Why I didn't become a ballerina

I used to take a lot of classes as a kid. Ballet, jazz, gymnastics, skating (which is probably why I burned out later and stopped taking classes altogether). Jazz was my favorite, but when I was five or six I also enjoyed ballet quite a bit. My class wasn't competitive: we would just perform something at the end of the year at a showcase. The dances from the various classes usually weren't connected in any way, but twice we ended up putting on short versions of an actual ballet, with various ages and skill levels.
The two ballets we did were "Nutcracker" and (a year later) "Sleeping Beauty". I enjoyed both, but my favorite was Nutcracker. In it, my class (there were a bunch of us...twelve or fifteen little girls) had two parts: as guests at Clara's party, and later as the "bonbons" at the end (which I'm pretty sure was a part they made up for us).
I liked being a candy, but somehow I enjoyed being a guest more, even though there was barely any dancing involved. It was more like role-playing, which was my favorite kind of game at the time (I called them "adventure games" later). I had a lady who was my pretend mom, and me and my pretend sisters would come to the party and play with the other guests via a short dance sequence. I liked the unity I felt with my pretend family, even though it felt weird to have a different mom. I wished I got to participate more in the story (we were pretty much just extras), but even with the small role it was a lot of fun. Before that, my only experience with acting had been a very lame Kindergarten play (I was the sun, mainly because I didn't want to be an animal), but this felt more real. My first actual play would be six years later, but with this I was off to a good start.

And that's why I'm an actor and not a dancer! The end.