Andrea Virgin: Widowed at 31, Rebuilding by Choice

Andrea moved back to Florida to balance the two sides of herself.

The side that was focused on getting her engineering degree and making her parents happy, and the side that wanted to follow her passion for dance.

She started dancing for a company there.

But then, in 2008, that company closed its doors due to the recession.

And to Andrea, the writing was on the wall for her career in the arts.

In 2008, you were with a dance company that had to close because of the recession.

How did you get to that point? Did you graduate and you were in the company?

Once I left Houston Ballet, came back down to South Florida, I started dancing with a company called Ballet Florida out of West Palm Beach.

So this was around like the 2005 timeline.

And started to kind of get integrated into that company was going for my finalizing my undergrad at FAU, which is a school here in Boca Raton.

In 2008, while I was dancing, graduated, got that degree that I would like shelve it and say, Mom, Dad, now I've got that.

Now let me dance so I can enjoy this career I've wanted to do for so long and work so hard at.

Then around that 2008, I mean, it was in 2007 that it really started to happen, was that the arts and culture industry was taking a huge hit.

People were pulling back, philanthropy was pulling back, ticket sales were pulling back.

And to add a further complexity, this company happened to have a lot of their philanthropy off the island, which was connected to the whole Bernie Madoff scandal, which was happening at the same time.

Needless to say, it was a very difficult environment for any nonprofit organization, let alone the performing arts.

And they started to really slow down their ability to pay their dancers and ultimately be able to even stay open.

And seeing the writing on the wall on that, I decided to audition, like see what other companies might be in a better financial state.

In almost every company I talked to was like, we're not hiring new dancers.

We can't even hold our current dancer base.

We'll hold your resume.

We appreciate you came in.

And you know, we'll see you in a few years.

But that's just not something that most dancers can withstand.

Obviously, many did.