By Christina Flores-Chan – special to the Dialog

When Toronto contemporary dancer Emma Lum-Gerry tilted her head upward at the theatre stage lights shining down on her five years ago, she made sure to soak in their warmth.

She kept her eyes wide open, taking in the bright beams that put her centre stage in otherwise total darkness. After 14 seasons with the studio, she was practically a vet. She felt the familiar wave of calm rush over her, the same one that had cooled her nerves over the years.

While she appreciated the roaring love from her team every time she took to the stage, she had grown accustomed to the cheers of her fellow dancers hooting and shouting from the audience. When she was on stage, it was just her, her breath, and everything she had worked on overtime in the studio finally coming to fruition.

And the lights.

At that moment, Lum-Gerry was almost sure it would be the last time.

The year was 2017, and she was in the middle of the final performance of her contemporary solo before leaving her lifelong passion behind to study psychology at X University, a decision she was devastated to have made.

“I didn’t think I was going to ever go on stage again,” Lum-Gerry says, shaking her head incredulously as she relives the memory. “I remember being like, ‘Oh my God, this is my last time seeing the lights.’”

It turned out, as time unfolded, that she would indeed see them again. A life without dance lasted less than six months.

Lum-Gerry says she knew she had to go back when she was sitting in a three-hour lecture right before her first set of exams, socks soaked in Uggs that hadn’t survived the slush-trudging winter walk around campus, and all she wanted was to feel the soles of her feet on the hardwood flooring of a dance studio.

By the new year, Lum-Gerry was enrolled in George Brown College’s Dance Performance Preparation program, back to doing what she loved after some time off.

“The program was very friendly and easy to adapt to,” the dancer says. “I have an issue sometimes with my confidence and won’t do well in an environment where I feel like I’m being judged.”

“Walking into George Brown the first day felt like I had already been there for years,” she says.

Lum-Gerry graduated with honours, earning the highest GPA in her class.

“I knew I wasn’t happy at Ryerson but I didn’t know why,” she says. “It was because I wasn’t dancing, but I needed time away to figure out that it was really what I wanted to pursue.”

Today, Lum-Gerry is a graduate of both the George Brown Dance Performance program as well as the preparation program, a young professional looking to further her career at a contemporary dance company.

George Brown Dance Performance is a full-time, two-year program located at the school’s Casa Loma Campus that sets students up for a successful career within dance through their classical or contemporary stream. Dancers graduate from the program with not just an Ontario College Diploma, but also comprehensive knowledge and ability in various forms of dance, as well as additional industry opportunities open for them to pursue.

“The dance program taught me confidence, bravery, and the courage to always take a leap before I’m ready,” she says. “I’m forever indebted to this program for helping me find my way back to my passion and love for dance.”

Lum-Gerry is also a teacher and choreographer at her childhood studio, Sandra Amodeo Dance Studio (SADS).

“I always knew I could rely on Emma to be a leader in my classroom,” studio instructor Alexandra DeLory says. DeLory has taught Lum-Gerry since she was seven years old and mentored her through her training as both a dancer and a teacher.

“She’s talented, but tough enough to be pushed past her comfort zone to challenge her technical and artistic boundaries,” DeLory says.

While Lum-Gerry built up her athletic and artistic skills throughout her years of dance training at Sandra Amodeo Dance Studio, dance helped her build confidence and character as well.

“I’ve watched Emma attain a great deal of self-confidence through dance,” Karen Gerry, the dancer’s mother, says. “She was a very shy little girl in the beginning of her career at SADS.”

“I literally hated it,” Lum-Gerry says with a laugh.

She recalls her first year at the studio. Four years old and nervous knees shaking in her pliés, she would ask her mother to sit by the mirror in class every week.

And yet every Sunday, she was back, tiny hand on the barre.

And every single Sunday, she wanted to be there.

Lum-Gerry began taking the sport more seriously at the age of eight, when she was asked to join the studio’s competitive program, a more rigorous and technically-demanding program than the recreational classes she had been taking. The following season, the dancer landed her first solo and won at every competition.

From there, training just got more and more intensive. With Lum-Gerry attending specialized arts school Unionville High School to then graduate to study in George Brown’s Dance Performance program, all while dancing (and later, teaching) at Sandra Amodeo Dance Studio, the sport consumed her days to nights, seven times a week.

 

Most recently, at George Brown, Lum-Gerry’s morning would begin at 9 a.m. with a two-hour ballet class, followed by pointe class for an hour. She would then get a 15-minute break, followed by jazz, contemporary, floor work, and modern soon afterwards.

“When we had a performance, I would train from 8 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.,” she says. “And then we’d have rehearsal until 9 p.m. and then go to sleep and do it all over again the next day.”

Some days, when her body ached and her head pounded, she’d let herself wonder, if only for a second, why she put herself through the mental and physical stress of professional dance.

But then she’d perfect the step or she’d nail the combo, and knowing that all her hard work was paying off was rewarding enough.

For the remainder of her performance career, Lum-Gerry is hoping to put her work ethic into a company away from home and learn about what the rest of the world has to offer in the sport.

Still, Lum-Gerry says that time is catching up to her.

“I’m already turning 22 and my body hurts really bad. So a career as a professional dancer is  not sustainable for long,” she says. “There’s only going to be a certain amount of time that I can do this for and that’s fine. As long as dance is part of my life, I really don’t care.”

In 10 years, Lum-Gerry says she’ll be happily back in Toronto, teaching and choreographing for up-and-coming dancers.

But for now, she’s just happy to keep looking up at the lights.

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