Six months of practice. Eight hours per day. Four hours of performance. Fourteen routines. All of this commitment culminated in Zeel Thakkar’s (‘22) debut performance as a professional dancer. Completing this feat made Zeel the first student in 20 years at her studio to enter the professional space, opening the door to countless opportunities such as dancing in music videos for her.

“My favorite thing is being able to immerse yourself in [dance],” Zeel said. “You can really see improvement if you put in the practice, and if you don’t put in the practice you won’t improve. The ability to sink into repetition and go into the same counts over and over again to see some improvement is really captivating and always draws me back to it.”

In addition to teaching her the importance of hard work, dance has become an integral part of Zeel’s life for its cultural element. 

“I started looking at [dance] differently in freshman year, and I realized dance was the only thing keeping me connected to my culture, and I fell in love with it,” Zeel said. “It was love at second sight.” 

Like dance, Zeel’s family has grounded her and connected her with her culture throughout high school. She maintains close relations with her cousins, particularly with her oldest cousin who moved to California when she was in third grade.

“[My oldest cousin has] taught me about family values and traditions, which I later brought into my interest in dance,” Zeel said. “Being close with family and people that support you in life is really important.”

The unique nature of how the tradition of dance passes down from teacher to student in her culture gave Zeel a new perspective on learning and knowledge, which extended outside the realm of performance.

“Dance is an oral tradition, which means it’s passed down from teacher to student to teacher to student, and you can’t find any of that online,” Zeel said. “It helped me value knowledge and learning a lot more, and it’s different from what we’re used to.”

From her experience with dance, Zeel gained an appreciation for diligence, drive and determination, all qualities which have translated to other pursuits. Specifically, she applied lessons from dance to exploring medicine and public health more in depth after developing an initial interest from her high school biology course. 

Outside of school, she has pursued her interest in medicine by shadowing an oncologist. Through this experience, she learned that the scope of medicine expands far beyond just science.

“We had one patient who was addicted to heroin and unhoused, so [we had to] navigate those extraneous complications along with medicine itself,” Zeel said. “It was a really difficult decision whether they should install a chemotherapy port when there’s a risk that he would use it for drugs and not follow his cancer treatment.”

Such dilemmas opened her eyes to aspects of the practice of medicine she had previously never considered. In particular, she recognized the issue of healthcare accessibility, which she believes can be alleviated by building trust in the doctor-patient relationship and the system as a whole.

“Especially in a world where so many people don’t trust medicine and science, I think it’s really important to build cultural competency and break language barriers and bridge the gap between doctors and patients to make people feel as secure as possible,” Zeel said. 

When it comes to social issues, Zeel is unafraid to voice her opinions. During the summer after her sophomore year, she put together a Black Lives Matter benefit concert featuring her dance skills. Upper school history teacher Mark Janda, who taught Zeel in her sophomore year, noted this quality about her.

“She sees something wrong in the world and she tries to figure out what she can do to help,” Janda said. “I really admire that. She has a phenomenal sense of right and wrong, a phenomenal sense of empathy, and you would be hard-pressed to talk to her for more than 15 minutes without finding that out.”