Broken foot - what it means to ballerina 4

A year ago - on 15th of December 2015 I broke my foot. I was preparing new combination for my students, I wanted to challenge them with the speed of simple entrechat trois and maybe I wanted to challenge myself even more. I played new, quicker version of music and in one moment in the air I did;t know what exactly I want to do - still entrechat trots or something else. This moment costed me broken foot, pain, fear of never going back to professional dance. Breaking foot was to me fear #1 - (when it comes to my dancing), I couldn't imagine myself breaking anything and well...yet I did and I had to face it and be brave. 

"Being humble = asking no question" - about dignity in ballet world

Why should I be humble when someone says and tells me that I should?
Should I be humble only because it is part of tradition of the ballet?
But as history shows things changes and what was right in past doesn't always have any right of being in nowadays reality.

Shouldn't I be humble when I choose and towards things I choose?

Isn't being humble against being true artist?

I have a feeling that being humble in ballet is a part of violent education where at the beginning students and later on brain washed dancers are not suppose to question anything and anyone and what more ask any question.
They are suppose to be thankful for being scram at, being pushed around and treated with no dignity.

Broken foot - what it means for ballerina 3

Natalia Maria Wojciechowska by Piotr Leczkowski

Exactly three months ago I broke my foot... What an amazing thing for a ballerina to break a foot. I felt like I lost my hand/head/everything.

All I felt back then was fear and many emotions without name. I was crying without knowing why I cry. I had to learn from the very beginning to name the emotions, to separate them from what I see and experience and feel and think. I had to teach myself what my emotionality is and how it affects or doesn't affect on me life. I had to see myself as somebody new. a person I knew for such a long time, but didn't want to let in for the same long time.

Broken foot - what it means for ballerina 2

Now, after I broke my foot, each day is an adventure. Everything is new, everything is different. People, places, things I hear, things people say to each other, how I act. No, it is not worse or better, it is just different. I can't help to notice that I am changed. I have changed a lot, because of recent experience which actually was like the culmination of my past. And now time has come to recover - body and mind. Yes, I knew that this time - off plaster - will be the worst, but I had time -7 weeks to prepare myself for this period. It will not be easy and of course it will take time. Full recovery - 6 months - this is what doctors say. And I am ok with that. I have to patient with myself, first time in my life no matter if I want to or not - I have to be patient with myself. Is it the hardest thing to do? Yes, but I try and I succeed and being surprised how patient I can be with myself.

Dance doesn't judge -people do

"Dance has no nationality, has no age, belongs to no-one.
Dance to everyone is - the same - pure, transitory, just, adamant."

I wrote that on the wall of my ballet school some time ago and I keep it in my heart as well. Some students ask me why I think dance is just as they think it is not. Yet then, when I explain them that they look at my words through somebodies else words about their dancing or others people dancing and that I didn't mean people are just...then they start to see what I meant. Dance doesn't judge...we do, we always did and we will.

Broken foot - what it means for a ballerina?

To be honest - yes, I think it it a big thing for a dancer to have broken foot, to actually have any kind of severe injury. The emotions take over, and at the beginning we really don't know what to do, what to think until we step down from being dancer to being human, then we see things differently, but that is in only in case when a broken foot is really just a broken foot or any injury is just curable and a temporary thing. And I am not being dramatic, I just would like others to understand that it is big deal every time a dancer or even regular person has an injury that makes this person to go to hospital and think that "a not so very good thing" happened and may still happen.