TAYLOR GORDON thought she might have a heart attack as she sprinted from Radio City to the Ailey Citigroup Theater. “I was literally shoving tourists out of the way," said the diminutive, doll-faced Ms. Gordon, who looks like a high school student. Welcome to the life of a New York freelance dancer.

On that November afternoon she was racing from the Christmas Spectacular to Ninth Avenue, where she was assisting the Ailey Extension teacher Kat Wildish’s student performances. In a city made for multitaskers, Ms. Gordon fits in all too well. Just 21, she has been living her dream of dancing in New York for five years, with the first two also spent training 30 hours a week at Ballet Academy East on the Upper East Side, getting a bachelor’s degree in communication arts and a master’s in publishing, and working in internships at magazines like The New Yorker and Pointe.

She landed the Radio City job (too short, at 5 foot 3, to be a Rockette, she danced in the ensemble) during her final semester of graduate school in 2008. The grueling schedule included quadruple-show days.

“Now, thinking back, I don’t know how I did this,” said Ms. Gordon, who finished her studies at Marymount Manhattan College in January 2008 and her graduate program at Pace University the next December. She laughed, shaking her head. “At the time it was like, ‘Why wouldn’t I do this?’ ”