Proud.

Standing on your toes for just 10 seconds. Can you?

3 years old, she started. Now for whom she is, I’m most proud of her.

We are all born flexible, able to touch our toes while standing, able to do splits. As we grow older, our bones grow bigger and our joints stiffen up. The next time you try to do your split again, you realize you can’t do it anymore.

However, unlike anyone else, she chose to remain flexible. 3 years old, she went to the dance studio and said she wanted to learn ballet. From then on, she was stretching almost everyday. Before class, she would wear her stockings and squeeze her tiny feet into the ballet shoes and tie the shoes’ ribbons on her leg tightly. Each time the teacher asked her to tiptoe, she went off balance. Failures upon failures, she did not give up. Overtime, she improved, tremendously.

Exams came.

Just as you are thinking ballet exams are just about examiners grading only your dance, you are wrong. Ballerinas have to run in the examination room in a glorious way, 4 at a time, lined up in a row from shortest to tallest before the examiners’ eyes. Ballerinas have to hold their skirts and bend down to greet the examiners together; this action is called curtsey. If they fail to greet the examiners in chorus, they will be marked down. Ballerinas must treat their examiners like queens. Any slightest mistakes, ballerinas will be deemed as having bad discipline and will be marked down.

Grade by grade, she went through the exams, one even tougher than the other, passion-driven. It’s something not just any girl can do it.

A lot of people say that ballerinas have the most ugly legs. Yes, they have cube-shaped leg muscles. Yes, they have nails, which are not well maintained. And yes, they have bruises everywhere. But to me, she has the most beautiful pair of legs I could ever find. They reflect the tough road that a ballerina had been through; reflect how tough and mentally strong a girl can be, even much stronger than a guy.

She is now a ballet teacher, at the age of 17. She still continues to learn ballet and challenge her limits.
She is easily the most amazing ballerina I’ve met.
Each time I see her dance in the ballet studio, her moves, her facial expressions never fail to touch my heart.

She makes me realize how beautiful Ballet really is.

I’m really proud of her. She knows that.

~ by yulun5 on October 26, 2009.