So, a blog redesign has been on the cards for quite some time now. However, I’m right in the middle of audition season so I’m so limited in both time and money. I wanted to put my newly acquired coding skills into practice to build a new site myself from scratch, but it would simply take too long to undertake that kind of work now! And with the cost of travelling around for auditions, I can’t spare the funds to pay for hosting and pre-made frameworks and themes.

However, I’ve been holding a vision in my mind for some time now of what I want this blog to be, and I just can’t wait to get started with it. So what I’ve done is simply updated my WordPress plan to ‘Personal’, which is the lowest cost upgrade, so that I can use my own domain. Then I changed the theme, just choosing from the free themes available, and customised it a little for a new, cleaner, more professional look. I’ve also changed the name of the blog from “The Blogging Ballerina” to “Dare to Dance” and updated my bio and information.

Why Dare to Dance?

I decided I wanted to change my blog name after finding another blog also titled “The Blogging Ballerina”. I spent some time brainstorming ideas, and settled on Dare to Dance. I feel like this really sums up my story… having started ballet much later than most, and faced adversity on my journey, I’m going against the status quo to pursue a career in dance. Lots of people tell me that it isn’t possible, but I believe I can make it happen. It’s all about not letting fear of failure stop you from doing something you really want to do… about feeling the fear and doing it anyway. That’s the idea I try to live by, and it’s the message I want to spread with this blog, so it seems a more fitting identity.

So it’s goodbye to The Blogging Ballerina. The blog has been a really great adventure so far under that identity! However, I want this blog to be more than that, and I think that Dare to Dance is going to live up to that challenge. You’ll still see all my previous content, and now you can get to the blog really easily at daretodance.co!

I’m dying to know what you think, so let me know your thoughts about the redesign in the comments!