Ruveem Ko

Purpose

Welcome!

Ballet and music are my goals, but, more specifically, my goal is to use them to make a positive impact on other people. I believe that this is what God wants me to be doing, and it makes me happy to be obedient.

In the past, playing viola/violin/piano in middle school, I always saw the violin as this "boring" instrument that you play classical music on, and playing it was always this "serious" feat where the skill comes first while the audience comes second. And if you play it without mistakes, then that's a badge of honor. However, coming across Karolina Protsenko's YouTube channel changed everything about the violin for me.

Karolina busks for people, and people really enjoy it. That's what matters! As of when I learned about her, she was 13, and she still wasn't super-skilled yet, but she made me realize that the skill level doesn't matter as much: it's how you make use of what you have that matters.

In Karolina's case, all while playing violin and dancing, she smiles at her audience, gives her audience attention, and interacts with them. Most notably, her gaze is not at the ground, nor at her violin, nor at any kind of sheet music - at least not most of the time. It is at her audience. The music itself is not as important as the people who are there with you. Karolina taught me that it's the people who matter.

With regards to dance, after seeing Karolina's example of how much more interesting the violin is when combined with dance, I decided to learn to dance. It started with thinking I can just teach myself at home without any teacher, and then accidentally twisting my ankle because I had no idea what I was doing ... I was being an idiot 🤦. Well, a few months later, ankle injury out of the way, it then started correctly with finding an adult ballet class, buying me a pair of ballet slippers, and signing up for class 😅.

As a child, I used to watch a VHS tape of Angelina Ballerina, and thus I always had ballet in the back of my mind. But I never was able to try it before this. Being raised in a poor immigrant family, I had parents who didn't even have money to afford music lessons, and they weren't going to even think about dance lessons. In fact, I didn't even know exactly what ballet was, only that it's a very pretty form of dance. I didn't know that there was value in dance. But when I finally saw the value in it from watching Karolina, and when I learned that Karolina is learning ballet, I decided that it's time for me to learn ballet too. I don't care that I'm an adult; I believe that God will use me and give me whatever ability He needs me to use for His glory.

While it was Karolina and the violin that initially drew me to dance, I fell in love with ballet since then. It is such a great form of art that is both extremely athletic, beneficial, challening, rewarding, beautiful, and effective at communicating emotion. Consider reading this book - it shows how Ballet Helps Everything in life. A person can either hate ballet or love ballet. I fell in love with ballet, and, despite all the soreness, sweating, and hard breathing, ballet makes me very happy, and, with each step of the way, I want to improve all the more.

Biography