First, I want to say thank you so much for loving the art and sport in which we put every ounce of effort into. Thank you for coming to every performance, gawking over the gaudy, bedazzled costumes, and dancing along to every catchy song lyric. Thank you for screaming along with us when we finally take home the top title, and for fan-girling over famous choreographers even though you honestly have no clue who Travis Wall or Mandy Moore is. It is obvious that you have the same amount of passion for dance that we do. I bet that if you could jump out of your chair onto the stage and start leaping and kicking with us, you would.

However, I do owe you an apology. While you do get to share a lot of the fun aspects of competitive dance with all of us dancers, you have no way to experience the best part. While we do love wearing fancy costumes, receiving ginormous trophies at competitions, and goofing around with our best friends, the best part of dancing is the different feelings we get while we dance. If I could share these feelings with you, I would in a heartbeat. These feelings give us pure joy and are the true reason why we keep dancing.

I am sad that you don’t get to experience the feeling of complete exhaustion after a really tough rehearsal. I am talking about the type of rehearsal where your legs feel like jelly, your arms feel like mush, and your brain feels like a fried egg when it finally ends. There are some rehearsals where we just come home, eat, and pass out because our bodies and minds cannot possibly do anything else. I know what you’re thinking; this does not sound like fun at all. However, we dancers know that these are the best kind of practices. We know that we got a lot accomplished, and that our routine has improved so much because our teacher pushed us this hard. We may hate these rehearsals in the moment, but our unconscious minds are content with the fact that we put in the work to ultimately better our dancing. Each fatigued muscle serves as a trophy for the great things we were able to achieve at rehearsal, and I wish you were able to receive hundreds of these trophies.

I am sorry that you also don’t get to experience the nervous jitters that build up inside of us on competition day. These nerves build up inside of us when we wake up in the morning, start to simmer while we are doing our hair and makeup, and feel like popcorn popping in the microwave when we head backstage. You don’t get to feel butterflies flutter hard as you watch the routines right before you, and intensify to their peak flutter speed as you walk out on the stage. You also don’t get to experience the feeling of relief when your music starts and the jitters shoot out of your fingers and toes as you hit your first pose.

You don’t get to experience the feelings of pure power as you take command of the stage. You don’t get to feel like the queen of the world as everyone watches you nail your perfect quadruple turn in your jazz dance, or slay your set of wings in your tap solo. You don’t get to feel like a wizard when you shock the crowd with a fancy tumbling pass or a carefully executed leg extension. To this I give my most sincere apologies, as who doesn’t want to feel like Harry Potter every once and awhile?

Next, I would like to apologize to you for not being able to experience what we feel after the music ends and we hit our final pose. Our lungs are on fire; we barely make it offstage before we collapse into a fit of panting and coughing. While this may sound like death to you, this is one of the greatest feelings in the world. When this happens, we know we gave that routine everything we had. We have no regrets about what we did on stage. I am sad to say that you also don’t get to experience the collective feeling of excitement we have when we know we crushed that performance. When this feeling of collective excitement is in the air, we all feel like we are floating on cloud nine. Who wouldn’t want to float on cloud nine?

Lastly, I am sorry you don’t get to experience the feeling of pure bliss we get when we receive an unexpected compliment from a random dance fan who watched our performance. We know at this moment that we did our duty, as we made the audience feel something special watching us perform. Not only does this thrill us because someone thought we looked cool, but we know we were able to transmit our love of dance to this audience member, and this feeling trumps any other feeling a dancer can feel. I shouldn’t really apologize for you not being able to feel this type of emotion, as this feeling is not attainable without all of you competitive dance fans. What I should be saying is thank you. Thank you for allowing us to feel the feelings that makes dance special in our hearts.