The Importance Of Ballet

Up until sophomore year of Highschool I felt that my defining title besides being a student, was being a dancer, a ballet dancer more specifically. I had hours long classes multiple times a week. Weekends would always have at least one day blocked off, dedicated to a long rehearsal and the trip there and back. Each year, I had to buy more and more pairs of pointe shoes, as they exhausted themselves with increasing speed. Stress and anxiety was produced from my inability to do a double pirouette of to extend my leg high enough. My life outside of school, family and friends revolved around ballet.
Most girls can recall a time in their youngest years when they would dress up in a tulle tutu, put on their pink slippers and go to ballet class. For some reason or another, it became one of those activities that all little girls are introduced to and love. Eventually, they find other activities more suited to them and ballet decreases in its popularity. For me this was not true. I continued doing ballet, because I truly enjoyed it.
Pinpointing a specific reason as to why I loved ballet so much would be difficult. At the core of it, I loved the versatility of its movements; sometimes the dance

Every year my whole family and friends proudly attended the show to see me perform as whatever I might have been cast that year: a mouse or a russian, a snowflake or an arabian dancer. Dancing on stage in front of the filled theater was an exhilarating experience that truly added to my love of ballet. Afterwards my family awaited behind the backstage door, flowers in hand and cameras poised to take pictures. Once I felt a sufficient amount of awkward pictures had been taken, we’d all go out to pizza together and discuss all our favorite parts of the show. As the years passed on, The Nutcracker became a yearly tradition in my family, an expected part of the holiday season, almost as much as going to Christmas eve