Michelle Spreadberry hopes to be a professional dancer some day.
To that end, Spreadberry, 17, dances seven days a week and has been doing so since she was 2.
One might say dancing is in her blood. She is the youngest of seven kids, and her three older sisters all danced, so she followed in their footsteps.
“The difference is I am actually the first one in my family trying to pursue it professionally as a career,” said Spreadberry, who learned early on that she wanted dance to be more than just her hobby. “It was more than moving to music. It was an art and expressing yourself. I can’t imagine myself doing anything else.”
Her mother has owned the Legacy Dance Studio in Midlothian since 2010. Two of her older sisters work there, one as an instructor and the other part time.
“It makes it really easy for me to go and dance every day and after school and on weekends,” Spreadberry said.
Spreadberry was 9 when she started competing and winning.
“Dancing was more fun when I started getting all the trophies and the medals,” said Spreadberry, who especially enjoys ballet and contemporary dance but also loves tap, jazz and hip-hop, as well as fine-tuning her tumbling skills.
But in time, even the thrill of winning wore off.
“It got to the point I had so many trophies that it didn’t mean much anymore,” she said. “As a freshman, I realized I wanted to do more than just the competition.”
About that time, she was invited by the Visceral Dance Center in Chicago to join the Visceral Studio Co. Membership is by invitation only.
“There are 17 of us,” Spreadberry said. “It is preprofessional training. Since I am not quite 18 yet, I can’t do professional training. It is more of a serious environment for dancers, so I’m downtown five days a week.”
While she won’t be 18 until next month, she did participate in the Broadway Theater Project, which allowed her to spend a week on an excursion with a Norwegian cruise line this summer and perform for an audience. That was part of an intensive, three-week summer dance program. She spent the first two weeks in Tampa, Fla., attending singing, acting and dance classes from 8 a.m. until 9 or 10 p.m. daily.
On the cruise, the troupe performed a show for two nights.
“The beginning was very rough for me because acting and singing was all new for me and I wasn’t as prepared as I could have been. I doubted myself,” she said, “but by the second week, it was a really good experience. I realized I didn’t have to be good at all three.”
In addition, to prepare for taking her dance abilities to the next level, Spreadberry has worked with a choreographer in Las Vegas, which enabled her to do some solo performances while continuing to compete at events such as the Midwest Starz National Dance Competition in Wisconsin Dells, where in June she was a national champion.
“It was a great feeling,” Spreadberry said.
She said her parents, Patricia and Walter Spreadberry, of Oak Forest, are her biggest supporters.
“They’ve always had my back and supported my dream,” she said.
A senior at Oak Forest High School, Spreadberry is ranked 16th in her class of 363. While dance takes up most of her free time, she also volunteers as a Bengal tutor and is a member of the pep club and Family Career and Consumer Leaders of America. After school, she also finds time to work at her mother’s dance studio as a tumbling instructor and does some choreography for the studio’s competition team. She also includes some modeling work for catalogs on her resume.
She is considering college as an option.
“You don’t need a degree to dance, but you can’t dance forever,” she said. “A big goal and dream would be to attend The Juilliard School (of Dance, in New York), and I’ve also looked at the University of Minnesota and also Tisch School of the Arts at New York University.
“I would love to be on Broadway. I’d love to be in a ‘Cirque du Soleil’ show and I also think it would be a cool experience to actually sign a contract and perform on a cruise line for longer than a week.”
Cheryl Dangel Bartolini is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
