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As long as she gets to dance, Makayla Evans says she’ll be OK.
It’s been that way since Evans, now 22, started dancing 20 years ago. Regardless of the state of her relationships or the trials she’s going through, dance has “always been my one constant love,” she tells TODAY.com.
But Evans stopped taking formal dance classes after she graduated from high school and aged out of her lifelong dance studio. The loss stung, affecting her mentally and physically and leading to a 40-pound weight gain. “Something I’ve known my whole life is all of a sudden gone,” Evans says, “and that was obviously hard … when you put your whole identity into something and then it goes away.”
Gone were the days she’d move for four to six hours per week, and her body missed the sensation. So, she turned to other activities — ones she associated with adulthood. Evans launched herself into an intense fitness streak and lost the weight. When she injured her ankle at the gym, she joined a circus class where her exercise routine was suspended in silks and the Lyra, an aerial hoop.
“I just wanted the sensation of spinning like I did in dance, so I replaced that within the air, just so I can feel like I was a turner again,” Evans says. But after one too many bruises from the hoop and more weight gain, she found herself thinking of dance again.
So, she returned to it in August 2023. When she couldn’t find an adult dance program for experienced dancers in her Texas town, she reached out to one an hour away that allows her to take ballet classes with high school students three to four days per week. The commute is long but it’s worth it.
Since then, Evans has posted about her dance progress on TikTok, where she’s gone viral for her 80-pound weight loss from 220 pounds. Dance, she says, was the solution. It…
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