TOPSHAM

W hen you do the right thing for the right reasons, usually you have to make some changes to make it work.

That’s what Elizabeth Drucker Treadwell did when her mother, Nancy Drucker, had a major stroke in 2008.

She closed The Ballet

School in Topsham, where she had taught dance since 1999. She sold her house, and moved with her mother to

Oneonta, N.Y., so her soon-to-be-husband,

Dereck Treadwell, a teacher at Hartwick College, could help support her while she cared for her mom.

“It was very close to my heart when

I left and I let it go completely,”

Drucker, who uses her maiden name professionally, told

The Times Record in an interview at the 799 Middlesex Road school. “My mother had been my business manager. We built the school together. She loved dance even though she wasn’t a dancer.”

Drucker has taught dance in Maine and New York for 19 years. She received her training from the School of American Ballet in New York City, and danced professionally with the New York City Ballet for several years.

“My mother loved to watch me dance. She loved to watch the dancers in the school. She loved me,” Drucker said.

Even though her mother was too sick to understand her daughter’s sacrifice, it was one Drucker does not regret.

“The last four years of my mother’s life were tremendous. Her nursing home was right around the corner from where we lived. I could take her for walks in her wheelchair. I could be with her every day,” she said.

And every day, Drucker and her mother listened to the birds.

Twist of fate

Usually, when you let something go, it doesn’t come back to you, despite the comfort of the old cliché.

But a few months after her mother died in 2011, Drucker learned that The Ballet School and her former home (both share the same property) were available. The school had continued as a dance studio, offering yoga, modern dance and contemporary ballet, but found itself in short sale.

“I always thought I’d restart a school, but I didn’t imagine it would be the same school,” Drucker said. Drucker and

Treadwell had it in their heads that if the price fell on the property to a certain price, they would go for it.

“It got down to within $5,000 of that price. Four days later we were under contract,” Drucker said.

The Ballet School restarted in July 2012.

The school always felt like a connection to her mother, Drucker said.

Dancers, like Kayla Bobalek, a senior at Mt. Ararat who danced with Drucker as a preschooler, came back to The Ballet School after leaving the Portland

Ballet CORPS program.

“It’s like home to me here,” Bobalek said. She now trains privately with

Drucker and hopes to dance her whole life.

Drucker has also gotten to know a new corp of little dancers, many of whom are siblings to dancers she taught five years ago.

Throughout the process of getting to know her school again, Drucker remembered the song birds she and her mother would listen to at the nursing home in New

York.

“I saw how much people appreciate them,” Drucker said.

That’s why the theme of The Ballet School’s first performance since Drucker’s return is “Flight — A Collection of Dances for All Ages” on Saturday, May 4, and Sunday, May 5, at 2 p.m. at Orion Performing Arts Center, 66 Republic Ave.

A release from Drucker describes “Flight” as “a series of reflections on avian inspired imagery, music and stories.”

More than 70 dancers from The Ballet School and its performing company, Coastal

Maine Youth Ballet, will be featured in this professionally staged production. They will grace the stage under John Urquhart’s creative lighting and sets. Swans, firebirds, origami cranes, and many other graceful and colorful characters complete the cast of this lively and touching ballet that will delight all ages.

“It’s a theme that seemed appropriate to create dances around. They symbolize so much,” Drucker said.

General admission tickets are available at the door for $10 child/senior and $12 adult.

More information is available by calling 729-6794 or by visiting www.theballetschool.com.

rshelly@timesrecord.com