Make no mistake, your very first priority when you get that first vestige of an idea that you want to be a dancer is to get as good as you can at whatever you do!
Dancing is a tough industry, there is a lot of talent around and there's only going to be more people doing this in the future. All this means that you're going to have to be the very best if you want to do dance on a full time basis and make it into your dance career as I'm sure you hope.
If you're not already in a dance school or in some sort of environment where you are improving your dancing, you need to start now!
Assuming that you have already got started on that road we need to take a look at what you are going to do in order to further that. As in what are you going to do to make yourself into an even better dancer that other people would like to hire for the dance jobs that they have going!
One of the best things that anybody can do is to enrol into a full-time 2 or 3 year course at a specialist dance college.
There are colleges dedicated specifically to dance and the performing arts. These places will have the best facilities - the best industry pros teaching you and to learn from, studios that you can rehearse in, lots of other dancers you can make contacts with and in some cases even dance agencies affiliated with the college for graduates.
They also provide students with lots of opportunities to perform so that they can get a proper taste for it and won't be intimidated by it when the time arises!
These colleges usually accept students from the ages of 16 or 18. They will also have some sort of audition (which you may have to pay to attend) in order to assess your standard and whether they will take you.
The most popular colleges may have over a thousand dancers auditioning for perhaps an intake of less than 100 students. If you get into one of the top dance schools in the first instance then you probably have something in you, that on further development can blossom into a successful dance career in the future.
Another thig to bear in mind is that these places are independent schools in many cases and therefore will have much higher fees than universities. They may offer scholarships or other schemes that may pay or part-pay for the course. Even these will be limited in number and will only be offered to the most promising candidates.
If you imagine how much you would pay at a typical university, then an independent dance college will often be twice the price - often even more!
While these colleges offer great quality that past students can attest to, all is not lost if you cannot get into one of these. There are also university dance courses that can offer comparable courses.
What you will have to be careful though is that you choose a place that will help your career. This is not a course just to get a qualification and you must remember that.
In the real dance world you'll be auditioning for more or less every job. And therefore it is the quality of the training that is of most importance. If a place is right for you and what you want to learn or achieve in the future then this is the place you should aim to go.
There are courses focussed on dance, there are performing arts courses, there are musical theatre courses? What do you want to learn?