Nostalgic Song

Being that I'm a dancer, I have done many recitals and dances in my life.  Because of this there are many songs I can choose from which would bring back a lot of memories.  After thinking about this for a long time I finally came to one that brings back one of my fondest memories.  'The Color Purple' was a Broadway show and in 2007, for my dance recital we did a dance to the song, 'The Color Purple Reprise.'  For some reason our teacher was very passionate about this dance and when we usually start working on a recital dance in January/February we started working on this dance in November.  I remember having the choreography changed weekly until our teacher thought it was perfect.  Our teacher would constantly hold us after class because he wanted to see it just one more time.  Then it came down to if we didn't do it perfectly we had to stay after class until we did.  I started to dread going to that class because it was so exhausting.  The class which was generally an hour lasted at least an hour and a half each week.  The first half hour was dedicated to warm ups which that alone can make you completely exhausted and then we had to do our dance.  The dance was strenuous and took a lot of energy, we were throwing ourselves around jumping, kicking, leaping, even rolling on the floor at some points.  The week before the recital our teacher made us come in 2 additional times that week to rehearse that one dance.  I remember thinking to myself that I couldn't possibly do this dance anymore I had done it so many times that I could do it in my sleep and I didn't understand why our teacher made us do it so much.  Opening night of our first show our teacher sat front row and everyone was SO nervous for him to see it, we knew that if it wasn't perfect we were going to yelled at like we couldn't even imagine at class the next week.  It was finally our turn to go on an we all stood back stage holding hands getting ready to take the stage.  We started on a blackout so we all guided each other onto the stage.  As we found our spots and the music started and the lights rose we knew we had to give the performance of a life time.  We did the dance the best we could, the best we've ever done it and at the end we all looked at our teacher in the front row and saw him crying.  Which of course made all of us cry and we were just SO pleased with ourselves and so happy that we made him proud.  It was that moment that I knew I wanted to perform forever.  It is something that I enjoy greatly and I never want to stop.