This morning, Ricky Rogers went to his modern dance class, and he’ll go again on Wednesday. Tomorrow, he has a ballet class. Friday is for contemporary dance.

He’s been a dancer since he was 4, and he’s done that for longer than he’s played football, but he’ll never be one or the other.

“I want to be known as me,” the 6-foot-1, 203-pound Rogers said. “If people think I’m the football player who dances or the dancer who’s a football player, it doesn’t matter to me. I just want to be unique, and I feel like I am.”

To Rogers, dance and football have always worked with and not against each other. They require and reward balance and body control, detail and discipline, footwork and flexibility, physical strength and mental stamina. He practices to perform for crowds that are excited to see a show and applaud a job well done.

He fits in his dance classes before football, but he finds himself working on football in the dance studio and dance on the football field. The instruction and the instructors are similar, too.

“If you mess up in dance class, they’re going to tell you that you messed up right then and there,” Rogers said. “If you mess up here, they’re going to tell you that you messed up right then and there, and they’ll also tell you how to correct it. ‘You messed up this. You need to do this.’ It’s the same there. ‘You messed up this. You need to do this.’ You’ll get yelled at and then you’ll get corrected.”