Toño Maldonado

Thank you, Virgin of Guadalupe, because I fulfill my childhood dream— to dance “the Nutcracker”.

During a ballet rehearsal Arturo Lezama lifted up his partner and hurt his back very badly. He gives thanks to Saint Jude for his prompt recovery.

The possibility to dance every day is the best gift that the life could have possibly given me. I love to merge with the music and to feel the flexibility of my muscles and to respond to the sound and to create the beauty in my movements. I thank the Virgin of the Rosary whom I asked to help me to become a ballet dancer, when I was a little girl. And she fulfilled my dream.

This is ex-voto of thanks to the leaders of Soviet revolution. If it hadn’t happened I couldn’t have had highly qualified workers from east for next to nothing. I’ve already had three musicians from Kiev Symphony Orchestra working for me as stevedores carrying cement. Now I have a surgeon working on a crane and two Ukrainian women at the kitchen. They were ballet dancers back in their homeland. They’re nice-looking broads, it’s nothing wrong with their bodies, probably because of gymnastics <…>

I thank the Blessed Sacrament because my parents finally accepted that the ballet is my true vocation and pay for my dance classes and even permitted me to rehearse wearing my tutu.