The Ballerina and the Red Balloon
Or how I learned to let go of expectations
When I was five-years old, my mother took me to see The Nutcracker. I don’t remember much of the actual experience, but it must have made a real impression on me because, shortly after, I declared that I wanted to be a ballerina. Not an unusual fantasy for a five-year-old girl, you might say and, of course, it wasn’t. What was perhaps unusual was the way in which my fantasy blossomed over time only to die a sudden, unceremonious death.
I remember the distinguished old building where the opera and ballet were housed in my small European hometown. Its walls were painted in a dark red color which contrasted against the white of the elaborate plaster cornices at the top. The marble steps in the front lead to heavy, dark-wood doors which only opened for performances.
I also remember the much less grand side entrance, reachable through a little, shabby garden that separated the opera house from a neighboring church, where singers, musicians, and dancers would enter. It was the door to magic, I thought at the time. If I could only step through it, I would find myself in a world of beauty and ethereal fairies.
As it happened, the Opera House also housed the ballet classes for children and once in a while I would see mothers with little girls…
