Watch the plus-size teen dancer who has taken the world by storm
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18-year-old Amanda LaCount is proving your size has nothing to do with dancing. The plus-size teen dancer has stunned everyone with her dancing skills.
Amanda, who lives in LA, started dancing when she was just two. She has always loved dancing and wanted to become a professional dancer.
Amanda has danced in Katy Perry’s “Swish Swish” music video and was a backing dancer for Lizzo at Coachella.
Amanda also appeared on The Ellen Show and was featured on the cover of Dance Spirit magazine.
Amanda, who is an ambassador for Zumba, hates when people say that she is a good dancer for her size.
Amanda told Barcroft TV: “Why can’t you just say I’m a good dancer, period? I don’t get why they always have to have the ‘for your size’ or: ‘I was so in shock that you could dance.’ I’m like, Why? I don’t get it, they always have this stereotype that people who are bigger or different can’t dance like everybody else, and it really annoys me.”
“People definitely questioned it along the way. I have had dance teachers, parents of dancers I danced with – everyone pretty much has questioned my abilities and my decision to be a professional dancer. Everyone has done it.”
“I have never known what it was like not to have people question me – so it’s kind of just part of my life”, she says.
Amanda hates when people question her dancing abilities. Even one of her dance teachers once dropped her because of her size.
She said that the teacher asked to have a meeting with her mom and he said, ‘I’m sorry, but your body doesn’t fit my vision I have for my team. I was 10 years old. That always baffles me. He said nothing about my dancing.”
However, Amanda didn’t lose her confidence and decided to prove everyone wrong.
She said: “I am the type of person who’s like, Oh, you tell me I can’t do it? Well, I’m going to do it now, definitely 100 percent. But it’s weird because I have kind of never felt what it’s like to be respected.”
“I am not like the stereotypical LA pretty girl you can say. And so it was hard and I didn’t get a lot of jobs because of the way I look. People would laugh at me when I came to auditions.”
But, Amanda was also supported by a few people during her journey to become a dancer. Her mother, Jill recalls one incident: “When she was seven or eight she performed in a recital and a parent came running after us when we were taking all the costumes to the car and said, ‘Oh my God I could not take my eyes off your daughter, even when my daughter was on stage, I couldn’t take my eyes off your daughter.’”
“I thought, ‘This is really weird, kind of scary weird’, and I talked to the studio director and she said: ‘Amanda has it.’ I said: ‘What do you mean she has it?’ And she said, ‘She has IT. You’ll see. She’s going to make it.”
Amanda said: “I love dancing so much because I kind of turn into a different person. I am 1,000 times more confident than I am in my daily life. I feel like I’m untouchable; no one can say anything to me, and I’m just flawless and perfect, even though obviously I’m not. But I feel that way whenever I’m dancing.”