Senior Spotlight: Arianna Perry

On a Friday night in December during a dance concert at Ragsdale High, Arianna Perry wanted to shock the crowd. She performed a split, and rolling out of it, she rolled the wrong way and heard the pop. Her right knee was ablaze in pain.

She stood up and wobbled. Right away, she knew she had dislocated it. 

Doctors told her she had bruised her patella, the triangular bone in front of the knee joint, and she would need to be in physical therapy for months. She had avoided surgery. Still, Arianna thought the worst.

“I will never dance again,” she kept telling herself.

By Monday morning, she walked into Ragsdale’s counseling office an emotional wreck. She needed to see someone she had grown to trust, someone who had helped guide her through her four years at Ragsdale: Carrington Murray.

“I understand how you’re feeling, but if you’re not having surgery, don’t feel like you’ll have to quit,” he told her. “You’ve never wanted to quit.”

“I love to dance!” Arianna responded.

“Yes,” Murray responded. “So, don’t quit. And don’t let that feeling take over.”

Arianna didn’t quit. She spent five months going to see a physical therapist once a week. She still danced, but she took it lightly. She hated it. By early April, Arianna felt comfortable enough going all that. She’s far from done. After she graduated Wednesday from Ragsdale High, she will continue going after her dream: Open her own dance studio. 

This fall, she’ll enroll in Central Piedmont Community College. After she earns her associate’s degree in two years, she plans to transfer to UNC-Charlotte and pursue a degree in dance education.

Murray gave her the confidence to do that. So did Taylor Roberson, the dance teacher at Ragsdale. So did Kieshauna Bradley, the receptionist in the counseling office. And Brianna Wilson, her English teacher her junior year who told her, “You’re a good student. I know you are, so much better than what you’re doing now.”

Arianna gets emotional when she thinks about what they all did for her. Her voice shakes, and she talks about how difficult it was moving from Raleigh to Greensboro after her parents’ divorce and walking into Ragsdale High as a freshman not knowing a soul.

Murray gave her the tour of the school. She felt he was, as she says, “pretty cool.” She also felt he was someone she could talk to about challenges in academics as well as her life. She started stopping by to see him every few months then every two weeks.

By the time she was a senior, she dropped in to see Murray every school day. He describes him as a “strong pillar” in her life. But so was Roberson, Bradley, and Wilson.

“I’ve done things by myself because I chose to,” says Arianna, her voice wavering with emotion. “But they knew I needed help, and they provided that for me. It made me who I am today.”

And who Arianna is today is a dancer. 

“It’s a getaway,” Arianna says of dance. “It’s not like working out and feeling the pain. It’s like sitting at the beach with the wind blowing. Dance is what you make it. It lets out your emotions without you telling people what those emotions are.”

Arianna began taking ballet at age 3. She stopped two years later and didn’t take up dance again until she entered Ragsdale High as a freshman. She started in the beginner’s class, and by her sophomore year, she had moved up to intermediate. By the end of her sophomore year, she wanted to try out for the Honors Dance Program.

Since her freshman year, she had always looked up to the dancers in the honors program. She wanted to be them, join them and wear with pride the black T-shirt of the Honors Dance Program with the diamond insignia with the dancer inside. 

At the end of her sophomore year, she tried out with two other dancers on a Friday afternoon. They all were identified by numbers. Arianna was No. 11. Arianna and the other two dancers performed choreography Roberson selected and then added their own choreography at the end. The tryout was no more than 45 seconds. Yet, for Arianna, the tryout felt like an eternity. She so wanted to make the team.

She knew she’d find out first through the program’s Instagram page. So, she turned on her notifications on her smart phone. By Monday afternoon while riding the school bus home, she heard her phone buzz. She looked and saw No. 11. She had made it. She called her mom immediately.

“Mom! Mom!” she whispered into her phone, bouncing up and down in the seat. “I made the team!”

Since then, Arianna has performed in six concerts and choreographed three dance routines. She knows what dance — and Ragsdale High — has done for her. Dance and Ragsdale has helped her discover herself and her talent. And now, she wants to use that as creative fuel to help others find themselves through dance.

“I’ve worked hard, and I’m proud of myself,” Arianna says. “There were moments that I wanted to quit, and I didn’t. That tells me I don’t give up. You’ll never see me quit.”