If you look back at your childhood, can you find clues about what you were destined to do with your life? Are you doing it now? Do you wish you were? I swear my kid self intuitively knew a heckuva lot more about the path I should be taking than my rational, practical, let’s-be-real adult self does these days. Thankfully, after much hemming and hawing, much “I don’t know what to do with my life,” and much “I can’t make a living as a dancer, because it’s too hard and I’m not good enough,” I listened to the little girl that loved to dance. Here is how it all began.
Enjoy this excerpt from
by Kristi Lynn Davis
My mother would say my obsession with dance started in my infancy. She tells the story of how, as a baby, I bounced in my car seat to the beat of “Hey There, Georgie Girl” playing on the radio. But I believe I first felt the rhythm long before that. Surely, I swam to the beat of my mother’s heart as a mere zygote in her womb.
You see, I am convinced that I was born to be on stage. My genetic makeup dictated a life bound to the theater. My first step on stage was an answer to a divine calling to entertain the masses: “Lo, an angel in an Armani original appeared in the heavens before me and said, ‘Go forth and kick thy long legs to thine eyes and tap thy large feet loudly upon the earth, for thou shalt be adorned in sequins and glitter and all that sparkles like a star.’” Be it a call from the Hollywood heavens or a chromosomal defect, my fate was to be an entertainer. It was as useless for me to fight the urge to perform as it would be a bird to squelch the urge to fly. I only wish I had realized this from the beginning.
What I did discover early on was that I was different from most people. Never quite fitting in with the crowd, I felt special, extraordinary. Although extremely shy and insecure in many ways, I had a spark inside waiting to be kindled. Bursting to be seen, to be heard, to be noticed, I was a dreamer, and I fantasized about the fascinating people, places, and experiences that were in store for me. While I marvel that I made it as far as I did in show business, even as a small child, I knew that my life was meant for something big.
I really owe a round of applause to my mother for she had a dream, too: she envisioned her beloved preschooler on stage tip-toeing about in a frilly tutu. When I was four, she took me to the local civic center for my first ballet lesson. The classroom was located in the bowels of the dark, dingy basement, and I grasped onto her leg as we marched down the empty stairwell. All Mom’s visions of twirling tulle were shattered when I was spooked by the tubby teacher in tights towering over me in the creepy underground classroom. To make matters worse, all the budding ballerinas were given star-sticker attendance books, and that creature-teacher-from-the-dark had the nerve to give me a used book left by the last defector. That horrible experience not only left my spark unkindled, but also completely snuffed out my interest in dance class for years to come.
Kristi (on drums) and her sister
While I had no desire to return to the “dungeon of dance,” I still loved showing-off for an audience. Despite having only thirty minutes of ballet instruction under my belt, I started creating and performing my own routines on the front porch of my grandmother’s Iowa farmhouse. Although my mother had given up taking me to ballet class, she bought my younger sister and me black leotards, pink tights, pink ballet shoes and pink tutus. My sister would tie her tutu on over her pants and pound on her toy drum, while I, dressed perfectly in all the appropriate dance attire, would prance around to her erratic rhythms. The hardest thing about being a dancer back then was getting my costume off in time to make it to the bathroom.
Thanks for reading. Visit soon for the next installment. It’s a doozie. And I’d love to hear what you were destined to do.
Twirl on,
Kristi
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