Moon Child

Chapter 15 Pressure

A special thanks to cmpotter for helping me with the technicalities for this chapter! You've certainly made my life a hundred times easier!

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With ballet comes immense pressure.

Pressure on the feet. Pressure on the emotions. Pressure on the mind.

Not one ballet dancer wouldn't have trained, sweat, cried, and even bled in their bid to perfect their art.

Every ballet dancer has learned to deal with pain in a way that transcends all human understanding early on in their long careers. In a way, they were warriors in their own rights, using pain to grow into the beautiful ethereal figures they were on stage. When pain becomes energy, that was when a dancer knows they have made it.

Only the best would survive. Only the best would learn how not to snap under pressure.

It takes a certain form of resolve to endure all the hours of training and hardship for a future that was uncertain. It was a well-known fact that not all ballet dancers would make it. Some simply become forgotten faces of an old newspaper. Others make it, only to be thrown into a whole new world of responsibilities and pain.

Perhaps that was why the ballet community was well-respected.

What the audience sees on stage was already the reward of their dedication to their craft. After all, it was a ballet dancer's job to make their movements look light and effortless. It was their job to smile through the pain.

Ultimately, true transformation only comes when one goes through pain unlike any other.

A pain that was life-changing.

It takes pressure to turn carbon into diamonds and that was exactly how it was with ballet.

(Dance by the beautiful dancers of SYTYCD. Ye Jin will be the girl in white)

Cover my eyes, cover my ears. Tell me these words are a lie.

The apprentices were completely in character now as they danced, pushing and pulling with fire in their eyes. A fire that only burned within them because of their passion to excel.

It can't be true, that I'm losing you. The sun cannot fall from the sky. 

"Push! Ms Son, lean back more when you're bending back. Use your core." Hyun Bin was back to teaching mode as he taught the apprentices the contemporary item for StarRise.

Ye Jin was the lead for their contemporary item, Tears of an Angel. It was another emotional piece advocating the end to bullying. There were two sides to the dance, the bullies and the bullied. It was yet another push and pull.

As the dancers turned and moved as one, they were drawing out the emotions of the piece progressively, portraying their characters with every fiber of their being.

The helplessness, the frustration, the bottled-up anger of the bullied.

The aggressiveness, the bitterness, the inner conflict of the bullies.

Both were victims of society's pressure to act a certain way to survive.

Can you hear heaven cry, the tears of an angel. The tears of an angel.

"Don't anticipate the landing in that tour jeté! Think arabesque." Hyun Bin called out again.

So hold on, be strong. Everyday, hope will grow. I'm here, don't you fear, little one, don't let go.