Somehow, we blinked, and it’s now 2025.
The year 2024 was a flurry of celebration for us here at Prestige. Many of our staff have had engagements, weddings, and babies announced this year, and our students have shown incredible dedication and growth already. Now we’re in the New Year, surrounded by our own reflections and everyone’s resolutions, thinking about what this New Year means to us.
Many of you have likely seen that meme that jokes about trading in the New Year for a vintage year like 2015 or 1998, and after a giggle, it sure made us think. It is daunting to face the new and unknown and unexpected—not knowing if we’ll meet our resolutions or fail to grow the way we’d hoped—and at a surface glance, going back to a year we know and loved sounds easier. Prestige Dance Academy has so many amazing years under its belt that if we had to turn back time and re-live one of the other twenty-two since we’ve opened, we’d be hard-pressed with which one to choose.
Would we go back to the beginning, in 2002, when Miss Amanda opened the first Prestige location? It could surely be incredible to go back to the year the seed of this studio was planted, while still knowing what a bustling community it would become. Perhaps we would visit the years when the South and ITC locations were opened, or visit years that have dancers we haven’t seen in a while, or when we travelled to Disneyland, or . . .
In truth, even if we had the choice to go back to any of those years that we so fondly reminisce over, we would still choose to be right here with you, facing the unknown together. Out of each and every one of those years we adored, we know each one had its own challenges and its own tears shed, yet we persevered. Each scary unknown was met, and we still made it through to be here with you today.
The beauty of being such a busy dance studio in Calgary is that so many people pass through our doors and change our lives for the better. This inevitably sets us up to miss them when it is time for them to move forward to their next adventure, but we’ve realized that it is a blessing to have had so many people be such a beacon of light in our lives. We don’t wish to hide from this happening, but instead to learn to cherish the time we have with each other while we are in the moment and welcome new people into our lives—something we can’t do if we’re stuck in the past.
The fear that can come with New Year’s resolutions is much like the fear our dancers face every time we try something new. That pesky fear of failure. But failure is something we teach our dancers not to fear because failure means you’re trying and growing. Above all, we get to choose what we fail at because we get to choose what we will work for, and that, to us, makes the prospect of a new year and new failures an exciting one.
When we made our resolutions for the upcoming year, we did not base them off of fears or off of what we don’t want to do. Our resolutions looked back on our favourite memories and decided to focus our efforts on doing more of what brought us those moments of happiness. Resolutions made from fear would keep us small, but resolutions made from the abundance of delight make us grow.
Our wish for you is that 2025 is a year full of memories of growth and resolutions founded in joy that you will reminisce upon fondly in the future.
Happy New Year!