“Mommy look!” – like an echo comes back to me a child’s calling… Daily home performances and me – a faithful spectator. I have not missed a single performance.
Still fresh memories and thoughts, as if it was yesterday… a week ago… although almost two decades behind us….
He has always danced. First he took his first steps, and then he just danced constantly… to the rhythm of music… and without music, or maybe it was just me who didn’t hear it sometimes… maybe it pulsed constantly in his veins, the one sensed only with the heart, urging him to whirl relentlessly – the music, the melody, the song of his existence….
We decided to channel this passion. When he was eight years old, we enrolled him in ballet school.
A whole new chapter in the life of our whole family began then….
The first year went smoothly – after all, we chose the school with the least number of lessons. Commuting twice a week from outside the city of Krakow to the center of Krakow, was not that much of a challenge. However, the next year the classes doubled, and the following year they were already held six days a week!
Were we prepared for this….
No. We were not ready at all. Man always instinctively chooses what is easiest. We don’t like solicitation, sacrifice, stealing our precious minutes. We were not ready. I don’t think we could ever manage to prepare. And I guess it’s not really about preparation – it’s more about making a decision. We were thrown into the very center of the professional ballet world, and looking for half-measures there, we didn’t stand a chance.
We had no previous experience with this art, so we didn’t realize that everything had to be put on the line. And now we were faced with a choice – whether to really give our all and prepare our son to become a professional dancer, or to simply enroll him in a dance focus at the House of Culture, so that he would have fond memories and we would have holy peace of mind.
I have nothing against ballet focuses and other activities at the Community Center. They are very necessary and developing – our younger child went to such classes and we were very happy. Now, however, it was about a specific case of a boy who, even while doing household chores, couldn’t help but dance.
We decided not to leave this path.
We put everything on the line. Daily commuting, rehearsals, performances… homeschooling at the end of elementary school and at the beginning of middle school… a family move to Warsaw for two years… our son leaving for school in Munich, parting ways and maintaining our ties despite the thousands of miles that separated us….
After graduating from ballet school, our Stanislav worked for seven years at the Royal Ballet in London. Today he is a soloist at the Semperoper in Dresden.
I no longer get to see his performances live as often. However, I systematically get dance recordings to keep me up to date all the time… as if I can still hear his call from years ago: “Mom watch!”
