Between the ages of 7 and 8, Kinzee Riedinger had to learn to find her rhythm again.

Eventually she figured out if she put her back to the wall or her feet firmly on the ground she could feel the rhythm and dance again. Nine years after the accident that took part of her ear, Riedinger is two years removed from performing on stage at the Grand Ole Opry and three weeks away from dancing at Disney World. 

“She still has days where it affects her. There’s times when she’s competing, if they don’t have speakers pointed at the stage just right she can’t hear the music,” her mother Kim Riedinger said. 

In 2014 the Riedinger family’s mastiff, Tatum, attacked Kinzee due to lesions on its brain. The young dancer was saved by her father who pulled the dog off twice and her mother, who picked Kinzee up and got her out of the dangerous situation. Cummins, Kinzee’s miniature Australian Shepherd, assisted the parents in keeping Tatum at bay, Kim said. All these years later he never leaves Kinzee’s side, and keeps the other animals calm if they start to get carried away.

“The dog, Tatum, had my whole head in his mouth and he kind of ripped half my ear off,” Kinzee said.

She required 18 surgeries to reconstruct her ear. After trying different options her surgeon, who specializes in constructing ears for babies, elected to use cartilage from her ribcage.

Now a sophomore at Powell High School, Kinzee is a dedicated dancer who has collected several overall high point awards from both her solo and group performances as well as platinum and gold awards. 

“I dance better to more intense songs and I connect with them better,” Kinzee said. “That's one of the reasons why I win, because I feel every beat I listen to it, hear the lyrics and make a story to go along with it for my character.”

Kinzee has been dancing for 14 years — she started clogging as a toddler in order to be with her older sister before moving to Victoria’s School of Dance.

“Not very many people understood what happened, so the only people that really understood were people that I was very close with,” Kinzee said. “And that's … the dance studio.”

Kinzee had started at Victoria’s School of Dance the same year she was attacked and Victoria Danovsky, who owns Victoria’s School of Dance, would sit with Kinzee when she felt dizzy and they would watch the practices together. Every time Kinzee had a surgery she couldn’t dance for six weeks but she would still go watch Victoria’s classes so she knew the dances.

Along with her dance school Kinzee performed in Times Square when she was 12, has competed in the Axis Dance Competition, an international event that travels to Billings, performed on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry and has been selected to perform in the San Diego Ballet’s rendition of the Nutcracker alongside Victoria’s daughter for the past two years. 

Being around horses has always been a safe space for Kinzee — even when she was supposed to lay low and rest — she’d go find them. Sometimes she’d directly disobey the doctor and go to the barn and sometimes she’d go around the barn to the horses, so finding hay in her bandages was not unusual.

“The surgeon would be like, ‘stay out of the barn.’ Then we go down the next week for bandage removal and he’d be like ‘you’ve been in the barn,” Kim remembered. 

Kinzee began barrel racing at 10 years old with help and she eventually began ratcheting up the speed and going alone. Last summer she competed in Go Mama Go’s barrel racing where she took first and second place (on two separate horses) in the 3D youth division. Next summer she plans to extend her rodeo career to the Cody Nite Rodeo.

Dancing and barrel racing keep her pretty busy, but that doesn’t mean she’s ready to slow down when she graduates. Kinzee hopes to become a veterinarian of large or small animals, just not snakes. 

At the end of the day, Kinzee finds her own rhythm.