A very special end of summer

In the past fifteen years, by the end of August, I would already be back in Paris, or preparing for my new season, or the season would have started already and I would have been back in the studios for ballet classes, and perhaps my first rehearsals.

But this time, I don’t have to go back to the Opera anymore. It is only now that my decision to leave actually changes my life.

I have just spent my first ballet-free summer since I started dancing twenty-two years ago: without worrying about keeping my body in shape, and without thinking about the coming season while on holiday. For this unprecedented summer, I decided to visit Canada, and then a magnificent French village called Talmont-sur-Gironde.

The only other time I went to Canada was in 2015, I believe, when I was graduating from the Paris Opera Ballet School and looking for a dancer’s contract all around the world, in case I could not enter the Paris Opera Ballet at the end of the year. I went to Montreal to audition for Les Grands Ballets Canadiens. It was January, and during the few days I spent there it was -30 degrees and snowing heavily. This time, I saw the city in vibrant summer weather, with luxuriant plants, animals, and incredibly kind people.

As for Talmont-sur-Gironde, it is one of the most beautifully flowered villages I know in France, with its unique landscapes.

I needed this break to recover from my very emotional farewell to the Paris Opera Ballet, after fifteen years in an institution where it felt like I had spent more than thirty. So much happened there, and with such intensity, that I am sure it will mark me for life. My farewell, on 12 July 2026, was perfect. Everything about it: the moment in my career, my last performance in my favourite ballet, La Bayadère, the party I organised after the show, the people who were there… it was perfect.

It felt like the one perfect thing I did in my entire dancing journey, with the perfection I had always pursued in ballet, was my farewell.

So now I feel very grateful. And from now on, I have no other choice than to make this decision real. It is now that the big new chapter of my life truly begins, as a wealth management advisor and a business founder.

Frankly, I feel pressure. Nothing like the going-back-to-the-Opera pressure, but pressure still. The fear of not being good enough, of not measuring up, the fear of not managing to do everything I would like to do. But this time more than ever, the pressure comes entirely from me. Deep down, I hope that my new career, my new life, will be at least as good as my journey at the Paris Opera, which is why my mind and my plans are filled with high ambitions and many projects: my wealth management firm, Wing Patrimoine, of course, with plenty of dossiers clients already waiting; the association Elido, that I must finally launch; the book I promised to write about my grandmother; going back to Hong Kong to work in ballet; visiting my sister in Thailand… I want to do all of it, and do it well. That is where the pressure comes from, even though none of it, apart from my clients at Wing Patrimoine, has a deadline. For the rest, I should be able to take my time.

A few more days to spend in Talmont. My friends and colleagues are probably starting classes again at the Opera Garnier today. I feel a little guilty knowing that they are back in the studios while I am not, and I miss them a lot already.

Now I really should write more here. No more excuses. This blog, that I started in 2013, means a great deal to me.

Thank you all for your support since then!