This is my time

"For everything there is a season,
And a time for every matter under heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance."
Ecclesiastes 3

For as long as I can remember dance has always been a part of my life.

Last Waltz on Bastille Day, Robert Doisneau



At three years old I took my first dance lessons in a studio above the gym where my sister Ren practiced gymnastics. I have vague memories of being taught by a fellow named Mark, who in my mind will always be wearing blue tights and hair all askew like Jean Simmons.

One day Mark showed us a video clip of British ballerina Margot Fonteyn dancing a solo called the "Black Dahlia".

Margot Fonteyn



At the beginning of her solo, her long, black tutu was pulled upwards around her face, and slowly she would let the layers of tulle drop around her as she started to dance, just like a flower opening. The effect was beautiful, and it has stuck in my mind to this day.

I tried to copy the dance at home by tying my dress-up Dracula cape around my waist and pulling it up over my head. Needless to say the effect was more comic than beautiful! My mom and my sister used to hide in the kitchen rolling on the floor in laughter as I subjected all of the neighborhood boys (I was the lone girl in the neighborhood) to my "performances".

And that was that. I was hooked.

Raymonda, circa 1997, I'm fourth from the left, 13 years old.



My love of dance escalated to training seven days a week in high school. I dreamed of dancing for companies like American Ballet Theatre and Boston Ballet. When I was seventeen I faced the hard realization that that destiny is for a chosen few, and my curvaceous genes were standing firmly in between me and a career in classical ballet.

So I began to teach and choreograph, and I hung up the pointe shoes and focused on more forgiving dance forms; modern, jazz and contemporary.

Then my life went crazy for a couple of years, which I won't go into right now, (if you know me personally or have been reading for a long time, you'll know what I'm referring to). However, throughout everything, when the figurative shit was hitting the fan over and over again, the constants have been my family, my friends and dance.

Professionally, these past few years have been extraordinarily difficult ones. I have gone through one workplace heartbreak after another and have come close to financial destitution. Sticking by dance has come at the expense of so much sacrifice.

At 17 years old, I realized that I would never dance for Boston Ballet.

Two days ago I accepted a full-time staff position with Boston Ballet. Yesterday, I started moving into my office.

Salary, benefits, paid vacation, the works.

Words cannot even begin to express how I feel right now. My entire life from my first dance lesson above Kelly's Gymnastics to pressing "SEND" e-mailing my resume to Boston, absolutely sure that they would never call me back has been leading up to this moment. I cannot believe it. My luck has come around.

This may be corny and philosophical but I just want to say, if there is something that you want to do in life, you should go and do it. I have been told that I needed to get a "real" job, I have looked at my bank account and wondered how I was going to eat, I have cried and cried and cried because I thought maybe it was time to not just hang up the pointe shoes, but chuck dance all together.

I only have one life, and at the end of the day this is what I want to do with it. And here I am. What are YOU doing? Is it what you dreamed of when you were 3 years old? 10 years old? 16 years old? Do you go to work every morning thinking "This is what I want to do for the rest of my life!" I hope that you do! But if not, why not go after your dreams? It's never too late. That's so cheese ball and cliche, but I believe it.

Wow this has turned into one of those epic posts...

I want to close with this quote from Merce Cunningham, a famous choreographer who just recently passed away. He lived until ninety and blazed a trail through the dance world until the very end. His words are wise and closely sum up how I feel at this moment...

"You have to love dancing to stick to it. It gives you nothing back, no manuscripts to store away, no paintings to show on walls and maybe hang in museums, no poems to be printed and sold, nothing but that single fleeting moment when you feel alive."
Merce Cunningham