Sunday, August 1, 2010

Today at church I kept having this special, almost beaming feeling run through my body. "I'm going to be taught by Mr. Dudley Davies, one of the first dancers of the Royal Ballet." I felt important, yet humbled.

Me trained by a dancer of the Royal Ballet of London? I wanted to tell everyone I met. I must be the luckiest girl in the world! He's a legend...a legend willing to teach me, a pale-skinned red-head who has nothing to her name but who loves to dance more than anything in the entire world.

Ever since I got the call from him yesterday, I've been walking on air. The bottom of my feet have crumbs on them from dancing in my kitchen. I am Angelina Ballerina, annoying my mother by forgetting to put the coffee filters away because I am yet again swept into another dance.

Mr. Davies loves to dance just like I do. He's passionate about sharing his love for ballet through teaching. Once, after one of his open teen/adult ballet classes, I asked him what he had planned for his weekend. He responded with giant admiration yet his words flowed as if they were completely second nature.

"Oh, just preparing for my class."

That's passion.

And I must confess, he wasn't preparing to teach professionals...just people who needed to move. As my director Kevyn Robertson would say, "people who are passionate about the project."

Mr Davies didn't care how good the people he taught were. He was concerned with instilling an appreciation for ballet into each of us, in giving us a yearning to move our limbs in grace. He looked for the good in us and made us all feel beautiful.

Do you know what it's like to be standing at bar and to have a little, old man who has worked with absolute ballet gods tell you,

"You look lovely, you know that?"

I do.