Dance has become a second language for Peninsula High senior Michelle May, a way to express concepts that might otherwise be difficult for her to share for a soft-spoken 17 year old.
“If I have a vision, I want to make that come to life and share that with the world,” May said. “I have a couple of ideas, like combining world events that sometimes go unnoticed, and I think dance is a really good way of communicating, it’s a good way to connect with people. It’s a universal language, so I think it’ll be really cool to use it to share what’s on my mind.”
Her mastery of that second language is what’s given her the opportunity to compete for one of the nation’s highest student honors, making her a 2015 United States Presidential Scholar for the Arts semifinalist.
May’s road toward the White House, began when she was four years old, placed into a ballet and tap dancing by her mother, Midori, who tried through the years to introduce her daugther to a number of different arts, including music.
“I used to play piano, and I introduced it to Michelle, but she seems not interested in piano,” Midori May said, laughing. “She’s very good at violin — I thought she if she kept playing and practicing that, I could see some potential there,” Midori continued, while her daughter shared a disapproving glance, having earlier mentioned a distaste for playing violin. “But I couldn’t force her,” she said. “If she loves it that’s good, but she didn’t want to go do that class.”
But for Michelle, her introduction to dance, she says, was where things “took off.” It wasn’t long until she broke away from ballet and classical music almost entirely, and made an effort to focus on tap dancing. “There’s a lot of freedom with tap — it’s not just just a dance, but it’s music. You’re creating music with your feet,” she said.
Two years ago, she said, she was recruited to join a hip-hop dancing club at high school — and that’s when doors began to open for her. “That’s what started shaping my choreography. I wanted to incorporate hip-hop upper body movements as well as tap footwork,” she said.
The melding of styles has brought about her biggest successes, as evidenced in her performance at the 2014 YoungArts Foundation Festival, which brought about her nomination to be considered for the Scholar honor, as well as a host of other scholarships and awards ranging from local to national competitions.
Unfortunately, May learned on Monday, May 3, that she was not named a United States Presidential Scholar, a fact she confirmed in a disappointed email.
But her story doesn’t end there. She’s continuing her education on scholarship to UCLA, where she’ll continue to practice her craft at a college that’s more focused on her interests.
“A lot of college dance programs are classical, more conservatory,” she said, noting that she never was a “classical kind of person.”
“They really respect tap, and they’re more contemporary in that they offer hip-hop, tap, and world arts and culture programs, with cultural dances that you learn as well. It’s very diverse in that sense,” she said.
May hopes to extend her range from performance to choreography, direction and — potentially — filmmaking, as shown by her 36-person dance piece “Nirvana.” But her passion, she says, is starting to lean towards choreography.
“You can choreograph to the meaning behind the song,” she said. “I can try different, weird moves and and I think it’s a really fun process. It’s really hard and time consuming, and sometimes I get lazy and not want to choreograph,” she admits, “but once I start getting into that vibe, I like it, and it’s a really fun process.”
