Disillusionment Strikes: The Broken Ballerina

If you don't believe that I actually just sent the following letter to my ballet instructor, then you don't know me at all. I'll post her reply as soon as I hear back...

Dearest Kaysie,
My name is Michael Warren Rice and you might remember me from your M-W morning ballet class. I am the young dancer who performs the atrocious pliets and am responsible for the only Y sex chromosome in the class. I write to you in regards to my feeling of utter disillusionment that has steadily grown over the last few weeks. I feel as though I’ve started this all wrong; let me explain.

My formative years were spent watching all the great dance movies: Dirty Dancing, Footloose, The Company, Save the Last Dance, You Got Served. Hell, anything touched by the majestic hands of Baz Luhrman filled me with more excitement than these words can convey. Broadway was not my dream, it was my destiny. Finally I decided it was time to take that first step, or tandue if you will, towards fate and I enrolled in Beginning Ballet.

When we fall Kaysie, we fall hard. Over the past few weeks it’s become apparent that I am perhaps the worst ballerina to ever step foot into that studio. My pliets look like Frankenstein trying to sit down onto a bar stool, my tandue en cwas resembles someone kicking rocks and stubbing their toe. All that to say my glittery aspirations have been crushed as I’ve suddenly realized my own inadequacies. My dreams, which once soared so high, have come crashing down to earth. When we see ourselves as we truly are (damn those floor to ceiling mirrors!), we don’t fall softly down to ground; instead we tumble down hard into the mud. I know I’ll never quite shine the same.

Tearfully,
Michael W. Rice