Dancing Dreams
Today’s post is based on a writing prompt I shared in a previous Daily Drafts & Dialogues post: Ballet Dancer. Keep reading to see what I wrote, and to access more writing prompts.
What I wrote below is based on the following writing prompt: Write a piece of flash fiction, or a poem, about a ballet dancer. Or write about the last time you either attended a ballet or performed in one.
Dancing Dreams
A corps of ballerinas fluttered stage left in a kaleidoscope of tulle, making way for the principal dancer to appear stage right. A decrescendo followed his flamboyant introductory leaps and turns as the auditorium grew still with anticipation.
Josie held her breath as the clarinets invited the new prima ballerina to the stage, as nervous as she was euphoric. All eyes were on the ballerina, yet only Josie could sense her invisible smile, because it was a smile they shared. They had both been waiting for this exact moment, auspiciously being christened by a symphony, for most of their lives.
She watched her daughter jeté and basque across center stage, each movement elegant and precise, indicative of her new position, vicariously living out her own dancing dreams. With each toe point and graceful arch of arms, Josie finally felt as if she belonged there too, in a version of her own ballet fantasy.
Ballet had always been home to Josie, a home that was just out of reach. Until the day Anabelle, then four, leapt around the living room mimicking a mouse wearing a tutu and tiara on their television screen. A day that marked the beginning of endless lessons and classes and recitals and tears and sprains and flowers and medals and promotions spanning two decades. And her divorce to Mark, Anabelle’s father, who thought ballet was silly and elitist and refused to pay for it. And her pivot from accountant to talent manager, a career change required for Anabelle’s ballet work. And her decades-long journey passive aggressively avenging her own mother who said she was too butch to be a ballerina when she was young, regularly suggesting she play soccer instead.
Though Annabelle knew nothing of that. Josie made sure of it.
From that first day, the day Annabelle fell down pirouetting on the carpet in her princess pajamas because she was a little too close to the entertainment center, Josie vowed to nurture her daughter’s budding joy of ballet, along with the resurgence of her own. No matter how long it took. No matter what she’d have to do. No matter what or whom she’d have to forsake.
Every time Mark refused to take her to a show, she’d take Annabelle to three. Every time her mother mocked her and the costumes she made for Annabelle, she’d make two more. Every time Annabelle bombed a recital, she’d book another audition. And every time her friends told her she was crazy and sacrificing too much for something that wasn’t guaranteed, she’d just look over in awe at Annabelle spinning around the studio and stretching on the barre.
But, above all else, Josie vowed to never take Anabelle’s joy for ballet away from her or taint it in any way with her own muddied feelings of the past. She could ignore the naysayers, those who didn’t understand, who didn’t know what ballet was and what it meant, because they hadn’t experienced Annabelle’s giggle that day, when she had fallen on her rear after a failed pirouette then gotten right back up to try it again, and again, and again, laughing yet determined each and every time.
The prima ballerina being lifted in the air before Josie now had always been full of confidence and purpose and poise and joy that just needed a bit of support and faith. And Josie was grateful to have nurtured that joy most of all, their joy, into the swan that her daughter had become. A joy that had blossomed into something that, now, no one could ever take away from either of them.
I might revise, edit, or add to this draft in the future. Stay tuned.
Leave a comment to start a dialogue, and be sure to see today’s writing prompt below if you’re interested in completing a creative writing exercise like this one.
© This work is not available for artificial intelligence (AI) training. All Rights Reserved by K.E. Creighton; Creighton’s Compositions LLC. The above work is a piece of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
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Today’s Writing Prompt
Writing Prompt: “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
Write a piece of flash fiction in which someone says,”I wouldn’t dream of it.” Or write about a time you have said this or have heard someone else say this in real life.
Writing Tip:
Before you begin writing, consider: Is this person being sincere or sarcastic? Who are they talking to, and what are they doing when they say this?
