Ballet Stories

"Do you want to go?" My question is to the room. One set of ears hears in a dead sleep. Springing up. Feet in perfect ballet turnout. Spinning in circles. Pirouettes of ecstasy. "Why does he do that?" She's asked the question before. Sort of rhetorically. Aware that the pup enjoys going out. She's right to wonder, though. "Why does he do his dance of joy, whirling around as if in ballet slippers?" "The pup hears something...

Last night the grasshoppers missed their cue to enter. Chomp. Chomp. Daddy's tiny dancer was playing Nutcracker. She plays that game with all of the cookies that she makes with Daddy's help. They bake cookies together. So much fun. Especially at Christmas time. The Nutcracker ballet comes. Tiny dancer is a ballerina. Dancing on pointe. Not really. Sigh. Some day. "Little one, where are the grasshoppers?" Daddy is stern. "...

Songul’s head spun under the glare of the different colored lights. She had only been to a county fair one other time in her life, and that was when she was a kid. Still, after being laid off from a job she had worked at for a while, it was refreshing to feel like a kid again. She zipped up her sweater and started walking down the pathway, the locks of her purple hair contrasting against her brown skin. She watched the pu...

Final tinkling of the piano. Then "Moon River" ends and they start moving around the floor. Some chatting, some sitting on the floor and removing slippers."Come in. Here, wedge it open." The door is letting people in and out."Hi, Larry. You alright?""Yes, I'm good. I see you don't have a brace on, Paige.""Just can't leave the ground. No jumps or leaps. So, everyone here?"Taking our chosen spots."Okay, first position... pr...

It is both wondrous and surreal watching Odette and Odile dancing in the masterpiece Swan Lake. Delicate grace and great technique make my eyes tear and my knees weak as powerful emotions come awake. I can’t describe with any words the dancers moving like the birds each arm aflutter like a feathered wing. I have no way I can convey the painfully sad yet beautiful way the movements make my spirit rise and sing. Of all the...