Graduating dance major Kate Hancock delivered a heartwarming and powerful speech at the University of Washington Department of Dance Graduation Celebration on Friday, June 12th as the nominated representative of the Class of 2026 Dance Majors. With many guests, graduates, and faculty members moved to tears by her words, the speech became a memorable and potent moment of the ceremony.
Read the Full Undergraduate Address by Kate Hancock at the 2026 Dance Graduation Celebration below:
“Hi! For those who don’t know me, my name is Kate. I was nominated by my classmates to speak today, and I feel very honored to be trusted with this task.
I honestly struggled with where to begin this speech, because I have so much I could say about this department and the people who make this place special.
I could force you to listen to me tell my friends how much I love them for eight minutes straight.
I could stand here and defend the value of a degree in dance.
I could pick apart evidence and build a proof on how pursuing an education in movement has fundamentally changed me.
I learned from my dance-making courses that when you’re still searching for what you really want to say, a good course of action is to cut through all of the filler and speak from the heart of it all.
At my core, what I want to say is thank you.
My first class of my undergraduate career was in this very studio. It feels surreal to be standing at this podium, tracing the moments that I have shared with you all here.
I wonder how many hours we have collected together in Meany Hall.
I wonder which streaks on the floor came from us, if the barres have our fingerprints worn into them by now. I wonder where the clacks of the ceiling pipes really come from. I wonder how much more the chairs you are sitting on can take, and why the ghost of 266 always wants our music to stop right as the beat drops.
I wonder if I will get the chance to be in this room with you again.
Our memories here manifest into a physical history. The dents on the lockers are evidence of the time we have dedicated to showing up for each other. The bruises on our bodies that mirror those are reminders of the sacrifices we have made for ourselves.
Getting a degree in dance was never the easy way through. This pursuit takes guts. It takes the willingness to feel unsteady, and to be persistent. Dance takes courage. It makes us human.
The work of a creative is essential to creating a future that fulfills our need for community, one that facilitates recognizing ourselves in witnessing each other. Authenticity cannot be manufactured; connection cannot be designed.
Sharing is not our hobby, sharing is our responsibility.
I feel privileged to join the legacy of dancers who marked this floor before me. I am the dancer, the person that I am, because I am a mosaic of our collective, embodied wisdom.
To be an artist is to be judged, questioned, overlooked.
Let this act as our filter.
Our power is in our noticing, in how we see patterns.
Our strength is in our choice to stay vulnerable. Naturally, we flock to the people who can see that, too.
As we look around the room at those who sit beside us, we find ourselves surrounded by faces who chose passion, ones that chose pain.
Thank you for saying yes to the hard work. Thank you for saying yes to love, yes to community, yes to each other.
Thank you for feeling hopeless and doing it anyway.
When I look around this room, I feel inspired.
There is a multidimensionality to the people who participate in this community. Our academic trajectories breach boundaries.
Some of us are scientists, art historians, filmmakers, engineers.
We are the point of many intersections.
We refuse to be condensed into one category; we will not be made smaller.
We act as bridges for collaboration. As the hands of our incredible mentors pull us up and forward, I encourage you to keep turning around to reach a hand down.
As I look towards the faculty that guide us, the graduate students who reinvigorate us, I feel empowered.
When I look to you all, I feel gratitude.
Thank you for welcoming me, thank you for getting the knots out of my back, thank you for making me laugh.
Thank you for dancing with me.
Thank you for the hugs on a hard day, thank you for baking me bread, thank you for believing in me.
Thank you for dancing with me.
Thank you for knowing my name, thank you for noticing,
Thank you for dancing with me.
So if they ask us, “What will you make of a degree like that?”
We will respond, “I will mold the world into my making.”
I will be bold, honest, soft, sensitive, witty, wise, caring, playful. I will be all of those, or some one day and a few the next, or I will make up something else entirely.
But I will be a force, and I will be relentless. And when I feel alone, I’ll turn over my shoulder, and you will be right there with me.
To close, I would like read to an excerpt from a free poem a stranger wrote for me:
May we all make more space for ourselves
And one another
To be how we need to be—
To be wandering
Or sick
Or ecstatic
Or in the midst of transformation. Transformation, yes always transformation.
This concrete and this hierarchy, we can undo it all with the expectation that we don’t know what we are doing, and thus we know exactly what we are doing.
We are building a new way,
And we need you.
Be brave, be scared
Do not explain, do not apologize
Let your volume of any moment be sacred and accepted.
Your kindred join you and laugh at it all.
Thank you.