Hello there. I am a young dancer, and I'd like to share a story that I am too afraid to share with anyone who will recognize it, so here I am anonymous. I have a specific memory in mind here. We were doing a photoshoot for a show that was coming up. I was very excited because although I had done some small photoshoots before, it was always exciting. An artist specializing in clothing had come, and he chose a few adults (we were working with a company of adult dancers that we knew) and one girl from our company to dress up, and then the rest of us were in our costumes for the show. He picked Avery to wear his garment, and I don't blame him. Avery was probably the best dancer in our company, and she was very pretty. She was often picked for promo images and lead roles. That, I don't have a problem with. There is a difference between favoritism and just being able to recognize talent and beauty. No, my problem is with what happened next. So, we were shooting pictures, the photographer was a bit intimidating, but it was fine. Our teacher was positioning people and then the photographer tweaked our movements as we went. Then, when they decided to go for another angle, something happened. Our teacher was positioning people around but left out about around five of us. Now, we five were not popular in the company. Not for being mean or incredibly bad, but we just didn't… stand out. So, when asked what we should do, our teacher said: “just go stand out of frame, this photo is pretty full of people already (to be fair, there were quite a lot of people), and this will only take a minute, and then you'll be back in!” Okay! We were happy to do so. So we went into the shade, happy to get some break from the sweltering sun. time passed. Five minutes. Ten. twenty. They hadn't called us back into the frame yet, so we just sat and waited. Then they started re-arranging people again. But they didn't notice us. Eventually, we realized that if we didn't say anything, we might be forgotten. Mind you that we weren't out of sight, just in the background. So I raised my voice and asked if we could be in yet. Our teacher was surprised, like she had forgotten we were there. She put us back in, but it still hurt. Getting to see the same four or five people get chosen to be in the spotlight again and again, while we five were continuously forgotten? I tried to act like it was fine, but it stung. It really stung.