all my blood, sweat, and tears \ for twenty-some years

my college dance team/villain origin story

I have been dancing for my entire living memory. Nothing else has had such a formative impact on my upbringing, the friends I’ve made, and the passwords I’ve chosen.

I rode the baby-gymnastics-to-competition-line pipeline all the way to college dance team. My little brother was once lost at the Minneapolis Convention Center during a dance competition. I did my solos at my tiny elementary school’s talent show. I freaking tap danced at the Minnesota State Fair.

Everyone’s dance upbringing is so different; I definitely haven’t seen it all, but I’ve seen a lot.

When I take a step back from it, I have to internalize the fact that I got to dance with the best of the best. Whether next to me in formation for St. Thomas or surrounded by dancers from across the country in a UDA Camp A-routine at Chula Vista Resort, I got to dance with absolute titans of the dance world. I have a lot of respect for any dancer, but if you’ve ever braved the sweltering warm-up space in the back of the ESPN Wide World of Sports building, I stand in a particular kind of solidarity with you.

For a dancer, competing on a college team is often the culmination of a passion that was first recognized as a toddler. It feels so full circle. There is a common thread of dreams realized, a lifetime of aspirations coming to fruition. During my four years on a college dance team, I got to experience this alongside some of the most talented people I’ve ever met.

I also came to realize that college dancers can often draw less wholesome parallels between our experiences.

---

As a member of the 17-time national championship-winning University of St. Thomas dance team, I used to think that our issues defining ourselves as relevant athletes at our university were personal. Unique to our team and our circumstances. A personal struggle of ours.

Women are often made to feel like the injustices we face are personal problems. But, the personal is often political. Through hearing from dancers at other universities, I came to realize that the underappreciation of my team within our little university was part of a more widespread and insidious issue.

There is power in talking about the issues we face, however big or small, because they are almost never personal. With two decades in the dance world and half a degree in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, this TED Talk had to be mine.

So, let’s talk.

Let’s talk about the cognitive dissonance of being nationally acclaimed but not university acclaimed–of being recognized as the best in the nation at what you do, but not being afforded the luxuries other athletes at your own school got.

Let’s talk about how my experience as a college dancer in 2022 mirrored that of so many female athletes long before me.

Let’s talk about how the plight of dancers is a microcosm of the plight of women.

These are my takeaways as someone who competed at the highest level in a sport that is chronically underappreciated.

---

Functionally, dance team is a sport. College teams compete at Universal Dance Association (UDA) Nationals, which are held at ESPN Wide World of Sports in Orlando. People forget I soft launched being UST’s commencement speaker by being interviewed about our team on ESPN. Yet, while some universities adequately define dance team as a sport, at St. Thomas we were not a sport in name. And boy, did they make sure we knew it.

Despite having to do athlete paperwork, adhere to athlete guidelines, and have athlete physicals done, the dance team was not granted access to UST student athlete resources. We didn’t have St. Thomas athletic trainers until senior year, and even then they were never present at practice or performances. We were not provided a strength and conditioning coach. We did not receive any kind of study halls, tutoring, or priority for class schedules. Even the athlete events at St. Thomas were held without us– we were second place in the nation in both Division I Jazz and Division I Hip Hop last winter, yet we were not invited to St. Thomas’ athletic awards in the spring. Scholarships? Don’t even think about it. We saw zero athletic scholarships, even when St. Thomas went Division I. On top of this, I paid about four grand of my own money on travel, costumes, and more to dance at St. Thomas over four years.

It is shameful that St Thomas does not pay in full for twenty-some dancers to compete at their only competition of the year but will pay for the entire football team (and half their bench of people who don’t even play) to fly across the country every week. It is frankly embarrassing that St. Thomas will not pay their dance team’s way to an event where the team has repeatedly won national championships for the school and made UST relevant among people who would otherwise never have heard of it, but the school will pay for the men’s basketball team to fly all over the country for months to lose. As a Division I dance team at a school with a massive endowment, dancers should not have to pay our way to Nationals.

All this mistreatment comes back to our school’s failure to recognize us as a sport. But, there is no logic that can make this exclusion make sense. College dancers deserve equal treatment as athletes.

