In The Shoes Of A Ballerina

Chapter 1

"If you don't feel pain anymore when you go en pointe, you're most likely dead than alive," Dea joked to her interviewer.

Dea, the youngest prima ballerina the Eleganté Theater had ever had, was up for an interview for the Ballet Magazine. She gained international recognition since she played Odette and Odile in Swan Lake, her dream role, the month before.

"I have my fair share of trials as a ballerina, and even before I become one." She sat comfortably in her seat before a vanity table. Not minding the camera rolling, she focused her brown eyes on her blonde interviewer, "I attended pre-ballet school when I was four until I was eight. Then I applied for a scholarship at the Novestilo Academy but I got rejected."

Dea suddenly felt herself watching the ten-year old Andrea anxiously waiting to be called and presented in front of a panel of judges. She was only in her panties, and a knitted khaki sweatshirt she was about to take off in a few.

"Andrea Martinez," called one of the examiners.

Little Andrea placed her sweatshirt on the barre, and walked to the center.

The lady, which Andrea believed to be in her mid-forties, held Andrea's left leg and extended it upward. Same thing was done to her right. The lady pulled her legs until she heard the cracking sound that seemed to signal the start of the dismemberment of her femurs from their joints.

Then, the lady traced her spine, and gently bent it backwards, allowing the examiners to see how flexible her torso was. Next, she was asked to do a turnout. Her heels together, and feet directed on opposite sides. It should be 180º but she couldn't make it. The lady positioned her left leg as support to Andrea's feet, and forced them to make a straight line.

Andrea felt like tons of pins and needles pricked through her entire body but she forced herself to show no emotion even if the pain started burning through her. Her pain was changed into torment when the lady made her sit in an imaginary chair, her thighs were forced into a straight horizontal line as her feet. She closed her eyes tight, her legs flailing, wanting to give in. She opened them again in an unhurried manner, and caught in her peripheral vision the shaking of some blond and brown heads.

"I went through the whole physical examination but I got a 'no' at my first attempt." She produced a sad smile to the interviewer. "I cried and cried. My mom couldn't give me any words of encouragement because she knew how much of a dream it was for me to enroll at the Novestilo."

Dea smiled at the thought of how great of a help her guardian angel Cassiel had been. He had encouraged her like no one in the world could. "There's always next time," he had told her when she didn't stop crying. He had offered to take little Dea's hand, and had danced her in sync with his humming - it had been so calming Dea thought she was performing in front of a large audience in the theater.

It was the first after she'd last seen him at the playground of the hospital that Cassiel had reappeared. She thought she'd lost him forever, that he'd left her already. God knew how happy she had been knowing that there was someone who wouldn't leave her after all.

After a few weeks of feeling down, Andrea had felt a new hope spring to life when her mother brought her books about ballet - the techniques, nuances, and biographies of great ballerinas. Whenever she would get home from school, Andrea would do her homework, and later, would study the books she had now considered her treasures.

She had done every possible way to make her body especially her legs pliable enough to get in to the Novestilo for the next year. And she did.

"It was like I was in heaven when I got in but you know what," She laughed at the thought of reminiscing that very event, "Novestilo was actually a hell in disguise especially during my first year."