‘It’s sad to see people who really can’t be out of their shell and live in their bodies. They’re so scared of being who they are and living up to themselves,” says Robert Hartwell, 19, from Knightdale who dances, sings and acts. “Dance has given me confidence in my body and who I am so that I can walk in an audition room with my head held high.” Hartwell is a freshman at Otterbein College in Westerville, Ohio, where he is working toward a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Musical Theater. He teaches dance at the North Carolina Dance Institute during breaks from school and is practicing (in this photo) for a performance with East Millbrook Middle School in Raleigh as a guest dancer in a production of “The Nutcracker.” “I fell in love with theater and I knew that was just what I had to do,” says Hartwell of his first experience of watching a play at Raleigh Little Theatre when he was 7. Hartwell has been acting since that first experience and started taking dance lessons when he was 11. His dedication took him to the N.C. School of the Arts when he was a teenager and now to Otterbein College. “This year my drama teacher at college gave us a Nelson Mandela speech and the last phrase of it is ‘As we let our own light shine we consciously give others the permission to do the same.’ ” he says. “It is just so the truth, you know, if you are free and open to yourself, you automatically radiate.”