Young ballet dancers audition for coveted spots in 'The Nutcracker'
By Michael Dinan for The Advocate (Stamford)

STAMFORD -- Nine-year-old Emma Berman waited excitedly in her leotard and ballet slippers in a line of boys and girls winding yesterday through the Rich Forum lobby.

"I want to be a girl from the Party Scene," Emma, a fourth-grader at Stamford's Roxbury Elementary School, said a few minutes before her audition for the Stamford Center for the Arts' production of "The Nutcracker."

"You get to dance with boys and stuff," she explained.

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I was excited reading this little article not because of the Nut auditions but because I noticed that they named the theater after a man to whom I owe a great deal: Anthony Truglia.

I grew up in Stamford and was one of a number of inner city kids whose lives were changed when Truglia started and ran an organization called "Project Music". It gave poor kids free music lessons and loaner instruments. I studied guitar for several years under that program.

I always wonder where I'd be if it weren't for "Project Music". My musical interest eventually branched out to encompass dance.

I've often wondered if Mr. Truglia lived long enough to realize just how many careers his brainchild launched. (His life was cut short in a car accident.)