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My world was a community ballet school, a marching band, my two sisters and my girlfriends. I played saxophone in the band and was a bit nerdy.

In the ballet studio, it was such an organized and disciplined environment, like I'd never had in my life. Seeing myself in the mirror, surrounded by the classical music, that's when I started to fall in love with dance.

The dance world was a big part of my growing up.

I lived and breathed dancing. It was my everything.

I was so invested in ballet, and it was my entire life. And then it was realizing that I didn't want it to be my entire life forever. And then it was this very specific life, and I wanted to learn about other things. So I modeled to fill the time because dancing was very much a job, even when I was 14 years old.

I found that dance, music, and literature is how I made sense of the world... it pushed me to think of things bigger than life's daily routines... to think beyond what is immediate or convenient.

Ballet found me, I guess you could say. I was discovered by a teacher in middle school. I always danced my whole life. I never had any training, never was exposed to seeing dance, but I always had something inside of me. I would love to choreograph and dance around.

Ballet was so structured. I'd been craving something that could guide me.

My whole background, my whole life was just lots and lots of theater, a lot of that being musical theater.

Ballet became this escape for me. I feel like I was on my own a lot. I was searching for stability, so I was going off on my own and imagining what I thought stability was. Ballet became a way for me to cope.