In my last year of studying dance in Munich, Germany, I was applying for many auditions. There was a lot of stress about the future in all of us at the school and insecurity inevitably brought comparison, competition and jealousy to the class. The auditions cost a lot of money as they required travelling, and one of them was exceptionally expensive, I had to travel to another country with very little time in advance. 

In February 2019, I went to an audition with a large production company. A month later, I was ecstatic to discover that I had been accepted and offered a role! This was a big win for me: I was the first person in my class to get an offer with such an established and well known dance company, and this made me feel capable, accepted and successful. The company felt extremely organised, and I received detailed descriptions of projects, scripts, mood boards, rehearsal schedules and tour dates almost a year ahead. 

The production was due to start in January, so in November I found a room in a nice apartment for me to live in for the time of the project. However, that same month I suddenly got an email from the company – it stated that the funds they had received had not met their production costs, so they had to cut down on the cast. I was one of the people that were let go due to insufficient funds, eight months after I had been accepted for the project and right before its beginning. 

I was very angry and hurt. I felt a great amount of rejection and hopelessness. The plans had completely shifted and I was scared. What would lie ahead? Was there a place for me in this world? Where in the world would I be living in only 6 weeks? My big and yet fragile ego had been temporarily shattered. Little did I know, of course, that everyone’s plans for that coming year, 2020, had been shifted without anyone yet knowing.