Portrait of an American Dancer




Kelley McCaa, 19, a junior at Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania started her college career as a dance major but decided that dancing suited her better as a hobby than as a career.

“I actually transferred out to Oklahoma on a $14,000 scholarship and couldn’t do the dieting anymore,” McCaa said.

Kelley teaches at Jen’s Academy of Rhythm and Moves in Butler, PA. The studio hosts dance classes for all ages, which can get rather noisy as the sounds of dance and hip-hop music clash with the sounds of children’s music.

“I’ve been teaching dance for about five years, and at my current studio for two,” Kelley said.




Kelley began taking dance classes at an early age. Though she maintains a passion for her art, she chose not to pursue it as a career when the pressure to maintain body weight took a dangerous turn.

“I’ve had a lot of problems with eating disorders since I was about 12 years old,” she said. “I was addicted to diet pills for quite awhile.”

Kelley said that she began taking diet pills in excess to meet the demands of the program in Oklahoma.

“You’re not supposed to exceed four a day, and I was on 8 to 12 everyday,” she said. “I started taking them because they were telling me I had to lose weight to stay in the program, and when I got there I had to lose even more weight, and I just couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t sleep at night because I was so wired from the pills. When my body would wear off them, I would just crash. I would fall asleep for like an hour and then I’d force myself awake and take more pills to go to dance class.”


After a short time in Oklahoma, Kelley elected to return to Slippery Rock for the sake of her physical and mental health. With help from friends, she overcame the addiction to the diet pills.

“When I came back to Slippery Rock, I just forced myself to stop taking them and I had friends to support me in that,” she said. “It’s a terrible thing, especially in the environment I was in. There would be girls throwing up in the bathroom before weigh-ins, and I knew that wasn’t what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to be a hundred pounds for the rest of my life, so I decided dancing for fun was better than dancing for a career. Dance teaching … that’s fun.”