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Susan Cushing ☕️ 📚 @sdcushing.bsky.social

When last at #TheCampfire, I was sharing with you my story about a 13 year old who wanted to be a dancer, and about getting invited to go to NYC with minimal skills and fewer funds to study at two renowned studios - to a chorus of parental NOs. You know we shed mighty tears until we won. Alt Text ⬇️

We stayed at the Wellington Hotel on 59th Street which was magnificent and ordinary. We were assigned a buddy dancer who was never to leave our side, and an adult chaperone who was to be with us any time we left the hotel. Mornings we danced to drums Uptown in a converted garage. That garage was the beginning of the Dance Theatre of Harlem. Undulations of our backs, hips, and necks would make us ache as if we were starting to dance all over again. But they made us better barefoot movers. Afternoons, we went to class downtown with our ballet slippers and buns at the American Ballet Theatre. Our legs rose ever higher above our ears en développé, and the girl in front of me fainted when Madame Pereyaslavic passed by with her fearsome cane. We were told not to stop dancing, and we did not, for minutes, until she recovered and left class. Nights were our own for a precious couple of hours. One night, we decided to get to Times Square and 47th Street and the Orange Julius store unchaperoned. Only twelve short blocks. It was easy to sneak out of the hotel - there just weren’t enough adults to watch us all. What we didn’t know then was that we would be paralleling, by one block, the infamous Minnesota Strip (see Wikipedia), where young runaways from my hometown were forced into prostitution. Part of me says there must have been a chaperone shadowing us. The other part of me now says that no pimp in his right mind would have touched those little blonde girls, set out on a walk like bait in a trap. But you know, as I am able to write this, that we made it there, got our smooth whipped orangey drinks, and made it back to dreams of nothing more than dancing through another day and finding more treats. How this all happened is a mystery for me now that died with our dance teacher thirty years ago, before I became truly curious about how the whole trip came together. I quit dancing at the end of that summer. Starting to dance again will be a story for another day.
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Rina @rina2012.bsky.social

What a story, Susan! It's so nice to read how your dream come true. And you tell so well (I notice that you read a lot) Bravo!! Looking forward to the next chapter 🥰

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