Dancers make it look easy but it is not.
Dancing on one's toes hurts and you have to have mental toughness as well as physical maturity to do it.
“I never allow a dancer to do it if I feel they are not strong enough mentally and physically,” said Melonie Motsinger, owner and teacher at Touch of Class Dance Studio in Harrisburg's Bonan Business Center.
Interestingly, all of her older students and some young ones are dancing on their toes, about 20 in all.
When these young men and women do modern routines they are wearing different footwear. Or they are barefoot.
Motsinger is providing the choreography and has 12 students dancing in the upcoming Harrisburg High School production of “Beauty and the Beast.”
The studio has been winning awards since it opened in 1996. Motsinger produced a brief version of the “Nutcracker” in November for Harrisburg Medical Center. They performed at the Bonan Center.
“My father was in the Air Force and while I was in Germany from 1981 to 1985 I performed with the Stuttgart Ballet Company. I was 15 when I returned to the U.S.,” Motsinger said.
In Louisiana she later performed with the Twin City Ballet in Monroe, La. After that she moved to the Belleville area and worked with the Belleville School of Ballet.
