Ballerina (No title)

Prologue - Alice Halliway

I can never live without ballet. It's all that I do. It's all that I want.... it's all that I need. I need to dance as much as I need to breathe; I need to dance as much as I need my heart to beat. It's more than just my passion, it's my life. The thrill of spinning through the air simply takes my breath away. The anticipation of every twirl and every leap sends my heart racing. Every single movement is exhilarating and every time I leap through the air, I feel an inexplicable and euphoric sense of freedom, like I'm a trapped bird taking flight for the very first time. It's like I'm spreading my unseen wings and letting the wind capture them and pull me up into the sky, taking away my breath and making me feel overwhelmingly joyous and... free.

Ballet is my escape from the rest of the world and the cage that has entrapped me for so long. Whenever I dance, I feel like an entirely different person... Like a person cleansed of the cruelty of the world. I feel refreshed. Like when the waves on a beach washes away the footprints in the sand, leaving nothing but a smooth, untouched surface.

I've always loved ballet, even since I was a young girl and never knew anything about it. I still remember when I was six or seven when my aunt took me to a ballet performance—secretly, of course, since my parents despise dancing and only have passions for music. I remember how mesmerized I was by the dancers' grace and how their every movement was beautiful to perfection. Despite my young age, I decided that I wanted to learn ballet and dance for the rest of my life. Somehow, that day with my aunt had completely changed me.

I never got to start learning until I was ten, though. That was the age where my passion for dancing really started developing—I started sneaking onto my mother's computer and watching ballet performances on YouTube and other websites. It was only then that I started to truly appreciate the art of ballet and how beautiful and perfect it was. I loved how the dancers were always poised and elegant, graceful like swans preparing to take flight.

I finally worked up the courage to ask my parents after I couldn't contain my passionate admiration for ballet anymore. My parents decided I was still too young to have true passions, so they allowed me to take classes, thinking that I would grow out of it soon and start taking up music, just as they had. But the truth is, I've never had much taste for music. Yes, it's lovely and extremely expressive in its own ways, but ballet always attracted my attention more than music has. Unfortunately for my parents, they believed I should be playing the piano instead of meddling with “immature” and “disgraceful” arts like ballet.

I didn't grow out of ballet. Instead, I did the opposite. I fell in love with dancing and admired everything about it. I found myself—even at the mere age of eleven—twirling and dancing in my bedroom mirror and imagining that I would be a professional dancer one day. Oddly, my parents never payed much attention to this behavior until I started insisting them on allowing me to dance at recitals and enter competitions. To my dismay, they began talking about banning me from ballet. They've always been strict and patient, but I've never seen their limit before and the thought of being unable to dance terrified me.

Yet surprisingly, they let me continue my lessons, but I could tell that they disliked it. I practiced hard and devoted most of my time to dancing, but it turned serious when I was fourteen. I started entering more contests—and won most of them—and began to think of attending dance school when I graduate high school. I knew that I had potential, and my ballet instructors did, too. My parents would never let me, but I decided I would prove to them somehow that ballet is as good as music is. I finally have my chance now.

I take classes—every day except for Sunday from 4-7 P.M—at an old school half an hour from my home. I bike there every day after school (and on Saturdays) to take my classes. The school was old, but it was good. But I never thought that it would be eligible to join in a contest for a free ticket into the best dance school in the nation. There would be a competition and the winner would get a free ticket into the most expensive—but the best—dance school in the nation. I finally had my chance. I finally had a chance to prove to my parents that ballet was my true passion.

I practiced harder and harder—winning wouldn't be easy. Especially because my ballet nemesis—Danika Kidman—was also competing. I've always beaten her, but she was good, too. She just didn't have the luck of winning the instructors' favoritism.

I only had one shot at this: One shot to win, one shot to prove something to my parents.

Little did I know, that this competition would completely change my life... In a horrible and gruesome way. I knew I would never be the same after it.