Music? Check. 

Choreography? Check. 

What’s next? 

The answer to that question is a little more complicated than you’d think. 

Running through routines multiple times in one night takes time. Multiply that by four or five per week, and all of a sudden, you only have one or two nights free out of seven. That doesn’t include finding space to finish extra work or sleep. 

In some ways, that may be the most difficult part of completing a dance routine — the delicate balancing act of remembering and perfecting a routine while also being enrolled in school full-time. That doesn’t even include maintaining a social life. 

Rurak dances for around five hours a day on six days of the week. It’s all part of the competitive dance process; squeezing out as much time as possible for homework or studying, regardless of how awkward the blocks of time may be.  

“Usually we have breaks at dance, so I try and get as much homework as I can done there, and then in my flex blocks at school, and when I get home, I usually have to stay up pretty late to finish homework,” she elaborated. 

Jonat, who goes to Thomas Haney, a self-directed secondary school, knows the feeling well. Despite having a little more flexibility when it comes to taking tests, for example, she’ll still dance for around six hours per day from Monday to Thursday. On Wednesdays, she practices for nearly 10 hours. 

“It’s definitely really hard,” she admitted. “These last two years, I’ve taken harder classes, so it’s really hard. Sometimes I’ll have to stay up late after dance or dedicate my Fridays and Saturdays to homework that sometimes I wish I could be with friends, but I have to get that done. I also do figure out how to make sure I’m seeing my friends too, because that’s important.” 

In the beginning stages of dance season, performers get busy enough. But come February and March, when exams begin to ramp up and competitions begin, things hit a whole different level. During this span of time, Jonat loses her Sundays to extra practices. 

“For my school, I think [February] is when most schools come up with report cards. So that’s your cut-off to get all your work in,” Jonat said. “[For] dance it’s finalizing the choreo, extra rehearsals, getting prepared for preview shows. First competition, all that, ramps up during February, maybe the end of January.” 

“I would probably say from maybe March to June,” Rurak added from her perspective. “We have a lot of group competitions, and they usually last a week or so, and I don’t usually get to go to school too much in that week, so it gets harder to catch up on work.”

This doesn’t even include the time taken for competitions themselves. Both Rurak and Jonat have travelled for competitions recently, with locations ranging anywhere from Seattle, to Las Vegas, to Toronto. Even without travel, competition days can even last over 12 hours. 

An unfathomable amount of time is spent crafting the perfect performance. After months on end of practice, patience, and dedication, all this time leads up to competition day itself.