Ms. Ami Crist
Undergraduate Dance Excellence Award

Ms. Ami Crist is in the class of 2018 at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland and ever since her mom signed her up for her first class, she has not stopped dancing (even for a sprained ankle). Some of her best memories of dance have been with her mentor Ms. Gloria Lang, whose impact on her dance career has been the most rewarding. It was she who directed Ms. Crist’s mainly adolescent troupe in a performance alongside Moscow Ballet’s company at the annual The Great Russian Nutcracker. Ms. Crist considers herself lucky enough to have continued working with Ms. Lang all four years in Mercy High School’s dance troupe which was voted the best high school level program in Baltimore. Dancing with the troupe enabled her to earn outstanding contribution awards all four years and the honor of the Adele and Felix Zajac Scholarship in her junior year.  This award is dedicated to Ms. Lang’s parents. At Washington College she quickly joined the dance club and National Society of Dance, first under Nu Delta

Alpha and then Delta Eta Pi. The dance honor society was a way in which she could give back a love of dance through community service as a member and now as the president. Though she strives towards a new future practicing medicine, the lessons of self-discipline, perseverance, and expectations of excellence that she learned through dance will stay with her even outside the studio walls in whatever challenge she is handed next.