𝖢𝗁𝖺𝗌𝗂𝗇𝗀 𝖲𝗍𝖺𝗋𝗌 || 𝖣𝖺𝗇𝖼𝖾 𝖬𝗈𝗆𝗌

Video Killed the ALDC Star

"As I watched the girl tear it all down, I realized I should never have brought the idea up.

I had seen and been a part of rivalries throughout my life. It was a concept that had been introduced to me by my dance teacher, but I never truly understood its purpose. If the point was for both people to strive harder for what they were trying to achieve, was it fair that only one of them got to win? Why did one get to be happy while the other one got to be disappointed and berated? Why couldn't they both be happy?

I also realized there were two main types of rivalries: the good ones and the bad ones. The good ones are considered "healthy competitions", and they mostly happen between two people who like each other. The bad ones occur between two people who don't like one another, and they might even consider each other "enemies".

At my dance studio, everyone was always told that being the best meant being on top, and each dancer was pitted against another dancer who was either the same age or had the same abilities and qualities. In most of the competitions we attended, ties weren't allowed, so it meant that if one of us won, everyone else automatically did not, and they would be made to feel bad about it. We couldn't even be happy for whoever won because that meant that we were happy about slacking off and not working as hard as the first-place dancer.

Since we attended the same competitions every year, we all had the same possibility of winning the same titles. For example, our dance studio attends Dance Educators of America every year, and so far, five dancers have won the Small Fry Miss national title. The first winner was Mikki Davis, who won back in Las Vegas in the year two thousand. For reference, every other winner since then wasn't even born yet, except for Brooke.

The second winner was Brooke Hyland, who won in two-thousand and seven with her solo "Bigger Isn't Better", and she competed in the New York nationals.

The third winner was me, who won in two thousand and eight with my solo "Since You've Been Gone" in Las Vegas.

The fourth winner was Maddie Ziegler, who won in two-thousand and nine in New York with her solo "Rhythm In Your Nursery Rhymes."

The most recent winner ― and current title-holder ― is Chloe Lukasiak, who won in twenty-ten with her solo "I Like to Fuss" when she competed at the New York nationals.

The point of all of that is that everyone indirectly strives for the same things, which shows that we all have the same possibility of winning the title someone else got. Just like the Petite Miss Dance of Pennsylvania title. Maddie won that title this year, and the runner-ups were Giselle, Chloe, Morgan, Paige, and Brenna. Along with Bella, Nia, and Sarah, they all had just as big a chance of being the winner as Maddie did, and still, the seven-year-old was the one who won. For that, they were all made to feel bad while Maddie was allowed to celebrate her big win.

All of that just goes to show how prevalent rivalry was in my life, and yet, I had never seen it take such a bad turn as that one Friday night.

For a bit of context: It was October first of twenty-ten, and I invited my friends over to my house after school to do a few things. For starters, Maddie and I were assigned a project at school the week prior, and since both of our moms helped us to make it, the only thing we had left to do was write it all down. Morgan and Paige had some really hard math homework to do, so they helped us with our work before we tried to help with theirs, even though that didn't work out.