Thursday, July 7, 2011

I Am Your Prince!

Yup.  That's right.  I am your prince.  I may not be a man, but, when you work at a home for girls and try to act out a scene from a ballet, someone has to take the man's role. 

This is how it goes: I go to a corner of the room and get down on one knee.  My "princess"--whichever girl is trying on my pointe shoes at the moment--spots me from the opposite corner.  We make eye contact and I call out, "Mi princesa!  Te he esperado! (My princess!  I've waited for you!)."  My princess runs into my arms, lifts one leg, and I spin her around in a circle.  We then spot my castle in the distance, run around the room and then, becuase my princess and I are so happy to be together, we run a little bit more and I lift my princess into a great, big leap.  We don't act out the rest, but we know what follows: marriage, of course, and living happily ever after.

Who knew that this prince/princess sequence would become such a popular part of my dance time with the girls?  I certainly wouldn't have guessed, but we've done it over and over again.  By now, I supposed, I've found my one, true love 20 or 30 times! 

Today, however, the girls branched out a bit more (meaning no prince/princess sequence) and some of them began showing a real knack for certain movements.  A couple of them even do a pretty good job of walking, on pointe, in my pointe shoes, despite the fact that their feet are way too small.

Though I set out to teach dance classes, I can hardly say that my time with the girls constitutes a class.  We start out by stretching in an organized way, and then all sense of organization begins to deteriorate into a state of disorganization that is, perhaps, much better than anything I could ever plan.  Girls come and go, take turns trying on my pointe and flat shoes, ask me to explain certain movements, show me how far they can go down in the splits...it seems that we are in constant motion and it is all great fun.  See for yourself...


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