More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
was just nervous about life, period. I felt awkward, as if I didn’t fit in anywhere, and I lived in constant fear of letting my mother down, or my teachers, or myself.
I would realize the true gift of my visual memory—the ability to see movement and quickly imitate it.
handstands. I already knew how to do the splits, though no one had ever shown me.
why my arms and legs had the elasticity of a rubber band. They just did, and I just knew. I spent
I’d tapped into the power of movement and felt its meditative grace. In it, I’d found an escape.
pop aria by Mariah Carey, and create. I didn’t know it was called choreographing at the time.
No, it wasn’t exactly George Balanchine. But I could easily imagine myself directing a video for MTV.
My love of performing was an unlikely one. At school, I was still so afraid of being called on in class that my stomach would tremble.
But for a little girl who lived in terror of making a mistake, of being embarrassed or criticized in front of others, the stage was somehow an oasis.
I decided that I would choreograph a dance for my two best friends, Danielle and Reina, and me to perform in the annual Point Fermin Elementary School talent show.
Being drill-team captain made me automatically popular, but I didn’t really feel I fit in with the others on the team.
There was no question that I danced the best and that’s why I was captain. When I was in that practice room, I found my voice.
Still, that afternoon, because my coach had asked me to and I always did what I was told, I dutifully walked to the Boys and Girls Club gym, crept quietly into the bleachers, and sat with my arms wrapped around my knees, watching.
Most ballerinas start to dance when they are sipping juice boxes in preschool. I was thirteen years old. Self-doubt taunted me. “You’re too old. You’re behind. You’ll never catch up.”
listened politely, but in my heart I didn’t feel it. Why in the world would I want to trek across town to study ballet? How would I get there?
Drill team—that was my dream.
But most days I would ride with Cindy, who would be waiting in front of the school, watching for my tiny frame and big feet to emerge from the crowd.
Cindy believed that ballet was richer when it embraced diverse shapes and colors.
Cindy pushed me from the very start, putting me in an advanced class to see if I could keep up with students who had been training for years. I could, and I did.
I mastered in minutes. Or so Cindy said.
Eight weeks after walking into Cindy’s school, I stood en pointe for the first time.
“The perfect ballerina has a small head, sloping shoulders, long legs, big feet, and a narrow rib cage,” Cindy
Like our years with Harold, we never wanted for anything. There was plenty of food in the refrigerator, closets bursting with matching outfits,
He often remarked on how much I looked like him and his relatives.
Suddenly, Robert intervened. “Since you guys can’t agree, you’ll have to fight it out.”
And though he was tough on the boys for acting out, Lindsey didn’t have to do anything at all to earn his wrath. Lindsey,
She looked more African American than any of our mixed-race clan, and it seemed that whenever
Often, when he was angry, he would call Lindsey a nigger. It stunned me. That was a word I’d heard only in black-and-white documentaries about the bad old South.
He’d use the N word when a black man cut him off on the freeway and talk about spics when he saw Latino teenagers hanging
I’d see bigotry again and again in my ballet career, and it would hurt every time. But after living with Robert it would no
not sure that I was black but certain I wasn’t white, and proceed to ignore me.
my mother told us kids that she was beginning to fear for her life. And so in the fifth month of my first year at Dana Middle School, it was again time to pick up and go.
Erica, Doug, and Chris had never really liked Robert.
They were balms on tough days, a respite from what had too often been a tough, tragic life.
My mother cried and mourned with his best friend, Doug, and a year later they got married. That man, Doug Copeland, was my father.
also began to learn the rites and traditions of Judaism, Cindy’s faith.
And every Friday we would dine together to celebrate Shabbat, lighting candles before sundown and reciting the special
This is what a family is supposed to be like. There were no other blacks at the synagogue we attended. But
preferred to hide. But there was no disappearing at Cindy’s.
“Some dancers have the right physique for dance, and others have the ability,” Cindy would say as Patrick nodded approvingly. “You have both.”
But Cindy and I would eventually get to the point of being able to talk for long stretches of time.
Cindy would always act as though my conclusions were the wisest, most profound analyses she’d ever heard.
felt like Cinderella. But Mommy saw the hair, the outfits, the way I’d changed. And she didn’t
I was rehearsing or taking dance classes. There was no time to go home.
That’s when Mommy really started to get angry. She felt as if she was losing me completely.
To this day, I have no negative feelings about Cindy and Patrick. They were positive forces in my life who pushed me to become a whole person. When I had to leave them, two years after I’d moved in, it would be the most traumatic of all my departures, more
I didn’t understand it. I didn’t know why I was being taken from these people who loved me so much, who had immersed me in the world of ballet,
would move from that new life to my old one, back into a motel. And I would resent my mother so much for returning me there.
was produced by the actress and choreographer Debbie Allen and added twists to the classic story of Clara and the toy soldiers come to life.
part of my preparation included taking classes with Debbie to learn various ethnic dance forms.
