Did I ever tell you the one about the cops and Lincoln Center?

Maybe I have.

Ever since my sisters brief “debut” at New York State Theatre in 2004 (don’t worry, I’ll explain) we’ve been telling everyone about our brush with law enforcement. Every blog I’ve ever had I’ve made sure to post about it, especially for my ballet readers who know exactly the place I’m talking about, and share the same sentiments about stepping on famous stages.

As Daniel Ulbricht said, “It’s one of those stories.”

And indeed it is.

It began innocently enough. In the summer of 2004, my mother, aunt, sister and I planned for a 3 p.m. tour of Lincoln Center. In the bottom floor basement of the MET Opera House we were introduced to our tour guide Marie: a gray haired woman with a thick accent and a rebellious streak.

At the start of the tour Marie broke the rules. Photography in the theatres was not allowed, but when I held up my camera and made a sorrowful face, she waved her hand in the air. “Take as many as you want.” A crew member crossed the MET stage expecting the theatre to be empty, so Marie yelled “Bravo” and he screamed and jumped in the air. “I like to scare them,” she said.

Tour groups were supposedly restricted from the second and third floors of the MET, but Marie waved her hand again, put us on an elevator and had us flying around the tiers. She pillaged a few programs for us and told us to hide them in our pockets. “I am so bad. I’m not supposed to do this, you know?”

To avoid being seen, she suggested taking the elevator back down to the first floor of the MET, and we mistakenly hopped on with a few MET administrators and big-wigs (I always guessed they were a bunch of Joe Volpe’s assistants and employees). Marie was caught with her hand in the cookie jar but she was bold and oiled her way through a greeting.

“Hi how are you?” She exchanged glances and the big-wigs let their jaws drop. We exited on the next floor giggling.

“Oh I am going to get in trouble!” Marie boasted with a smirk.

Our tour of Avery Fisher hall was meant to be brief but was prolonged when Marie invited us to sit in the balcony and chat. Mother told Marie that Dione was a ballet dancer, and with that her eyes lit up.

“Then we must let her stand on stage!” she threw up her arms for the hundredth time that afternoon. “But we must hurry.” The tour was to only last until 6 p.m. After that, we’d be kicked out so that the theatres could prepare for their evening performances. We sped across the plaza, and into State Theatre. It was closed, and a policeman stood in attendance at the stairwell to the promenade. Time was up, but Marie knew what to do.

“Oh you must help us!” She threw her arms around the guard dramatically, and feigned a sob or two for good measure. The guard narrowed her eyes skeptically.

“This girl here, she’s going to be a famous dancer, everyone will know her. I want her to dance on stage,” Marie said.

The guard looked at her watch.

“It’s six o’clock.”

“But she is going to be a very famous dancer. Only for one minute! I told her she has to dance!”

The guard pressed her lips together, looked over both shoulders and then at her watch again.

“You got fifteen minutes.”

With that, Marie jumped up in the air and planted a huge kiss on the guard’s cheek. We all slipped past the velvet rope and into the dark New York State Theatre. The only light shining was the “ghost light.”

“Gosh this is creepy,” I said. “We might see Balanchine’s ghost!”

Marie led Dione to the stage staircase. “Not so loud!” she hissed, looking over her shoulder in the dark. Dione slipped off her shoes and stood right in front of the ghost light in first arabesque. I tip-toed between the seats and photographed her twice then we raced back out into the first floor lobby all a-glow with excitement.

The police woman who’d let us enter was still there, smiling as we threw her thanks and Marie blew her kisses. “Now you can say you danced on the same stage as Kyra Nichols and Jerome Robbins and yada, yada,” Marie said. For the first time she looked a little breathless from the running and sneaking, but still had enough spark to give Dione a hug. We walked back to the MET to retrieve our things, and took one photo with Marie before we left.

O.K. So maybe its not that dangerous, or adventurous and perhaps still very innocent. For Dione and I it was our adventure, and a story we’re welcome to tell when the time permits.