Mother Earth Takes a Breath

"My mother took me to the Official School of Ballet when I was eight. They had auditions for beginners every year. The first attempt to enter that major Ballet Institute was vain…and in vain."

"My mother took me to the Official School of Ballet when I was eight. They had auditions for beginners every year. The first attempt to enter that major Ballet Institute was vain…and in vain. I looked at everything there and it all looked so sumptuous, so big, so formal, so unattainable, and so adult…and the girls there had a very snobbish flair. I was so scared of the whole atmosphere that I didn’t take my hands off my mother’s skirt. I didn’t enter there.

The second attempt and my eyes were so full of tears that I couldn't see a palm in front of my face. And I should not even have to mention (but I will anyway, for this is part of the story, with recurrences) that I didn’t take the test.

Two girls were indeed very nice to me, or perhaps they just had pity over me. As oddly as it appeared in a cut throat atmosphere which is the world of Ballet, to name one of the most competitive arts in the world, from some very few coorporations, you still can get some co-operation. So they took me inside the dressing room; they washed my face and they returned me to my mother’s arms.

The third attempt, I was so scared of people in there, all girls running on the hall, that I was about to finish the test when I decided to go back to my mother.

Now I was nine years old and I was still fascinated, and yet scared, in the middle of those angels there, who seemed to float by the impulse of their long necks, running gracefully towards the “novices” as they called us. One of them, with long legs like a heron and arms balancing in a vigorous way like a potter playing on a clay, kept pointing at each one of us, while she passed rapidly through the ball of characters displayed there, as if in a hurried expedient in the middle of the huge line that we made on the hall. Later on I would find out that this quick steps were quite a normal pace, a typical walk from a body inhabited by repetitive but gracious dancing movements. I can still remember my number: 1447; meaning that there were just some more 1446 girls on the way. The girl then pointed ramdomly to some of us, saying:

“Good Luck, good luck, good luck!”

I observed her as if she was not made of flesh and blood; as she stretched her neck more and more to reach out to each one of us like a swan, she looked towards my direction and said:

"Good Luck".

Instead of saying, “Thank you!” I just thought to myself that i had to keep as much energy as I possibly could, so I just declared our commom wish mentally “Amem!”

I started to appreciate and understand more about the métier and then I even got some ideas to do in my audition. I observed how they dressed, how they talked, how they walked and ran. I was definitely ready. I was doing so well, that I could see the faces of the examiners in their old fashioned wooden table, looking at me and smiling, while stretching their necks to observe my dancing, tiptoeing in a flat shoe, as soon as they allowed the competitors to create. I was irradiant, completly thrilled and fulfilled! Came to my mother with a smile:

“I am sure this time I made it, mom! I am going to become a ballerina.”



I had to overcome many phases yet, many tests, much of my crying over rejections and fearfulness, to really be able to discern that I was on my right track, I mean, on my writing task.

Thanks to my mother's efforts and aspirations, and her precious patience and encouraging help I did become everything I wished for. So much so that now I wish most of everything else to become a mother.

Because there is something that burns as a ceaseless fire, something that only when given can make it greater. There is this passion which dances inside and out, that forever stays no matter what. And that’s what my mother gave to me, the most precious gift of all: Life!

There is this air that I breathe in and out my whole life through. Once I realized that this air is life itself, filled with love, I could finally see that we are all immortal souls, radiant beings, a beam of light dancing among thousands of billions of other shinning stars, from a constellation that reaches out to eternity, a life that forever grows."

(Excerpts from the book "The Tao of Physical and Spiritual by Ana Bowlova) .