Mighty dancer: 15-year-old Taylor Storey is a national winner

It was a time when dancers wore leg warmers.

At age 4, Taylor Storey wanted to be a dancer.

She put on her sister's knitted stockings, which at the time came up to her hips.

"They had, back in the day, these funky dance accessories," said Taylor. "They were bright pink. I was like, 'Oh, I want to wear these.' They would just dance around the house with me."

Both of older sisters were amused at the sight of Taylor dancing around wearing a costume five times too big.

It wasn't long after that when Taylor danced before bigger audiences. No one was laughing then. They were mostly in awe of her talent.

To this day, her teachers are in equal awe of her work ethic.

"As she gets older, she gets more confident," said Kelli Gill, a choreographer and teacher at Erin's Danceworks in Spring Hill, where Taylor has been a student for more than six years. "She's accomplished a lot already and she's so young. I think she can go as far as she wants with this."

Taylor, 15, dances with two of her closest friends. All of them have been national winners in solo competitions.

It's like an all-star team that competes year-round.

She sat in the middle of her living room Wednesday afternoon. Her smile never left her face and she invoked laughter throughout the interview. She spoke in detail about her earliest memories as a competitive dancer, her goals beyond her educational life and her favorite musicals - a three-way tie among "Grease," "Wicked" and "Hairspray."

Taylor competed solo in July in the International Dance Challenge (IDC) in Orlando. She was pitted against dancers from all over the world, some coming from Hungary, Austria and Mexico.

The audition process, Taylor said, was nerve-racking.

There was a jazz combo she had to perform before the panel of judges.

Then there was an interview.

Finally, she had to do a solo performance, which she said was created solely by the judges. There was no preparation that could have helped her.

"One of the judges showed it to us," Taylor said. "We'd never heard the song and never seen it. It was like, 'Here you go. See this? Now do it.'"

She competed against roughly 25 other dancers. At 14 years old, she won Senior Miss IDC International Dance Challenge.

Taylor is a freshman at Nature Coast Technical High School, where she studies drama.

She doesn't partake in the dance program at the school because her demands at Erin's Danceworks are too great, she said.

As each competition gets closer, she will spend six days a week at the studio.

Taylor's ambitions go beyond high school and college, where she will continue to study the arts.

She has her sights set on Broadway.

"I have no doubt she could absolutely do that if she wanted to," said Gill. "She's one of the hardest-working students I've ever seen at the studio."

"She just has the natural gift," said Gill's sister, Erin Messaris, who owns Erin's Danceworks. "I had to beg her mom to let her do a solo that first year. She was 9 at the time ... I think it's all paid off in the end."

In addition to the thousand of hours per year taking dance, she also is taking voice lessons.

"I definitely want to do something with dance," Taylor said about her future. "I don't want to do choreography for a while. I want to be the one dancing."

Taylor has an intense love for all things jazz, but she also regularly delves in ballet, point, tap, lyrical, contemporary, hip hop and modern - basically everything that is offered at her studio.

"If I had to pick a favorite, I'd have to say jazz," she said. "There's so much you can do with it. There's funky jazz, slow jazz ... so many different types."

She is constantly competing against dancers older than her. When she advances to a higher age bracket, she wins her age group during her first year of eligibility. That means she can't compete again until she old enough to enter the next group.

Her young age also keeps her from applying for a spot on "So You Think You Can Dance?" It is her favorite primetime show, she said.

It's only for those ages 18 and older.

The next two state competitions are in February and March.

Taylor and her family are kicking off the New Year with a ski trip in Utah. Taylor has never seen snow let alone skied down a mountain.

"Her teachers are really nervous," said her mother, Lucy Storey. "They tell her, 'Whatever you do, don't break anything.'"