To Prestige’s Incredible Community: Thank you

Here at Prestige, we’ve always been thankful for our community, but this past month has only increased our awe of you. Your ability to adapt. Your strength. Your positivity, and your vulnerability.

You inspire us.

Dance is back, and you’ve helped ensure that it’s a safe place to be through your care and attention to the new safety protocols. Our dancers’ ability to do what they love has shone a light of hope through these times and shown others that we can be cautious and still ignite our joy. Dance is a safe, fulfilling outlet for all the frustrations that have bombarded us recently. This year tripped the whole world up, but that doesn’t mean we are destined to lie face-first on the ground; it’s a lesson on how to pick up our feet. Sometimes the only way to get it right is to try and fail multiple times, but at Prestige we always get back up.

And that’s how we know this year will be better than ever.

After a worldwide stumble through a myriad of issues, there are a lot of emotions surrounding our re-entry, and we are right here with you. For those of you that wish to start a bit later this year, to our virtual dancers, to our hybrid dancers, and to our in-class dancers: We are here for you. Thank you for doing what works best for you and caring for your physical and mental health the best way you can. We are so, so proud of each and every one of you, and we are here to help you along on your journey in any way that we can.

Your next step is to show up to dance-ready. Arrive with your goals, your hopes, your fears. Prepare yourself for the highs and the lows and allow yourself to fail. When what we’ve planned doesn’t go quite right, we get frustrated. We’d love for everything to be perfect all the time, but that’s just not how dance—or life—works. It’s hard to get pulled off course. It can be even harder when it feels like nothing is in our control. It is important to have somewhere safe to be when you are frustrated, and Prestige is a place where we can work through the difficult times together. We don’t ignore them. We don’t push them to the side. Here, at Prestige, we embrace the challenge.

Every part of these hardships will transform our art. Our soul work extends down to every twitch of the finger, and that is not something that comes without falter. This comes with patience. It comes with stumbles. And what we do here brings us to a new level of understanding of who we are and how to feed the fire within our souls. It’s not easy, but if it were easy it wouldn’t be nearly as much fun.

So, thank you. Thank you for being our community, our inspiration, our fire, and most of all, thank you for being you.