Yes, ballet is in French. Not just French. French. We are not French, and that means you know it in our country. It means we have never been French. We were born in France and raised in Paris. Our parents were French. We went to France, and French kids all the time.
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When a dancer starts the routine, she goes into high def, which is the exact language of Parisian life. In most high schools, this is what they do every Saturday morning. We had a program about French immersion. The program included French lessons, French dances, and French classes. We also gave a summer program in Paris, which was free. There are all these French schools. I wanted my kids to play French.
At school, one of my classmates brought back the letter he wrote to a friend in France, asking for help because everyone was teaching French in the high school. Everyone wanted to be a French teacher. They said they were like our friends, but had different accents so didn’t fit in. Everyone wanted to be French, but couldn’t because they didn’t look French enough.
We asked what we should do. If we were willing—the way we felt about our family was a little bit more forgiving than the way they did—we would teach for free and get to stay in Paris. That would mean we could go to the French schools, the French museums, the French theaters. We could learn more about French people, and how we see our culture. Why don’t you stay and learn French in Paris, instead of Paris and a million other places?
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We started a program. We asked everyone who could teach us and said, “Hey, come on up and teach. We need you!” We were so nervous, and so many schools said “No thanks.” But some of them said to us, “Well, why not?” So we would go back to the French academies and teach at the schools.
It was really hard not to take French as seriously as we did. I had grown up in North Carolina, so I was an American girl. My parents had French roots. If they didn’t go out of their way to teach me French, I might not have learned as much French as I had wanted to learn. So that helped me feel better about going to school when I did. There were times when my parents asked me, ”
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