I’ve wondered, “maybe it’s because dance team exists outside of NCAA?” But that’s irrelevant. Other universities have made dance team a sport despite this. Of course I’ve heard the “spectator money” argument, but that’s a joke. There are plenty of other sports that don’t bring in a lot of spectator money, and that does not stop them from receiving athletic status, scholarships, and perks. You cannot tell me the baseball team is bringing in big spectator money for St. Thomas, and they were permitted to walk in on our practice spaces without the decency to even look apologetic.

Imagine it’s mere weeks before Nationals, and you’re practicing in the athletics center, and the baseball team that is in PRESEASON walks in and starts putting down bullpen nets right where you’re practicing. Without saying a word. Without batting an eye.

Imagine having to go cheer on the men’s basketball team on top of regular practices during your Nationals season… after the same team previously relegated one of your practices to a literal racquetball court because they felt like using the gym.

Imagine your nationally recognized hip hop choreographer coming in to choreograph your soon-to-be national championship-winning hip hop dance,,, in half a gym,,, while OPEN GYM basketballs bounce loudly on the other side of a mesh divider.

The laundry list of memories I have of losing out on practice space to other UST teams… or worse, to open gym…. that is my villain origin story.

Our dance team’s experience among our school’s athletics was much like the experience of women in the world; we were overworked and undervalued. Obviously, there is a long history of women’s sports being treated as secondary to men’s. We didn’t even get equal treatment to other female sports, much less getting equal status to the male sports. Forget about any kind of preference that other athletes would get if they won Division I, if they were the winningest team at their university— historically and at present.

---

So, why?

Why this mistreatment?

And, how is it allowed to continue in 2022?

Because dance is sexualized, so it’s not taken seriously.

Being a woman who dances means constantly navigating the dilemma that the very thing you are encouraged to do your entire life–be attractive, sexy even– is the very thing that people will use to dismiss your sport.

Dance is entirely about how you look when you do what you do. That’s the whole point of it, the whole art of it, the whole way you gain and lose points in competition– the entire reason it takes so much athleticism. I can’t think of another sport where you have to do your sport and simultaneously be judged (figuratively and literally) based on what your face is doing, on how good of a job you’re doing at making it all look easy, on how well you’re telling a story.

Dance is about image. So obviously, yeah– we look good doing it. And that is both our strength in the competitive dance world and our downfall in the athletic community.

Navigating the duality of that, how it’s both empowering and disempowering, is messy. It’s fun and empowering to get out there and do a hip hop dance to Megan Thee Stallion and know you’re hot as hell and good at what you do. But dance is sexualized, so it’s not taken seriously.

You’re considered athletically and morally dubious if you dance; assumptions are made about your level of athleticism compared to other athletes, and assumptions are made about you, sexually.

Even during our dance team commitments to our university that involve looking good while we cheer on other athletes, usually men, we have to look palatably good. Because young women are supposed to be sexy, but not sexual.

“Your team is so classy. So… not scandalous,” are “compliments” we’ve gotten from school officials after halftime football performances. So… we’re literally there to look good, but we can’t look too good?.... Of course not. That would be inappropriate. People sexualize women either way without our consent all the time, but then if they think we’re trying to act sexual, it’s not okay.

Although those school officials meant to compliment us, it’s a very misguided compliment to give a group of young women. Because how our bodies are perceived is never on our terms anyway.

It was implied that we needed to censor the way we dance on game days; save the body rolls and bare midriffs for something like Vikings Cheerleaders. Because there, middle-aged men don’t have to interrogate their own attraction to and objectification of women decades younger than them. There, they can ogle without uneasiness, shielded by the implication that, by getting paid for it and electing to dance in low-waisted outfits in front of thousands of men, those women are consenting to being objectified.* NFL fans are coddled by an environment that normalizes the objectification of professional cheerleaders, shielding fans from their own moral pushback. Meanwhile, on the college scene, some of the best, most stylized, most bootstrap-girl-power hip hop dances are deemed obscene by outside onlookers due to the way they celebrate movement.

As dancers, people will look at us sexually and fetishize our flexibility either way. But if we move our body in a way that they perceive as suggestive, then that’s inappropriate and not okay. God forbid a woman be feeling herself, publicly, for her own sake, ever. Our vanity is insanity unless it helps get someone off.¹

I mean really, what about dancing, about movement, is inappropriate??

I would argue that the answer is nothing, other than the way men fantasize about it.

But, it’s a man’s world. When people think of sports, they think: sports are gritty. Sports are sweaty. Sports require strength and dedication and pump up music– things people (problematically) associate with masculinity. But, the nature of dance–the movement quality and the way we smile through it– makes people view dance as feminine. This creates a cognitive dissonance that doesn’t allow people to see dance as equally rigorous to other, more seemingly “masculine” sports.

