Reina Shah is a bright student in Arya Dance Academy. She was in 2nd grade when she had started to take dance classes.
Shah is seventh grade student at Colonia Middle School. Shah also has a brother who is younger than her by 2 years. Her brother’s name is Ishaan Shah. Every instructor praises Shah for her dance skills and how long it takes her to learn a new dance.
“On stage it is nerve-wracking for some people because you think that you’ll forget the steps in front of many people which is embarrassing,” Shah said. “This feeling mostly happens to thoughts that are new to performing in front of people. But for people who are used to performing too many people don’t usually feel nerve- wracking.”
In the performing group there are four other girls. Two of the girls are older than all of them. The two older girls are Arya and Deyvanshi who are in 9th grade. The other two girls are Anaya and Tanishka who are in 7th grade. So in total there are 5 girls including Shah.
While backstage the rules are to practice your dance and make sure your props are ready because the entrance of the stage will be crowded, which will lead to no finding a place for your props. It is suggested to do that before the stage gets crowded. Another rule for both on and off stage is to keep your ears open because due to the songs playing it will be hard to know if it’s your dance or when you have to go on stage.
The dance recital is at Bound Brook Center in NJ. The reason it was kept there was because the stage was big enough to fit many people and if there are any stunts then it will be easy to do it. The backstage is big enough to fit more than 50 kids so there will be enough space to practice.
The teammates took at least three to four months due to the transitions and hard steps. The dances had many transitions like in one part there is a certain amount of people then the other part has another certain amount. It took three to four months to practice because the theme of the performance took time to decide then it also took time to know what song and artist to do.
The students that are in Thursday ages 11+ classes did 2 dances while all age troupe class did one whole dance together. The reason it was three dances was because three (Reina,Arya,and Devanshi) out of the five girls were in troupe dance. Troupe dance is more of an advanced level dance so that class had to do one dance with multiple transitions while the original dance class had to do 2 dances.
“If people talk badly about your dance or you let them because if they talk about themselves no one will listen,” Shah said.