I was fifteen years old when I made my way to the south of France to study dance at Rosella Hightower's Centre de Danse International, a conservatory with training that includes academic study in addition to a variety of dance disciplines. During my first summer there I learned that there was a way to write dance, but even though this technique, known as dance notation, was stimulating intellectually, I was going to be a dancer and therefore had no serious interest in it.

A couple of years later, during a rehearsal, I pinched a nerve in my spine; even though I was in pain, I continued dancing. No one was going to take my role away from me! Only when I sat down and couldn't stand up again did I realize that it was time to see a doctor. Although I had hurt myself badly, I believed that therapy, albeit painful, would get me back on my feet. My back was a little stiffer, but I could still dance.

By the time I was twenty-three, the joy of dance was as strong as ever, but the grueling schedule of class, rehearsal, and performance was making the pain unbearable. I no longer had a choice; my career as a professional dancer came to on abrupt end often only five years.

What were my options? My ties to the dance world were too strong to abandon. I didn't think I had accumulated enough experience to become a ballet mistress. Perhaps I could teach or coach or try my hand at choreography. Or I could also branch out into such related fields as stage management or fund-raising. Even though these are all wonderful options, they were not for me.

Then I remembered those informal lessons in notation at the Centre de Danse International and I knew I had found my niche. Here was a way to continue to be part of the dance world. I would be able to stage works, so I could still "dance," but without the pain. I would still be working with professionals in the environment that was my second home - the studio. Whether I was watching a work that I had helped stage or watching a new piece I had notated, the applause at the end of the performance would be as gratifying as it would have been if I were standing onstage in the spotlight.