Aside from the fact that men dance too, this misconception is harmful because people become blind to the difficulty of dance and opt to see only the artistry of it… And as we know, being artistic is often seen as a feminine trait, compounding dance’s alleged femininity. By the end of all these toxic mental gymnastics, dancers are relegated to a second-class status among athletes.

It doesn’t help that the dance world is so insular²; even at the college level, our school rarely sees the routines we compete at Nationals. What people see are our halftime and sideline performances at football and basketball games. What people see is a sideshow for the people who come to watch the other, “real” athletes. What people see is a group of young women cheering on the boys.

---

It shows. I used to hear from some other people at St. Thomas that there seemed to be this idea that the dance team “thinks they’re so cool, the dance team thinks they’re so great”…. Which is equal parts fair and unfair. Because there’s a difference between being humble and being dishonest. And sometimes people conflate the two.

Honestly, yeah; maybe sometimes we felt like we were cool. But, maybe that’s because we were cool. Maybe it would’ve been an untruth to not celebrate our accomplishments to the degree they deserved. Because maybe it is really cool to be the best in the nation at what you do. Maybe no one should be faulted for celebrating that.

I don’t think anyone should be expected to reduce their accomplishments to nothing, diminish the gravity of what they accomplished, just in the name of fitting into some people’s definition of “humble.” People, especially women, shouldn’t be expected to be demure and unassuming and reserved about our accomplishments.

It feels like anyone who thought that way (and it was usually men) just didn’t want to accept what a big deal our accomplishments were. They wanted to be able to think that we were exaggerating our triumphs because then they could go on disrespecting what we do. A line I heard from a man was that they “couldn’t go on Instagram without hearing that the dance team won Nationals.” They didn’t want to understand why we were celebrating like we’d just won the NCAA Championship because they didn’t respect dance to the same extent that they valued other sports.

UDA Nationals is our Super Bowl. The highest level of competition an American dance team-er can reach. Just because some people don’t understand it and it’s not as monetized doesn’t mean it’s not a big deal.

I mean, if the men’s basketball team won the NCAA championship or were runners up in Division I, our university would have rioted. The same people faulting us would NEVER have had the same things to say about the football team’s success, attitudes, or social media presence.

I personally think people should celebrate anything they can think to celebrate. There’s enough to grieve in the world; people should take their moments to rejoice. So, whenever people– and it was almost always men–commented insinuating the dance team was obnoxious or cocky, I’ve always kind of been like… why do you hate women??

The cockiness comments were extra comical to me because dance is the most humbling thing I’ve ever participated in. You always think you suck a little bit. Dance is not like other sports where it’s even theoretically possible to have a perfect batting average or record. Dance is humbling because you can never ever be perfect. You can always do another turn, you can always get your leg higher, you can always perform better. It never ends.

For this reason, dancers are often insecure about how other dancers perceive our work. Some of the most talented dancers I know post dance videos on Instagram with captions like “not perfect, but great to be back!” or “very rusty!” when the videos they’re posting are incredible and they’re some of the best dancers I’ve ever perceived. Many dancers are so self-conscious about their dancing that, apparently, it can’t even go without saying that dancers are never perfect.

My college dance career was very humbling. I was humbled indirectly by a university that didn’t value my team’s accomplishments and overtly by my body’s limits, as I simply could never have done a fifth year ohmygodiretiredsohard. To say that dancers are cocky is a reach.

---

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had a very satisfying and rewarding dance career. I mean, every hot girl had a dance era as a child, but mine never ended.

Not many 22-year-olds can measure their love for something in decades. I will always be grateful to have had such a wonderful way to grow up.

My teammates and I got to be there for the most successful four-year period the University of St. Thomas Dance Team has ever had. But, the double national championships came with a lot of double standards. I hope that fact is now as blatantly obvious to you as it has always been to my teammates and me.

---

*mandatory final disclaimer* I do not represent the entire University of St. Thomas dance team and am happily retired. So, if you’re a school official reading this: hey hi heyy, the dance team is not liable for this and should face no retaliation whatsoever & all that jazz.

But, I did not stutter.

---

1. yes, this is a nod to Shay Alexi Stewart’s “Song of the Prettybird,” please read it

2. ESPN buzzword