We’d worked hard, Katrina and I. Well she’d sweated and I had directed. I remember her when she first appeared, gangly, unformed in body and mind, but with fragile beauty. Oh dear, I thought, another hopeful, been to some school somewhere where they had taught the movements, and said encouraging words just to keep her coming to the classes.

I’d seen it all before, a pushy mother, a hopeful teacher, won some prize somewhere, and now recommended for a test to enter the Central Ballet School. I had nurtured the best, and I had a reputation for producing the best, and for being a hard task master.

It was true, I had lost that soft human trait known as sympathy. After years of driving ballerinas and male dancers I had developed a shell to keep my inner emotions in check. There was many a time that I could have cried with them as they despaired at their lack of achievement, or were tormented by injury and the constant pain that accompanies their training. And so I looked at Katrina with jaundiced eye. That is until she moved across the floor.

Those gangly legs and starved thin body transformed into one poetic movement, an outline of moving grace, a figure contained in a fluid line. As she turned her eyes caught mine, and in a seductive glance challenged me to not miss this chance. In that moment my defences were pierced and my heart went out to her, here was a star in the making!

The room turned on it’s axis, the rather tinny piano turned into a concert grand, suddenly there was the sound of a symphony in my ears, and there she was, in my arms, and we were dancing together! As we danced time swept by, that form in my arms filled out, the signet turned into the swan.

That line became a fully formed body, those thin unformed muscles had now become streamlined power under glowing skin, a coiled spring ready to explode on the world of dance. She became my muse.

In the end she broke my heart, she was a bird ready to fly, a swan to entrance and enchant the world. But not before……I’ll let you guess!