When OC was a little oc, she wanted to be a ballerina, but a tutu was too itchy to sit at the piano for hours doing Hanon exercises and too impractical for diving on the soccer field. Ballet lust was sparked by a hand-me-down book called A Very Young Dancer by Jill Krementz which followed a 10-year-old ballerina named Stephanie from the classrooms of NYC's School of American Ballet to the stages of Lincoln Center as Marie in the NYCB's Nutcracker.
A prodigious talent at ten, handpicked by Balanchine for her role in the Nutcracker, Stephanie had all the marks of a great career. But through Jill Krementz, The New York Times tracked her down in Wyoming (where she lives now with her husband) and the former ballerina has a different story to tell.
Read about Stephanie's lost decades here.