why I bawled at Billy Eliot

I was expecting a show about a boy discovering the joys of dance, against all odds. But I guess I didn't stop to consider what "all odds" might entail.

Even though Billy grew up in a hard scrabble mining town in Northern England, and I grew up in a cushy suburb of New York City, his story was powerfully familiar to me. I'm notorious for tearing up at movies, but by the final curtain of this show, I had dissolved into a trembling, exhausted, soggy heap.

When Billy's tough, gruff, working class father takes him to audition at London's Royal School of Ballet, having crossed the picket line to earn the money for the bus tickets, I wept. My father didn't want me to be a musician any more than Billy's father originally wanted his son to be a dancer. By all rights, Billy should have been a miner, like his dad, and as the eldest child, lacking a brother of any age, I was expected to step up and become a surgeon, like mine.

Billy was passionate about the dance, but the biggest difference I could see between him and me was that when he caved to family pressure, his teacher took a big risk and advocated for him. Like Billy, I was afraid to stand up to parental expectations on my own; as a child, I wasn't strong enough in my convictions and I doubted the sufficiency of my gifts. So, I cried when Billy's teacher, "Miss", walked through the snow, bravely knocked on the doorway of his house and yelled at his dad about Billy's remarkable combination of talent and passion and what a tragic waste it would be not to let him dance.

Billy's mother died of cancer when he was small, so we do not know whether she would have supported his career aspirations, but by the letter he keeps from her and reads on stage, summoning her presence in his memory, it is implied that she would have offered him unconditional love and supported his following his dream. Rather than taken by cancer, my mother's will was subsumed into her marriage to my father, and she averred, against all evidence to the contrary, that she was better off having sacrificed her own career in dance to become a doctor's wife and a mother.

Because of his teacher's intervention, Billy is offered and able to accept the scholarship from the Royal Academy, and the audience is treated to a glimpse into the future where we see Billy as a powerful and majestic adult ballet dancer.

I saw this show with two sons who study dance. Max is almost sixteen and takes dance instruction half heartedly, if not reluctantly, as a means to an end. He wants to be in the theatre and is currently starring in his second professional production. Isaac, on the other hand, dances every time there is music, sometimes when he is the only one who hears it. But while Isaac, at age seven, seems destined to become an entreprenuer, the puzzle of Max's future brings up the same memories and emotions for me as those triggered by seeing Billy Eliot, on an almost daily basis.

When I was Max's exact age, I was a senior in high school, and my dream of pursuing a professional music career had already effectively been squashed. The very month of my sixteenth birthday, forbidden to pursue music perfomance beyond high school, I turned down a unsolicited music scholarship, which came attached to an invitation to play in the Akron Symphony. That same month, I applied to Harvard early decision, and my fate was sealed. I was so fortunate, arriving in Cambridge, to have Roman Totenberg as my violin teacher, but I was so confused by what I was doing in Cambridge that I shirked practicing responsibilities in order to do the work required to get top grades, for no other reason than I believed was "supposed to" put academics first. What was I trying to accomplish? I'd already attained the goal of ridiculously high grades and scores, but I was now desperately seeking a new goal (to replace my musical one) by trying my very hardest to overcome each and every new academic challenge.

The answer is that at sixteen, I was not strong enough on my own to buck the system I had been born into, and I also lacked a mentor willing to go to bat for me, to stand up to parental authority and argue that I should be - not just allowed - but actively supported in pursuit of my dream. I was trying in vain to launch myself in another direction. But nothing ever drew me, ever called to me, ever pulled at my heart strings like music did and still does.

This is just part of the baggage I carry with me as I try to be the most loving and helful parent I can be. As I am confronted by a teenager who dreams of pursuing a career in the arts, but also piles on more AP courses than anyone else in his class because he believes he's "supposed to" get into a top school, I wonder how much my neuroses are affecting him, and whether I am (in Kahlil Gibran terms) being a proper bow to his arrow. For we lack another thing that Billy Eliot had. Max and I both have free will, so, rather than rely on an author to determine our story's end, we will continue to struggle very humanly to communicate with each other, and together, try to determine what is the best use of our time and resources, and the best decision to be made each step of the way, and I will try both to support him and to get out of his way, and to have faith every day that he can and will find the way to his destiny.