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Personal Narrative: My First Jazz Music

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“Pas de bourrée. It means back, side, front. So you have to move your feet to the back, then to the side, then to the front,” my teacher, Ms. Amanda, said as she demonstrated the dance move. My head was spinning. A pas de bou-what? The next thing I knew, the music was playing and it was my turn to go. Nearly tripping over myself, I stumbled across the floor, as my uncoordinated arms and dizzy brain struggled to keep up with the melody.
“Nice, ladies,” Ms. Amanda said after we had finished. “Really good work!”
Truthfully, my dancing was not looking “nice” at all that day, but my first jazz class was the beginning of my expanding love for dance.
“I still don’t want to,” little me said, five years ago.
“Well you’re signed up,” replied Mom. She had been trying to get me to a dance class for a year now, and this was the closest she had ever come. Mom wasn’t going to back down now.
“But Mom…”
“No …show more content…
I was still trying to comprehend the preparation when it was once again my turn to go across the floor to perform the chassé step saut de chat, a sizable split leap. Flustered, I began my clunky chassé on the wrong foot, and I became offbeat. I proceeded to take about five baby steps before extending my front leg into the air and pushing off the ground; it felt like I was soaring. My toes weren’t pointed as they should have been and my arms were flailing about, but all that mattered in that moment was the exhilarating feeling of achieving a move that even the highest level of dancers constantly strive to perfect.
I landed with a thud as the next girl in line began. To my astonishment, her chassé started on the correct foot, she took one step, and then was high in the air; in a full split, knees straight and toes pointed, might I add. With my eyes wide and mouth open, I told myself that I would one day perform that leap with the same, if not better, technique and grace as she

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