Marianna always wanted to be a ballerina.

From her earliest childhood, she was fascinated by the tulle dresses, the satin slippers with ribbons, and the graceful movements of the slender figures that flew across the stages like butterflies, almost without touching the ground with their toes or rose triumphantly, tracing elegant lines with their bodies held by handsome dancers who raised them as if they were feathers of fantastic birds.

A thousand stories and tales described by that harmony of movement paraded through his imagination. She wanted to be one of those lucky women who turned everything into a sweet fantasy. But although she saw all the beauty of the dance, she could not hear the music that originated it: she had been born deaf and mute.

Her father, Matt, a fragile and sensitive man who adored his daughter, bought her a tutu dress, satin slippers with laces, and even a headband and took her to a ballet school. However, realizing that the little girl could not hear the music or the teacher’s voice, they rejected her on the first day, even though she reproduced the movements with remarkable ease.

Matt picked up his crying daughter and took her home.

– “You will be a great dancer, no matter what they say.”

He asked her not to take off her tulle dress or her satin slippers. He put a video of Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker on television and began to play the rhythm of the music with his drums. Marianna could feel the drum’s vibrations and observe the dancers’ movements, so she began to practice.

Eventually, Matt took her back to school, this time with his drums, and asked the teachers to give her a chance to audition. The girl did so well that they decided to admit her and incorporate the percussion into the classes.

From the stage to the street

Over time, she became an artist and even took to the stage. By then, Marianna had learned to recognize the vibrations of instruments. On her first evening on stage, when she approached the audience to receive the ovation she could not hear, Marianna thought of his father, who had already died.

– “I hope you see me from the other side of life and are proud of me, Dad.”

As she bowed with her co-stars, her tears of sadness and longing watered the bouquet she carried in her hand.

Since Matt was no longer there with his drums to help Marianna train, she began searching for vibrations to obtain rhythms that would inspire her dance.

She went out into the street in her tulle dress her hard-toed satin slippers with bows, and began to dance to the rhythm of the vibrations of honking horns, the braking of cars, and the roar of motorcycles as they started.

Marianna was like a white butterfly moving gracefully through the gray landscape of the poor neighborhood where she had grown up. And so on day after day and day after day, as long as he had the strength.

The neighbors looked out their windows to watch her dance. It was the dance of silence that she had carried in her heart since she was born: A delicate choreography of mysterious beauty.

FFFC 242