BALLET, BOOKS, AND BEST FRIENDS
How my friends and I started a non-profit chapter at UNC
Ever since I was a young girl, my mom and my nana would take me to see UNCSA School of Dance's performance of The Nutcracker every year during the holiday season. I remember pirouetting into the theater in my black Mary Jane shoes, dressed in a cute little Christmas dress with bows in my hair, and my eyes wide with wonder as I looked at the promotional pictures of the elegant ballerinas in their glittery tutus inside the theater.
The Nutcracker ballet is one of the most popular ballets in the world, as it tells the story of Clara, a girl who receives a nutcracker as a Christmas present. In this fairy tale, toys come to life and battle an army of mice. Clara and her nutcracker, transformed into a prince, travel into the Land of Sweets, ruled by the Sugar Plum Fairy. “I want to be just like her,” I would say to myself as I stared in awe at the image of the Sugar Plum Fairy in the theater entryway.
We would walk through the bustling crowd and pick out new nutcrackers that we added to our collection back home. I would pretend to be Clara as I pulled the nutcracker out of the box and twirled to our seats. The lights dimmed, the curtains opened, hand painted set scenes of a whimsical candyland dream appeared, and the orchestra opened the ballet with the iconic melodies of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Overture. I would squirm in my chair with excitement as the opening scene would lift to reveal the stage, where one by one, dancers of all ages appeared to tell the magical story through the beauty of ballet.
My mom noticed the excitement and wonder I expressed when I watched the ballerinas on stage for the first time, so she enrolled me in ballet classes at the local performing arts center downtown. I quickly fell in love with the pink leotards, the tutus, and the special costumes we would wear for recitals. Along with ballet, I also took tap lessons, which I’m sure drove my parents nuts when I would tap around the house in my shiny tap shoes.
Like many young girls, being a ballerina was my dream. While that dream was short-lived, ballet takes up most of my childhood memories. I would dress up in my leotards and tutus at home and put on my own Nutcracker performances for my parents and pretend to be the Sugar Plum Fairy. I even dressed my little brother in my tutus with me and made him be the Mouse King or the Cavalier. Ballet was my girlhood.
As I grew up and lost interest in taking ballet classes, my love for the art never left me. I still went to see The Nutcracker every Christmastime with my nana and my mom all through high school, because it made me feel connected to my younger ballerina-loving self. I still know the different ballet positions, I still know how to fouetté, and miraculously, I can still hold my turnout without falling over. Part of me likes to wonder what my life would be like if I was a professional ballerina. While that was never really in the cards for me, I still like to wonder. Now that I’m in college, my love for ballet found a new connection when I met two of my bestest friends, Natalie and Bridget.
I met the two of them during my freshman year through the Alpha Phi Omega service fraternity at UNC-Chapel Hill. They were roommates and had an extraordinary backstory that brought them together. Although they both grew up in North Carolina, they first met in Philadelphia at a ballet camp, where they forged a close friendship while training in an art they had both dedicated their lives to. They each had dreams of becoming professional dancers before choosing college instead, and their friendship over the years became deeply intertwined with their shared love for ballet.
Connecting with Natalie and Bridget rekindled my old love for ballet in new ways. Their stories of dancing throughout high school, nearly pursuing it professionally, and the close-knit nature of their friendship reminded me of the magic that ballet had brought into my own childhood.
Inspired by their passion, Natalie and Bridget approached me last year with the idea of starting a chapter of Ballet & Books at UNC-Chapel Hill. Ballet & Books is a national non-profit organization that seeks to reduce the literacy gap through the unique blend of storytelling in both ballet and reading. They believed I’d be a good fit to run the social media account for the new chapter, bringing my experience and appreciation for sharing the magic of ballet with others. Together, we wanted to blend our current experience with community service from being in Alpha Phi Omega with our shared roots in ballet to create something that felt meaningful and full circle—a way to honor the art form we loved while also giving back to the next generation.
Launching the newest chapter of Ballet & Books has been both exhilarating and humbling. As we have started building a team and preparing to make our presence known on campus, we were blown away by the enthusiasm from fellow students. With a full executive board with many of our friends, dedicated dance teachers, and over 20 students who were inspired by Natalie and Bridget’s unwavering vision to become mentors and help bridge the literacy gap through ballet and reading, the chapter has taken shape faster than imagined—a testament to the power of merging creativity with community impact.
This experience has brought me closer to Natalie and Bridget, too. None of this would have been made possible without them. This was their vision from the very start—a shared idea they brought to life with their dedication and passion. Their excitement was contagious; I was honored when they asked me to join their mission. We’re building something that has the potential to leave a lasting impact, but it’s their foresight and dedication that laid the foundation.
Every step of this journey has reminded me of why ballet continues to hold a special place in my heart. Through Ballet & Books, we’re fulfilling a shared dream that connects our pasts to our futures while contributing to a cause that is greater than ourselves. I think back to those years spent watching The Nutcracker, pretending to be the Sugar Plum Fairy, and feeling the magic that ballet brought to my life. Now, that same magic is something we can offer to children in our community.
