Ending my incredible and magical journey at the Paris Opera Ballet

I started blogging here back around 2012–2013, when I was still a student at the Paris Opera Ballet School. Feeling quite lonely, and a little lost, I didn’t speak much French, and found myself among students for whom this world was native. I wanted to journal my thoughts and what I was going through.

After dinner, we would return to our rooms at the boarding school around 8pm, and have two or three hours of free time before bed. That was when I would open my HP laptop and start writing.

That was how this blog was born. I wrote about my happy moments, and my less happy ones. About what filled me with wonder in Paris and in this extraordinary institution. About life in France, gala performances outside the capital, what happens in the wings of the Paris Opera…

My writing here has not always been consistent. In recent years, social media has taken up part of that space, and I regret it. But there it is, my blog. First on Weebly, and now this one, that I named Tale of Chun.

I wish I had written more. There were so many stories I would have loved to share. When you enter a professional ballet company, you begin most of the time as an understudy, not dancing much in those first years, which left me plenty of time to explore Paris, to play piano, to watch performances, to be curious and inspired by everything that came with being new to the Opera. 

Then the rhythm accelerates. You perform more and more. I spent most of my free time studying on the side, which left less space for reflection, for curiosity, for writing. And I regret it.

All these years, this blog has been my safe place, somewhere to step back from what I was living and observe my journey from a distance. I have always felt a great deal of kindness and support here, and that warmth has meant more to me than I can say. Thank you for being here, all along.

So, around fifteen years after I first came to Paris for ballet, here I am, making the difficult decision to bring my time with the Paris Opera Ballet to an end, at least as a dancer. This choice feels almost as exciting, and at the same time as frightening, as the one I made fifteen years ago. 

Leaving an old life behind to leap into a new one.

Having been in wealth management for four or five years now, I will naturally be devoting more time to my firm, and doing my best to be as good at it as I can. But I also have other projects: writing a book about my grandmother, Ah Ma. And helping foreign, non-French-speaking artists find their footing in France.

I hope to write more about this transition. How does a dancer reinvent themselves after an eleven-year career?

This coming summer, for instance, I realise that since I was seven, the year I started ballet, every single summer has been dedicated to dance: summer intensives, performances, galas, creations… In just two months, after my last performance with the Paris Opera Ballet, probably on the 14th of July, I will have my first summer without ballet in more than twenty years.

Until then, it is with a tangle of emotions that I am living through these “last times” at the Opera. It has not always been easy. There were hardships. But what a journey it has been. I will miss the stage, the audience, the laughter with my colleagues… It has been truly extraordinary. I intend to live these final weeks to the fullest, and to write more here, to share my thoughts on what it means to reinvent oneself. 

I will keep doing what feels right.