Chelsey Price was almost literally born dancing. She lived close enough to her dance studio in Sulphur Springs, Tenn., that she could walk to weekly classes that she began taking at the age of 5. To Chelsey, though, walking wasn’t much fun. “I would cry the whole way and then when I got there I was all giggles,” she remembers. Obviously, something about dance has stuck to her because she has stuck to it.
   
Price, now a junior at ETSU, calls dance something she has “just always done.” She was diagnosed with ADHD when she was growing up, she said, so dance was the perfect outlet to channel all her extra energy. Then at Sullivan South High School in Kingsport, she joined both the color guard and winter guard teams, both of which require detailed choreography and involved group participation.

At ETSU, Price started taking dance classes to supplement her major in public relations as electives. From these dance classes, she found out about Mountain Movers, a modern dance company associated with ETSU. Price says modern dance is quite different from ballet. “Ballet is like trying to defy gravity, and modern [dance] is earthy, and you use weight, emotion and expression to dance,” she explained.

For almost a year, Price and the others in the Mountain Movers company rehearsed for the ETSU Spring Dance Concert, which was held on Feb. 26, 28 and March 1. Price not only danced in the concert; she also designed the poster and was featured on it. “I designed the poster and that’s me in the picture, but I didn’t pick the picture,” she stresses. “The ETSU dance teacher picked the picture.”

With all of Price’s communication and design talent, a career in public relations seems only natural. However, she fell into the field only recently. She decided that she wanted to do something in the public relations field her senior year of high school when she took a marketing class. She was assigned a mock ad campaign for the Coca-Cola Corporation, and her teacher said she did a great job and should consider a career in the field.

She took that advice to heart, and it stayed with her as she chose a major in college. “I knew I wanted to go to college but didn’t know what to do. I liked the project and my teacher told me I was good at it, so I ran with it.”

In between dancing and school, Chelsey found time to get married. Price said her co-worker Sean took one look at her and knew that he was in love, but it took about a week for her to warm up to him. She and her future husband kept their dating a secret when they were working at the (now defunct) Kingsport location of Cootie Brown’s, because they knew their co-workers would gossip about them.

 They dated for about three months and then a then “a couple weeks” after everyone at work found out they were dating, the couple got engaged. They were married on June 14, 2008.

Married life hasn’t been easy, Price said. She said she has learned that she has to constantly consider her husband, now a chef at The Chop House in Kingsport, in her decision-making. And she has also learned a lot about herself. She said that her husband can point out a bad habit that she didn’t even know existed, and she is able to change it, which makes her a better person.

Not that she was ever a bad person. She readily shares her love of dance. On a mission trip to Mexico, Price taught two dance classes to impoverished children, and she has also taught dance at Calvary Church in Boones Creek.

She knows that she wants to keep dancing after college. “I’ll just find classes wherever I move,” she said. And Price doesnn’t plan to let her age get in the way of her love for dance either. “I don’t plan on becoming a [full-time dance] teacher until I’m too old to be a performer.”