A Ballerina Memory

Last week, the little town of Holbrook was lucky enough to have the amazing Brigham Young University Ballet Company perform in our auditorium. My mom, as a member of the Holbrook Regional Arts Alliance and a former dancer at BYU, had been prepping and preparing for months before the ballerinas arrived. She did everything in her power to make sure our (not so familiar with the arts) community supported them by coming to see the concert. She was crazy busy getting everything ready for them, and I was almost as overwhelmed as her just from helping. I was so caught up in handing out flyers and dressing like a princess and visiting elementary schools and speaking at assemblies and making ugly, pink, tissue paper balls that I forgot to get excited!

Before I knew it, it was the Saturday of the Ballet and I was getting dressed to go the workshop that the company offered by invitation to the choirs, and local Dance schools of Holbrook. I arrived to find a couple of my show choir buddies along with a room filled with frivolous little girls in pink tutus and red lip stick. I reconsidered in my head what the work shop would be like. Then the dancers arrived and they were perfect. The way they could move their bodies before they even started dancing, had me crawling with envy. I immediately felt like an awkward duck in pond full of beautiful swan. I felt I had lost the right to call my self a “dancer.” It made me feel nervous. I am an eighteen year old preparing to leave to BYU in just a few short months, with ambitions to go into something involving dance. Not particularly ballet, but it still made me anxious of knowing and understanding my own capabilities.

Still, the day crept forward, and it was already time to get ready for the princess party. This party was being held just before the performance and it was giving all the little kids attending a chance to meet the beautiful dancers. I was a helper at the party so I got to arrive early as well; dressed in my prom dress and posing as a pretty princess . . . It was for the children. (: Finally the noisy room of giddy girls started thinning out as they made their way in to the auditorium. NOW, I could hardly wait to watch. My sister and I sat side by side in our big poofy dresses and enjoyed every last second of the show. Watching things that I have so much passion for literally make me want to run on the stage and cry! I feel so much emotion attached to the stage and all of the beauties that go on it. But the night still wasn’t over!

 After transforming from a princess, back to my self, and cleaning up the mess of the princess party, we got to take some ballerinas home! Our church had the assignment of housing the dancers, so my family took three of the girls. I told them that I was going to BYU this summer and we had so much fun talking about all the joys of college life, and even more, the thrills of being at BYU. It was so much fun! One of the girls was in the same major program that I want to try out for, but wasn’t sure if I could make my first year. We talked a lot about it, and so much more! They got me so excited; I could hardly contain it by the end of the night! Even though I had felt a little out of place early that day, they left me feeling like I could do anything I wanted. They were just a few years older then me, but they started out the same as I did and have come to do amazing things.

I learned from this memory that you should never loose passion and drive for what you love most. I am inflexible and started dancing at a later age then most dancers, but I have come so far from when I started at fourteen. I love dance. I’m never going to let go of that. I’m going to ride it and see where it takes me, because I really can do anything I set my mind to. 

Work Shop:

       

Karson and I at the princess party!

A pretty ballerina (: