Why ballet? My answer in prose.

Who asked you to train so hard to be able
to stand in turn-out by changing the natural
way our bodies are supposed to function?

Why choose to end up being exhausted,
with sore muscles, and battered up feet
at the end of the day?

How to continue your journey when many
people not part of your world don’t understand what you do
though they think they do, and base their judgment
and words on what they think wrongly
right?

What makes you want to spend years on
the same old thing just to try to perfect
technique that cannot ever be fully perfected?

How to go through all the sweat and
tears, to get to the dream that you know
many other people around the world have
too?

Who came up with the idea to make
something very apparently not easy, seem
effortless in front of the outsiders?

In short, why do all this hard work just to
dance; an occupation that is hardly long-lasting
or considered well paying?

Because, it is something you love to do.
Your passion.

Something that makes you
happy; something that you want to do in
your life because it completes it.

Because you can feel free and be yourself in as
many expressions possible.

Simply, because it is who you are.

And we remember this:
“If ballet were easy, they’d call it football.”

Rediscovered and republished from 2009