In Search of a Dream
By Sara
HAVANA TIMES – My daughter loves to dance. However, the geographical fatality of living in the countryside complicates matters. Ballet schools are in the capital. So, how do you explain to your 6-year-old daughter that her dream of being a dancer cannot be just because she lives where she lives?
Whose fault is it? How do you explain that even though you work every day, you can’t afford the travel expenses to the capital, pay for classes (which are private) plus buy clothes and shoes? Without counting expenses in snacks.
I’ve studied all my life, now I work and still can’t afford ballet classes for my daughter. This, in a society in which every day children stop being children and begin to grow sexualized to the beat of reggaeton, which is spread by whatever media outlet exists. Even when supposedly in a country where the rescue of traditions is advocated. And… isn’t ballet tradition too? Wasn’t Alicia Alonso, with her ballet, the one who raised the name of Cuba?
Days go by, months go by. She keeps asking me if we will go to ballet classes. At that moment the image of her blurs in my eyes. So many questions that in her mind find no answer.
So, I tell her: “My love, we have to wait for the pandemic to pass, now you know you can’t travel.” Before the pandemic it was the transport crisis, later, I imagine something else will appear.
Today in the morning she told me: “turn off the music mom, (while she was hiding something in her hands), I caught the silence and I want to try it”… the silence caught me.
My daughter is 8 years old today, her name is Alicia, but she will not be a dancer…
Try to contact Carlos Acosta, he may be able help. He has a website and Twitter account.
It is hard to grow in such an environment. She will learn in any way possible, I believe that she can do it even with those barriers