Editor’s Note: The following essay is one of five winning submissions selected for the 2025 Showstopper Day Essay Contest. In his essay “Most People Grow Up Going to School, Coming Home, Doing Homework, and Sleeping for the Rest of Their Day,” Anthony Shafir brings readers into an often forgotten perspective, a boy dancer’s experiences inside the studio and outside of it. In his response to the prompt, “What is one aspect of being a dancer that most people don’t understand?” Anthony reminds readers that experiences outside the studio are just as important as those inside.
Most people grow up going to school, coming home, doing homework, and sleeping for the rest of their day. These same people don’t spend their free time saying “Boom, hit, and 1, 2, pop, pop, and snap and turn.” They also don’t spend their weekends driving an hour to a building they are unfamiliar with to listen to music and express their feelings through a set of moves. But dancers do.
There are a lot of things about dancing that most people don’t understand. If I got a dollar for every time someone made a rude or false comment about dance, I would be the richest human on Earth. Except, I don’t get offended because of the things they say. Instead, I get upset that they are judging something that they don’t understand. For example, if I were to go up to my older brother, who knows nothing about dance, play a song, and ask him to hum to the rhythm or clap to the beat, he would stare at me in confusion. That’s because he doesn’t know how to feel the beat or hear the rhythm. That goes for a lot of people. This doesn’t mean that you have to be a dancer to do this, but it’s something that ordinary people don’t understand.
But the one thing that hurts my feelings the most is being judged for dancing. Not because I’m bad at it, but because I’m a boy. I get laughed at, called gay, and mocked just because I dance. And what hurts the most about this is that they don’t even understand the concept of dancing. So when I’m called a “little ballerina,” I don’t know why. Sure, I take some ballet lessons, but that doesn’t make me a ballerina. And if I dance, that doesn’t mean I’m gay or I’m a girl. It just means that I express my passion differently. Through dance and through music. Not by doing wheelies on a motorcycle or drifting in a car to try to fit in. I see girls playing physical contact sports like basketball or football, but I don’t judge them, because I experience this judgment every day. Though I still don’t give up, because deep down, I know that they are only doing this because they can never be at the level that I am at now.
I have been dancing for 8 to 9 years, and I have gotten to do things that I could’ve only imagined at the age of 5. But lots of people don’t understand why. If I’m being honest, I don’t only dance. I play sports as well. I play some basketball from time to time, and whenever I have a break in between dances, I grab a small object and play some soccer with my friends. And it’s fun to do. But there are a lot of things I don’t understand about these sports. For example, soccer players get red cards and yellow cards and all the cards of the rainbow for kicking another player’s shins or ankles. They don’t always get hurt. They just roll around and act dramatically so that the opponent gets taken out. Which leads me to my last point. Injuries.
Almost everyone that has made fun of me for dancing has said something about dance not being a contact sport, so there are no ways of getting hurt. But that’s not true. Lots of people also insult me by telling me that I could break a nail. And the only reason why that is wrong is because I’m a boy. Girls, on the other hand, can. Only that’s not the only way to get hurt through dancing. Lots of sports, if not all, require sneakers. Meanwhile, dancing can vary. From barefoot, to socks, to tap shoes, to sneakers, and more. But imagine going barefoot on a floor that people of all kinds go on. They could drop a small earring or drop a tiny needle. The possibilities of stepping on them are endless. Especially if you can’t see it, considering there is a black floor that can camouflage a lot of things. But that’s only if something sharp is dropped on the floor. There are other ways of getting hurt, like breaking a bone. I can’t count how many times my friends have broken or fractured a bone. Just around a month ago, I was backstage preparing to dance when a young girl was crying about her foot and how she thought she broke it. And this is very likely to happen when you are moving quickly to a fast-paced song and have no time to think. You could also be dancing really slowly and fall out of a trick. This hurt not only hurts you physically, but mentally as well because of the embarrassment that comes with it. But lots of people don’t understand this.
From expressing your feelings to getting injured, there are a ton of aspects about dance that most people don’t understand. And instead of realizing it, they judge people because of it. But one quote I always tell myself is “Ignore them, because at the end of the day, it’s not you who’s the fool, it’s them, because they should know that before judging someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes.”
