…Rehearsal room. It is cold and there is an echo. Thin fingers, straight backs, stretched out toes… Excel to excellence…

… Endless. Endless ballet class. Or not a class. Rather a duel. With yourself, with your fear, with the clumsiness of your body, with the shyness of spirit, with the weakness of faith… And what if you can’t do that? If you don’t excel? If you don’t transform? And here comes… step, jump, lift off, flight. The space melts away in the mirrors and they reflect for just a moment elven wings, so transparent and light that they don’t seem to exist behind the shoulders of a tiny fluttering, floating and swirling figure. But they do exist for… if there are no wings how could it be possible to dance this way?

This dream, so vivid, bright and real, that repeats over and over again, comes to your mind at the moments of fatigue, when you have no strength to work and move forward… It fills you with a new, fresh energy. This dream comes when it is the time to change, get rid of all the doubts, torments and a huge number of questions to yourself and to the world. When it is hard because you need to make the decision. When quality should again come through quality and your fate waits for you behind the corner and you need to really believe in yourself, grow up and reach out…

Not many people see this dream. Her name was either Matilda, or Anna, or Isidora… He was either Vaclav, or Vakhtang, or Rudolf… Or, maybe this name is yet to be called — in St. Petersburg this spring?

And what if it is your name?

And when this magical dream will become yours too. In between your take-offs and landings, at the next crossroads, before you open a new door, at the most important moments of your life, in the minutes of choice and growing up it will return and reinforce your self-belief.

Your dreams will come true and you will become yourself. One evening, after you finish performing the most complicated role and drown in the flowers and applauses, you will remember about the Rotunda Hall, April master classes and St. Petersburg… And you will experience the same anxiety and joy, hear the hardly audible sound of elven wings, jump and flight… The magic and power of free movement, victory over gravity and the moment of limitless power over your body with the reins of fate in your hands…

It means that it is now the time. Your time to change has come. Don’t loose it. And dance, dance, dance…