Alexis Senge JohnsonBack in 2002, with hopes and dreams still fresh in my eyes, I loaded up my life and headed to Oklahoma City University. I’d just come off a summer spent at Broadway Theatre Project and the Rockettes Summer Dance Intensive and I was determined to leave my tiny beachside community. I had a plan and it ended with me dancing on stage as a Radio City Rockette after graduation. Spoiler alert, that didn’t happen. I did spend a year at OCU as an Entertainment Business major where I learned that what I wanted to do professionally, working in the realm of nonprofit arts organizations, apparently wasn’t what they hoped to teach me about. More importantly, my time at OCU brought me the opportunity to dance as a member of the American Spirit Dance Company under the direction of Jo Rowan.
Now, if you’ve never heard of Jo, I want you to picture every stereotypical ballet mistress you’ve ever seen in a movie. Performance credentials from the far off past, a stern look that could kill the bad technique right out of your body, pink tights and black leotard are of the staple of wardrobe options, hair slicked back into a pristine bun and of course the accompanying head wrap. Unlike the rest of the members of the dance company, I wasn’t a dance or dance management major and that meant I didn’t take technique classes as a part of my daily course work so I only crossed paths with Jo when working on the holiday show. It was in those few opportunities that she still left the same lasting impact with me.
She’s a southern gal through and through, so expect the wild sayings and crazy anecdotes that you might expect to hear muttered so casually by any great bible belt grandmother. She has a tough-love way to her and so you can imagine her comments would follow suit. The one that stuck with me the most, probably because she uttered it the most when speaking of the holiday show, is something along the lines of: “success is preparation meeting opportunity.” You know what? I’ll be darned if she wasn’t exactly right!
While I found myself packing up and coming home only a year after my time at OCU began, what I learned stuck with me for many years since. The amount of opportunities I’ve “lucked” into was due to the preparation I’d put into my future success, even if I didn’t realize it at the time. Funny thing is, when I worked in the world of theme parks each day, I used to have a magnet in my cubical that read, “lack of planning on your behalf does not constitute an emergency on mine.” While I know that statement is far from true in the realms I worked in, I was always going to fix whatever problem someone else might have created because it’s all about making sure the show still goes one, it did start many conversations from others who came to my space and apologized for situations they may have put me in by not planning ahead.
I’m thankful for so many of the lessons I learned along the way, but I know I was meant to spend that year in Oklahoma so that I could meet Jo Rowan and learn the key to success. The relocation back and forth might not have been fun and the time away from family was difficult, but I was exactly where I was meant to be. Today, thanks to Jo, I live a life of success because my preparation met opportunities I just couldn’t turn down.
