While surrounded by the beautiful Rockies here in Banff where I am performing this summer at The Banff Centre as part of the Professional Dance Program, I can’t help but think back at what an extraordinary year this has been for me.

It’s just like reading a book where you are taken to new places and introduced to so many wonderful new characters. Whether I was a fairy giving the gift of a beautiful voice to Princess Aurora in The Sleeping Beauty, acting as the notes of music in 24 Preludes by Chopin at the 2010 Cultural Olympiad, an Italian Princess trying to win the heart of a Prince in Swan Lake or giving a little Puerto Rican/New York spice as Anita in West Side Story Suite, I loved every moment. But the icing on my wonderful cake had to be at the season closing party. I’ve never needed waterproof mascara more than at the moment I heard Karen Kain say that I was being promoted to Second Soloist. It was a dream come true. It’s a good thing I’ll be performing up in the mountains because I am still on “cloud nine.”

I couldn’t ask for a better year and for the next three weeks, I will be making even more amazing memories working here at Banff with Lindsay Fischer, Artistic Director of YOU dance/Ballet Master, Mandy-Jayne Richardson, Senior Ballet Mistress, and Jean-Yves Esquerre, Assistant to the Artistic Director of San Francisco Ballet, who have been so wonderful helping me shape myself into the next level of dancer that I want to be. And now… on to Le Corsaire!

[Photo 1: Jordana Daumec by Sian Richards. Photo 2: Rockies by Jordana Daumec. Photo 3: The Nutcracker by Bruce Zinger.]