When I was six, I planned out my life. I decided that I would train in ballet, become a professional, then use my influence to bring ballet to kids in the inner city. I wouldn’t have time for a marriage. I wouldn’t have time for a family. And six-year-old me sitting in her bedroom in Stevensville, Michigan was okay with that. As you might imagine, Stevensville wasn’t the cultural destination I hoped it would be. But it didn’t matter. Something in me knew that I was meant for the stage, that I could do it, and that it was only a matter of time before I lived in a big city (or Europe). Pursuing ballet professionally quickly became my north star.
Despite our location and the expense associated with ballet, my parents were all in. If I wanted to do it, they would help me as much as they could to pursue this career. They tore up the carpet in my room so I would have a wood floor and got me a portable barre so that I could practice at home. They enrolled me in the local studio and bought the $75 pointe shoes I went through at least once a week. They listened to my travails of not getting cast in roles I knew I could do and they helped me ice my feet.
One year, I saw an ad in the newspaper for both a local scholarship and an audition for a fine arts camp. According to everything I had read in Dance Magazine, going away for the summer to train was definitely a requirement if I wanted to be a professional. So, my mom drove me the one hour to Holland, Michigan to audition for a former New York City Ballet and Metropolitan Opera Ballet dancer who happened to be leading the dance program at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp. I was 11. He saw my potential and not only offered me a place in the advanced summer program, but a small scholarship as well. I would be dancing alongside 13 to 17 year-olds who had been to many summer dance programs and didn’t live in Stevensville.
With the help of my mom, I choreographed a piece and competed for the local scholarship. I was lucky to be awarded and able to put it towards my training. To put it into perspective, at that time in the 1990’s summer dance programs cost around $3,000. As the daughter of a Honduran immigrant and someone from rural Michigan, I was instantly put into a world of privileged people. The only ones who could afford this art form! My first summer away, I learned a lot. And, I was so lucky that Jefferson Baum, the director of the program brought in his former classmates and colleagues. In the middle of the woods in Muskegon, Michigan, I trained almost 8 hours a day every day with superb teachers including Duncan Noble, Amanda McKerrow, John Gardner, and more. Socially, it was hard being so much younger, but artistically I was in heaven! Every class was accompanied by a live pianist. And every night we attended a classical music performance overlooking a lake. When the closing performance ended, I cried about going home. My place, my environment was meant be surrounded by arts and artists! I knew that I needed more.
I started to explore training outside of Stevensville, taking classes in Kalamazoo and Holland and continuing to go to Blue Lake in the summer. After seeing another ad in the newspaper, I asked my mom if we could go to a performance in South Bend, Indiana about 45 minutes away. She took me and both of us were blown away. This was the next step. Led by a former dancer with Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, Southold Dance Theater was a gem in the Midwest. All of their dancers went away every summer to big programs like the Joffrey Ballet, Suzanne Farrell’s select program, the Rock School, and Pacific Northwest Ballet. After talking with my parents, they got me an audition for the preprofessional company knowing that I would need to commit to five days a week minimum with a commute of 45 minutes each way. They saw my potential even though I had a lot of catching up to do. And I was offered a scholarship spot (the only way I could have done it) to become a member of Southold Dance Theater.
Every day my parents drove me to class and rehearsal. I’d get home around 10 and do my homework often until after midnight. The deal was always that I had to keep good grades in order to keep dancing. My parents knew nothing about the ballet world, but they knew that I wanted it more than anything and that I was a hard worker. That year, I had my first performance with a live orchestra in The Nutcracker and even got to miss school with a performance schedule of about 9 performances in a week. I felt like I was in the big time.
That January I went with the other dancers to Chicago almost every weekend to audition for summer dance programs. The commute was an hour and a half and our moms would wait upwards of two hours to collect their sweaty dancers and drive back home. I still remember the stinging of the cold air on my face in the middle of winter after emerging from the studio. Out of at least 200 people at 14 auditions around the country, each program would accept anywhere from 25 to 150 dancers in total. It was competitive. And it wasn’t easy. I got into almost every program I auditioned for that year after 6 months of training with the new teacher. And that summer at the age of 14, I flew by myself for the first time to spend the summer training at the Boston Ballet. Again, I felt like I was dreaming. Once we arrived, we had to audition to be placed in levels. While there, every day felt like an audition. And we were trusted to manage ourselves staying in dorms at Emerson College in the heart of Boston. It was an adventure.
Marie’s Move It Story – Part V 