A passion for dance has become the driving force behind Zane Unger’s life.
“Because in dance, and I think life in general, you have to set goals consistently,” Zane said.
His mom first put him in dance to help his coordination.
“I started at two because I was a clumsy baby,” Zane said.
“Yes,” his mom, Traci Unger, agreed with a laugh. “He could barely walk across the floor without falling down.”
“So, she said, ‘I’ll put him in dance, by the time he goes to kindergarten he’ll quit,’” Zane said.
But instead—he fell in love with it.
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“I love dance so much that just even thinking about doing something else is terrible,” Zane said.
At the age of seven, dance became his life’s goal. “I always knew that I wanted to be a choreographer. I always saw that and I was like, ‘that’s what I want to do,’” Zane said.
To get ready, he’s trained in nearly every style of dance. “Ya, it’s just fun,” Zane Said. Ballet, tap, jazz, hip-hop, contemporary, you name it and he’s likely danced it.
But there have been challenges—like when he was training to do the splits.
“I’m really still not very flexible,” Zane said. “And so I did that [the splits] and I was crying. I was like, ‘oh my gosh, this hurts!’” Zane said.
But no matter how many times Zane was tempted to give up, his team of supporters where there for him.
“Well, there’ve been times that I pushed him,” Traci said. “He’s like, ‘mom I’m quitting dance,’ and I’m like ‘okay you can quit, now go get in the car we’re going to dance.’”
While his mom kept pushing, his older brother, Ryan Smith, kept inspiring him. “He’s funny, he’s caring, he’s the whole package,” Zane said about Ryan.
Ryan was born facing various challenges, which affect his speech and mobility.
“He hates anything loud, but he’ll deal with it just long enough to watch me dance . . . and he always has a smile on his face. He’s always laughing . . . it fills me with so much joy to like watch him enjoying me. I don’t know, I just love him,” Zane said.
From the beginning, these brothers were also friends; both working through their own unique challenges.
For Ryan, it was learning to walk without a wheelchair. For Zane, it was thriving on the dance floor.
“I know that he can’t do what I’m doing. And so I know that I can’t take this for granted at all,” Zane said.
Thanks to the support of his family, Zane is not afraid to back down from a challenge. So when he visited the prestigious performing arts school Juilliard in New York City for a dance camp, he knew he wanted to apply to go to school there after graduating from Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Dallas.
But he knew getting into Juilliard wasn’t going to be easy.
“And so from that point forward I worked as hard as I could,” Zane said.
He increased his training and started taking extra dance classes, “because I knew that where I was at that time, was not good enough for the school,” Zane said.
The Juilliard School only accepts 12 freshmen male dancers each year, and at first—Zane was not one of them.
“I don’t know if he told you but he was waitlisted,” Traci said. “So there were tears in our house. And so when we got the call . . .”
“I’m happy to say that you are finally admitted to The Juilliard,” Zane said, explaining what the Juilliard admissions person told him on the phone. “And so I was like, ‘ahhhh!’”
“Oh my gosh, you know as a parent it’s probably the best thing in the world to see your kid’s dreams coming true,” Traci said.
For Zane’s older brother, Ryan, “he’s even more excited than anyone. I think he’s most excited though—that he’ll get the whole house to himself,” Zane said with Ryan laughing in agreement.
Zane is traveling to Israel this summer to train for dance for several weeks, then he moves to New York City to start school at Juilliard.
Zane will also be in good company. Out of the 12 male dancers accepted for the freshmen class at Juilliard, five of them are his classmates from Booker T. Washington. This is the first time this has happened at the school.
