Hana Páníková

"I started going to ballet. I wanted to be a ballerina since I was a little girl. At that time, we got free tickets to the theatre for our parents, the master Němeček was in charge, Elvíra Němečková, Kydlíček [ballet master Miloslav Kydlíček] was there, we practised in the Malé divadlo [Small theatre - transl.]. My mother was in the theatre for the first time back then, and she was shocked saying she wouldn't have me trained to fly around the stage like a naked whore, so I was forbidden. There was a charge, and the lessons were expensive. I mean, I don't want to exaggerate, but I think they cost thirty crowns. So I stopped going. I met Master Němeček in the city, and he said, 'Why don't you come anymore?' I said that my mother didn't want to give me money, and he said, 'You don't have to pay.'"

"I have fond memories of my childhood. We first lived on Seventh Street, then we got a bigger apartment on Eighth Street. There was a pump in front of our house, there was a front yard and a gazebo in which I had toys, including a puppet theatre. The Zýkas also lived in Eighth Street, and Láďa Zýka, coincidentally, worked with me in Povrly when I went to the reconstructions. So he was my bodyguard, he would tell the assemblers: 'Dont you try anything, Hanka is my friend...'"