Finding out that you are being trusted to do something challenging is both encouraging and terrifying. Encouraging in that someone obviously feels that you are capable of handling it, but terrifying in that, now that someone has put their trust in you, you really don’t want to let them down.

My company’s show this spring is double billed, meaning that there are two shorter shows instead of one longer show. While I’ve talked a bit more on what we’re doing for Firebird, since it’s pretty much been the only thing we’ve been working on, we only recently started working on our other ballet, Aurora’s Wedding, which is entirely different. It’s a far more classical ballet, much like Swan Lake, which we did last year. Also, it’s mostly variations and we typically learn those in pointe class instead of taking out rehearsal time for them.

We’ve been working our way through everyone’s variations, specifically focusing on the Jewels, since everyone is either a Jewel or an understudy. The variation that I am doing, which is typically called the Diamond variation, was the last one we started learning, and while I had briefly entertained theories of a quick-and-painless variations, they were quickly shattered.

“I’ll just say that I have never seen this variation done well on stage and I think it is in many ways the hardest variation,” my director said before we even started. “It’s also really fast and springy, but you can handle it, right?”

“No!” I wanted to scream, probably while running out of the room, but since that is typically frowned upon in class, I merely put on my biggest smile and nodded along with the rest of the dancers.

Having now learned it, I’d have to say that while it is definitely difficult, it’s not as bad as I had feared that it would be. I’m still a little nervous due to the “never seen this done well” comment, but my director has not had any complaints so far, and I am determined to be amazing.