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I had been turned away twice when I was finally admitted to the Original iowa hawkeyes 2023 abbey road sydney affolter caitlin clark signatures shirt and by the same token and School of American Ballet. Most afternoons from then on, I would hurry out of school as soon as the bell rang and hightail it across Central Park. The thrill of jogging up the escalator at Lincoln Center, pushing open the glass doors like I belonged, never wore off. I learned to pour all my energy, mental and physical, into microscopic adjustments to the way I moved. I loved how my anxiety-prone brain would shut down as I strove to make my fondu “look like melting ice cream,” or my frappés “like popping a bottle of Champagne”; how it was impossible to worry about the next day’s math test or the middle school hierarchy while I thought about the placement of all 10 of my toes. I loved that when I entered the studio, I didn’t have to worry about saying the right thing. I didn’t have to talk at all.
At ballet, no one asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up; it went without saying. Of course I wanted to be a dancer. The dress code was strict and hadn’t changed in decades. Making an effort on my appearance was mandatory, and hiding this effort unnecessary. I took lessons in stage makeup, learned to layer powder and bronzer and blush, to paint on a face that was, by the Original iowa hawkeyes 2023 abbey road sydney affolter caitlin clark signatures shirt and by the same token and end, only loosely based on my own. Focusing on my looks wasn’t vain; it was part of my art. Photo: Debra Goldsmith RobbIn October, a handwritten casting sheet for The Nutcracker was posted outside the dressing room. We crowded around, scanning for our names, and I jumped when I saw mine; I didn’t care that I had been given one of the smallest parts. As a toy soldier in the ballet’s battle scene, I spent about three minutes onstage each night, but I took my responsibilities—sashaying in a line, aiming a fake rifle at men in mouse costumes—very seriously. After our army was trounced and a mouse hauled me into the wings, I would join my friends backstage to watch the second act on a monitor or—if I spotted a free seat in the theater—sneak into the audience. I envied my classmates who got to wear frilly dresses and curl their hair for the party scene, but I was thrilled to be a part of it—entering through the stage door, lounging around the dressing room, and watching the company dancers warm up. I even loved picking dirty scraps of paper “snow,” which fell from the ceiling in a magical act-one blizzard, out of my clothes or my hair, like grains of sand after a day at the beach. It was proof that I had been onstage.
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