memoir

When I was thirteen years old, I had a particular ballet teacher that really made a difference in my life. It was during a summer dance camp program, and I will never forget it.
The man’s name is Scott Jovovich. He had been on Broadway, in a ballet company, and now he teaches at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. That’s the first thing he told us when he got in the studio, and then he said, “Okay, let’s go, plies now!”
All of the combinations were excruciatingly difficult, but then he stopped us around the fifth combination. It was obvious we weren’t doing very well - we had never had such an intense ballet class before. He had a look on his face that seemed both confused, and intense. We were a little worried; we have had a lot of ballet teachers burst out into random screaming when we did something incorrectly, but he didn’t look like he was going to. Then he decided to speak, and what he said could possibly be the best advice of my life.
“Everything is ballet. We live ballet. We breathe ballet. Life is a dance. Traffic is choreography. People look at us on the street, and they can tell we’re dancers. We have a certain air about us. We walk like dancers. We talk like dancers. We act like dancers. Now why don’t you dance like dancers? Honestly, it’s not that hard. Just do it. Quit worrying about if you’re using the correct muscles and joints, and just do it. Take chances. You’re at the barre, you aren’t going to fall, and if you do, it won’t hurt that badly.”
Then, he looked at me specifically and said, “When I look at you dance, I see a dancer who has never fallen. You aren’t a dancer until you’ve attempted ten pirouettes, and fallen good and hard. You haven’t done that yet have you?”
I had no choice but to respond no, because I most definitely hadn’t. That piece of advice has had the greatest impact on me than any other piece of advice I have ever received from anyone. It made sense, and as much as I didn’t want to fall - I knew I had to. I needed to start taking chances in my dancing and stop playing it safe. So I did. Two days later, I decided to make my move. When we went out to the center, I attempted ten pirouettes, when I knew good and well that I could barely even do three. Of course, I fell, good and hard, but Mr. Jovovich was right, I fell, and I’m still living to tell the story!
Since then, I’ve fallen many more times, but that’s hardly the story. After I fell out of my pirouette, I realized that indeed, I was not on the floor with a concussion, I was still perfectly intact with the exception of a slight butt ache. I did four pirouettes, and I may be sitting on the floor with five other girls staring at me, but I did it. I took a chance, and although I fell, I didn’t fail. I accomplished something I had never done before with an amazingly low injury level. I realized that taking chances, and “just doing it,” didn’t only apply to ballet, it applied to the rest of life as well.
I had never really taken chances in life. You never know what’s out there if you don’t take a chance and look. I was taught when I was young to not do anything if you know you’ll fall. Well, that worked for awhile, but it was time to take chances now. It was time to start falling. So now, I try things that I used to think were beyond my reach. Success, failure, winning, and losing are all words with new meanings. I don’t take them so literally anymore. People who take chances are winners. And if I fall, I get right back up and try again, because we’re only human, and that’s all we can do. We have the power to do anything we want, but we’ll never know unless we just do it.
To this day, Scott has come back to our studio to choreograph one number a year, and sometimes, he still tells me, “Annalee! Dance!” But then, I just have to whip out another ten pirouettes and remind him exactly who taught me to “just do it.”