This month, Erika Lasaker competed in the Worlds Dance Competition in Orlando, Florida.  This is as far as a competitive dance team can go.

Dancing since seventh grade, Lasaker has devoted most of her free time to dance — more specifically, hip hop.  She dances after school every day, including two-hour practices on Mondays and Fridays and four-hour practices on Sundays.

This, however, does not cut it.  Because dancing is such an intense sport, Lasaker must condition at the gym about four days out of the week.

Her dancing experience has become so extensive that she teaches at Elite Kids on Mondays.  This will help her with her plans to open her own competitive dance studio.  She will attend University of Cincinnati in the fall to study Entrepreneurship and Business to eventually carry out these plans.

All of this hard work ended up being worth the time and effort because she has been able to grow as a person as well. For Lasaker, it has not just taught her how to dance, but how to lead as well as the importance of a strong work ethic.

“It has taught me about leadership and learning to take control of a situation for myself. One of my biggest lessons is you have to learn through hard work,” she said.

These leadership skills took her and her team to the Dance Worlds Competition to compete against the best teams of countries from all over the world.  In the Open Coed Hip Hop (College) Division, she and her team placed eleventh with their performance of “The Purge.”  With their performance of “Voodoo” in the Senior Coed Hip Hop Division, she and her team placed seventh.

“You come to this one competition in Florida and, suddenly, everybody is your friend and everybody is an aspiring artist,” Lasaker said. “You’re not just a dancer. It’s honorable to be there in itself.”