Like many little girls, I walked into my first dance studio when I was 3 years old. Everything looked so big with the barre and the floor-to-ceiling mirror, and I had the attention span of a grain of rice, so it looked to be the most exciting place I'd ever seen. I started with ballet and through the years added tap, jazz, musical theater, modern, lyrical, contemporary, hip hop, you name it.

In today's modern age of reality tv and child stars, dance has become a commercial industry, and when you tell people you are a dancer, the first thing they tend to think of is Dance Moms or another one of those crazy tv shows. But there is one difference between myself and all those other dancers: I've never been to a dance competition in my life.

It is more uncommon now to belong to a studio that doesn't compete, and I have worked in outside companies and master classes with both competition dancers and non-competition dancers. And the one question I always get from girls who do compete is, why didn't I?

Well for one thing, I don't like the whole competition culture. Don't get me wrong, I love Dance Moms as much as the next teenage girl with too much time on her hands, but I wouldn't want to live it. That is fine if that is your thing, and I also understand that all competition dancers don't all fill the stereotypes, but I have met too many other dancers who are catty and condescending to other dancers who aren't like them. The whole idea of a dance competition means telling certain dancers they are better than others, but in this field there is no one way to be "good." So what if you can't do aerials or back flips or hyper-extend your back? It doesn't make you any less of a dancer and a performer, and it doesn't mean any performance you give is less meaningful.

And that is just what this sport/art form is about. It's not about being able to do thirty turns in a row or hold a needle in the middle of a performance. It is about feeling something so whole heartedly that you can convey it to the audience, and make an entire room of people feel something too. It is about passion, and a love of what you're doing, and no one should need a panel of judges telling you that.

And in my opinion, dancers should build each other up, not tear each other down. The dance community gets enough flack from people outside who will question its legitimacy; we don't need it from each other. I have made some of the best friends of my life dancing, and we never felt the need to be better than one another because we were never set up against one another in a competition.

So if you were a competition dancer, all the power to you, I support whatever you choose to do. But I choose to dance for me, to make something out of nothing but a piece of music and an empty floor.