How the Silent Years Shaped My Dance Journey

I’ve been dancing for as long as I can remember. My Mom enrolled me in the Sheila Marie Dance troupe in Birmingham, England where we lived, which apart from its regular productions also did the competition circuit. Yup I was a competition kid! When we migrated back to Jamaica I was taught by the late Pansy Hassan at my prep school.Then I entered what I refer to as the “silent years”, where I wasn’t involved in any formal dance programme. Those years lasted the length of my high school career. But they weren’t really silent.My feet needed to move and my mind needed to express itself. So I spent hours at home after school making up dances in my living room.I used to lament the fact that I spent so many years not training formally, feeling that I could have been a much better dancer had I not paused. But those years making up dances in my living room for no one but myself were a training ground for making dances that would grace stages and bless others. God makes no mistakes.