Fifteen years ago, a twenty-year old ballet dancer named Portia Jones gave her first professional performance as a snowflake in the Pennsylvania Ballet production of the Nutcracker.
And having just hung up her slippers in June, Jones will be embarking on a second career this fall -- one as a full-time Penn student. However, the first day of school jitters are likely to pale in comparison to those on that opening night.
"I was scared out of my wits," Jones said. "It's funny because later in the rest of my career I did feature roles in the Nutcracker, but I don't think I was ever as nervous as being one of those 18 or so snowflakes."
Jones, who was born in England, but grew up in Brazil, attended the School of American Ballet in New York City, and eventually, Barnard College. At the beginning of her sophomore year, she received word of an opening in the Pennsylvania Ballet, and immediately hopped on the train for the audition.
Afterwards, when asked to join the approximately 40-member company, Jones accepted the offer on the spot.
"It was absolutely a no-brainer," she said of the decision, which meant leaving Barnard. "It's what I always wanted to do. I knew that you could go to school afterwards, but ballet is a finite career."
Jones went on to play such notable roles as Caliope in George Balanchine's Apollo and Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream, but she insists that she has no favorites.
"It's really hard to pick," she said. "If you love dancing, you pretty much love everything that you're dancing -- I love them all."
When a few minor injuries began popping up recently, and with next year's season consisting of mostly ballets that she had already done, Jones made the tough decision to pick up where she had left before and return to school as a junior, since she had taken several Penn evening courses over the years.
So with a schedule of biology, chemistry and calculus planned for the fall in the College of General Studies, instead of graceful jumps and turns, Jones is currently faced with the dilemma facing all students: finding cheap textbooks. And she said that if her science classes go well, veterinarian school may be next on her horizon.
But she has no regrets taking the opportunity to grace the stage in the Academy of Music, something few of her future classmates can likely attest to.
"I consider myself very, very fortunate to have done what was my dream," Jones said. "Some people don't even know what their dream is, and the fact that I knew what I wanted to do, and that I got to do it, is just incredible."
