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Emily Schnitzer

Ms. Lopez

World Literature and Composition

11/7/22

FULL OUT

A time in my life I was brave was a couple weeks ago in my dance class. It was my Saturday

morning company class with my friend like any normal Saturday, except we had a new teacher.

I have been dancing my whole life, so I’ve had to deal with many teachers good and bad, but this

teacher was another level of bad for me. The second my friend and I walked into class, she talked about

how hard the class would be and how professional of a dancer she was, by saying things like “I have

probably danced with or for any famous person you can think of”. This already gave me mixed feelings

about her because I felt as if she was going to be strict and act like she was the boss, and boy was I right.

Right after she talked about herself, she made us stand at the barré and hold our legs up in the air

without stretching before. We had to continue to grip onto our legs for dear life for the next 20 grueling

minutes that felt at least like an hour. I understood that this was good for us because we are in class to be

challenged and improve, but from the beginning, I knew this was going to be a different level of

challenging. Right after we did that, we weren’t allowed to stretch or get water. We had to go right to

center and lay on our backs. She then told us to do sit ups. She proceeded to play a song and just dance

around the studio while we were on the ground doing our sit ups for the entirety of the song, which was

a good three minutes. Right after we did the sit ups, she played the song again and we did pushups. At

this point I felt like my body was going to collapse and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. For the whole

song again while she continued to dance in the middle of the room, we were doing push ups. After we
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did that we had to hold our legs up in the air on the floor for another song. After all of this, mind you my

friend and I were so out of breath, red in the face, very thirsty, and not properly stretched; we had to go

across the floor.

That part of class wasn’t as bad and was probably the best part of the class. It felt like my normal

dance classes, but instead of my teacher explaining how to do certain things she did it once across the

floor and then it was our turn. She turned the music on so quickly that I couldn’t question anything about

what we had to do. Since she gave no direction my friend and I of course did the movements wrong. We

were expecting to receive feedback but didn’t, instead she laughed at us. It wasn’t once or twice. It was

every, single, time. The first time she laughed at us I laughed along just to joke around, but after that I

wasn’t laughing with her anymore and she still was. This was the point she started laughing at us and the

point I started getting really upset.

At this point in class we were only 30 minutes into class out of the hour and a half class we had.

I raised my hand and said “Can we please get water?” and she responded with a sigh and a “yes”. I was

so thankful to breathe for 30 seconds and get a sip of water. But right after I placed my cup down, she

started teaching our combo. We then learned the combo (a 45 second dance) in 45 minutes. It was

different though. We had to do the movement over, and over, and over. I am not joking when I say I

think I did that combo at least 30 times. We had to do it so many times because we weren’t doing it “full

out enough”. If my friend and I did something wrong, the feedback we’d receive was a laugh, and a “5,

6, 7, 8” as she turned the blasting music on.

The last 15 minutes of class I had sweat dripping all the way down my face like I had just

stepped out in a rainstorm. My friend and I were even more red in the face than before, and at this point
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we had no water since the beginning of class and didn’t get a break until class was over. By the time the

class was finally over, the teacher told us that if we wanted to be professional dancers like her one day

that we “had to learn how to breathe and work harder”. I didn’t even respond and just walked out with a

“bye thank you”.

And at this point I knew it was going to be a long dance season if this teacher was going to stick

around. So, knowing this, picture my feelings and face when I saw this same teacher when I walked into

dance class the following Wednesday night. Let me just tell you that I’m more than grateful she was just

a sub that night.