dancing that I had developed from failing so many times. Fortunately my strength grew with my age, and my flexibility and endurance enhanced from participating in sports in middle and high school. Conjunctively, my dancing skills also improved and eventually my friends and I created a dancers club that met and danced together. Every day I began looking forward to discussing and showing off different dance techniques with others. However, I had no trouble dancing with my friends because they were people that I was actually comfortable with. I still had qualms with the thought of doing an actual performance.

Since that short time, I have improved vastly, and my confidence in my dancing improved when I decided to jump into the game and perform for a dance studio towards the end of junior year. There I had my most revealing dance experience. Our instructor was a tough and skilled dancer whose main rule was that as long as the music was playing, we had to keep moving in a rhythmic fashion. Incredibly, she never turned the music off once during the entire hour that was the lesson. With this kind of intense practice, I finally began to be comfortable with my dancing to the point where I did not have to force myself to dance - I just naturally moved.

Because of this revelatory dancing experience, I became more comfortable with my physique than before, and because I felt so much stronger I began to act with much more confidence. I saw an entire new world, and whenever I heard music I would automatically pay attention to its instruments, its structure, and its organization. The lessons that I learned about music have also helped me in mixing music together as a DJ. While I loved music before, I understood it to a greater extent now. It is more fun to dance to music when one understands it better, and it becomes easier to anticipate the part of the song that comes next when I freestyle. I had finally begun to realize that I could indeed be considered a dancer, and with this revelation I had a fantastic feeling of exultation. This kind of feeling was surpassed only by the knowledge that there was still much more to learn in the realm of dancing.