A Solo Performance

Cathy Papadopoulos lies in a hospital bed, plastic tubes in her chest. Visitors must wear surgical masks and wash their hands as they enter her room, guarding against the infections that could kill the 51-year-old Anaheim Hills mother of three.

She is in the advanced stages of a rare cancer that is causing her white blood cells to fall to a dangerous level. And while that frightens her, Papadopoulos is thinking mostly these days about a trip she had badly wanted to make: to see her 13-year-old daughter, Paskalina, dance in a summer program of the prestigious Joffrey Ballet.

Paskalina is among one of 50 ballet dancers nationwide to receive a scholarship to the eight-week program, and for the past two months, Papadopoulos and her daughter had been planning a big trip to New York City.

They shopped for pink dance slippers, matching tights and black leotards, all part of the school uniform. They bought athletic tape for Paskalina’s ankles and dresses for Broadway shows. They rented an apartment in Greenwich Village.

But 12 days ago, Papadopoulos collapsed on the floor of her doctor’s office and lost consciousness when her white blood cell count fell nearly to zero. She was taken to St. Joseph Hospital in Orange, where she will be recovering while a relative takes her place in New York.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever have this chance again,” said Papadopoulos, who also missed her daughter’s eighth-grade graduation Friday. “I could cope with the end of my life. What’s harder to deal with is the pain I would cause my family by not being there for them.”

Ever since Paskalina began ballet training at age 5, dance has been the linchpin between mother and daughter.

They were passing a dance studio on the way to swimming lessons one day and decided to sign up. After two lessons, Paskalina was hooked, and she now spends at least five days a week practicing her moves, from pirouettes to point turns. Papadopoulos would take Paskalina to and from classes, attend her recitals and treat her to performances of professional ballet troupes that happened to be in town.

“Ballet gave me this wonderful opportunity be spend time with her,” said Papadopoulos, who had to quit her job as a GTE consultant when she was diagnosed in 1993 with multiple myeloma, an often-fatal form of bone marrow cancer.

“It was a good focus point for me as well. . . . To live, you have to continue to look for the bright things in life,” Papadopoulos said. “She’s been very bright for me.”

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The pair found strength in each other, and having Papadopoulos in the audience also helped Paskalina triumph. Through her mother’s battle, the daughter said she has learned to appreciate time and make the most of it.

Not only has Paskalina worked hard to excel at ballet, the El Rancho Middle School honor student regularly stays up past midnight to complete homework in advanced math, English, history and science.

“It has made me take on more things . . . and do my best at them,” Paskalina said.

Tracy Dee Baker, director of Paskalina’s ballet school, has seen the teenager’s determination at work.

“One day she just said she wanted to dance professionally and follow in my footsteps, and she started doing everything she could to accomplish that,” Baker said. She’ll work on a step over and over and over until she gets it, the instructor said.

When she received the acceptance letter from Joffrey, Paskalina said she felt the envelope to see if it was a thick package--with a registration form inside indicating she’d been accepted--or a thin package, meaning rejection.

“It’s thick, Mom. It’s thick,” Paskalina told her mother.

Paskalina recalls “jumping up and down, and then I started crying.”

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Each year, thousands like her compete for a few hundred spots in the nation’s top ballet schools, hoping for a chance to be trained professionally. The Joffrey Ballet School, for example, visited 22 cities nationwide and auditioned more than 1,500 girls ages 12 to 19, accepting about 200. Only a quarter of those received scholarships.

Paskalina was among five students from her ballet school to attend summer ballet programs. The others are Krista Baker, 11, of Laguna Niguel; Joanna Mi, 12, of Anaheim Hills; and Abby Kuo, 10, of Anaheim Hills, all of whom will be attending the Kirov Academy of Dance in Washington, D.C. Erin Straugher, 9, of Yorba Linda will attend the Hartford School of Ballet in Hartford, Conn.

Although Papadopoulos will not accompany Paskalina to New York, she said she will try her best to visit the daughter at the end of the term.

“I can always hope,” she said. “That’s the thing with cancer. You never know what will happen, good or bad.”

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Paskalina has had to face her mother’s physical demise many times before. In 1997, Papadopoulos said she came close to dying not once, but three times.

That’s when the reality of death hit Paskalina, and she broke down in tears, her mother said. Years later, the shy teenager with braces still doesn’t like to talk about her mother’s illness, preferring to speak about ballet, school and New York.

“She keeps to herself a lot,” said Pete Papadopoulos, 51, her father. “She’s not one to let her feelings show.”

Pete Papadopoulos, a retired convenience store manager who now runs a car-detailing business, described his daughter as someone who would cry alone in the bathroom rather than let her mother see the pain. He is touched by the girl’s maturity, but sometimes worries about her.

“It’s hard, you know, being a kid and [having] to deal with all this,” he said. “She’s tough, though. She doesn’t give up.”

Paskalina agrees.

“My parents have encouraged me so much, and I want to do my best for them. . . . I want them to expect the most from me.”