When we stumbled up on this video on YouTube last year in Canada we watched it obsessively.
It reminded me so much of the days when I used to do ballet in the Scouts hall in Carragaline. I went from the star of the show, aged 8 to the girl with the “ fountain on her head” a phrase my teacher used to describe my efforts to look like Joan Fontaine. That remark ended my ballet career. My mum never understood why I ran from the hall to the car dropping my slipper like Cinderella crying, “I’m never going back there”.
Now, in Canada 12 years later, looking at the little girl placing her feet together with such determination I wondered did I quit ballet prematurely. After all see how elegant and graceful I am now… right?? So us six Canada girls set out for our first ballet class, in a rough part of town in our new leggings. When we arrived the teacher, although gob smacked by the fact he suddenly had six Irish girls in his class who didn’t know the meaning of pirouette, seemed happy to see us. The 8-year-old ballerina inside me leapt around the room, like a baby elephant in leggings, thinking she was Angelina Ballerina. Totally absorbed in my own wonderfulness, like the little girl in the video, I didn’t notice that the other five, who had some ballet skills, were falling around the place hysterically laughing at my little girl efforts.
Lets hope that that little girl managed to put her feet together so age 22 she wont be fantasizing that she’s as graceful as a gazelle as she prances about a dance studio in a bad part of town.
Have you ever tried to go back and pick up a childhood fantasy??
