The story of Sharon Maccanico, the fifteen-year-old from Irpinia who grew up between Australia and New Zealand, who found her own language in dance and left a lasting impression on the people she met.
When I enter In the Maccanico family's house, I understand that something doesn't match the idea I had brought with me.
The pain is there, and it's palpable in the photographs draped over the furniture, the videos scrolling on the phone, and the memories that resurface as Mom and Dad begin to tell their stories. Yet, what strikes me most is the way the absence seems unable to assert itself, because in that house, Sharon doesn't appear as someone who's truly gone.
Sharon is in the smile with which her mother pronounces her name, in her father's pride when he remembers the races, in her cousin's stories Martina, which emerge with a naturalness capable of almost cancelling the distance, and in V's eyesring, the little dog who still looks for her in the places where she used to find her.
They welcome me with an affection I hadn't expected, and, opening the door to their home, they entrust me, above all, with their story. The tape recorder remains almost forgotten on the table, and as questions give way to memories, something rare in a journalist's work happens to me: I stop chasing a story and start getting to know a person.
Through their words Sharon It takes shape with such clarity that, after a few minutes, it almost seems like I have it before me, not because of the suggestion of the moment, but because every memory brings it back to the room with the concrete force of a presence.
At the beginning of our meeting, my mother asks me only one thing:
«Talk about it in the present tense. Because Sharon lives..»
Before the ballerina
After Sharon's death, her family began to get to know her through the eyes of others, collecting episodes, words, and gestures that until then had remained outside of home life.
«I’m discovering it now,» my mother tells me, as she picks up her phone and shows me the messages from her friends, who still write to tell her about a test, a difficult day, a victory, a disappointment, or an evening spent together, entrusting their daily lives to her as if the dialogue had never stopped.
Through those messages, the mother learns of events her daughter had never shared, of attentions given to others, and of gestures made without feeling the need to share them with her family as proof of their generosity. What emerges is not a different Sharon from the one her family knew, but a part of her that until then had remained entrusted to friends, classmates, and people she met along the way.
What's striking is that no one, when talking about Sharon, begins with her dancing, her competitions, or the trophies she won; before her talent, everyone remembers the girl and her ability, rare even in adults, to make those around her feel important.
A better illustration of this attitude toward others is an episode that occurred during the first few days at the new school, when Sharon approached the principal and, rather than introducing herself, asked how her day had gone. Shortly thereafter, the principal wrote to the parents, because among the hundreds of students she had met over the years, no one had ever asked her such a basic and, therefore, unexpected question.
In that question, uttered without attributing any importance to it, we can recognize the way Sharon approaches relationships: by observing, listening, and naturally shifting her attention from herself to the person in front of her.
It is through gestures like this that Sharon remains with the people who knew her and who today feel the need to give a fragment of her back to the family. To understand where that curiosity for others and that natural ability to connect come from, however, we must go back a long way, to Avellino, and to a three-year-old girl clutching a small suitcase outside her front door.
A little girl with a suitcase and Italy in her heart
At the front door stands a three-year-old girl with a small suitcase in her hands. She drags it to the front door, waiting as if someone might arrive at any moment, and repeats the same phrase over and over: "Buy me a ticket. I want to go home.".
To understand Sharon we have to start from here.
Her story begins in Avellino and resembles that of many Italian families who, at a certain point in their lives, decide to cross an ocean in pursuit of a different future. When her mother and father chose to move to Australia, she was too young to understand the significance of that departure, but old enough to feel that something had changed forever.
Over time, that suitcase became one of the family's most cherished memories, because it speaks better than any explanation of Sharon's lifelong bond with Italy. For her, home isn't just where she lives, but where she feels she belongs, even when life takes her to the other side of the world.
Australia, little by little, ceases to be the country she arrived in and becomes the place where she grows up. A new language, a new school, new friends arrive, and when everything finally seems to have found its balance, the family sets off once again, this time towards New Zealand.
This time, too, Sharon starts over. The city, the school, and the friends have changed, but not the way she approaches each new beginning: she enters new places with curiosity, builds relationships naturally, and always ends up feeling part of the community that welcomes her.
Yet, as she grows up between two continents, something never changes. Italy returns to her in summers spent with relatives, in the flavors that remind her of her childhood, in family conversations, and even in the days dedicated to different cultures organized by her school, when she chooses to show up in the Italian flag and tell her classmates about the country where she was born with the pride of someone who knows exactly where she comes from.
Growing up among different cultures taught her to look at the world with curiosity, never viewing differences as distance. Sharon learned early on that one can belong to multiple places without betraying one's roots, and perhaps it is precisely this balance, built between departures, returns, and new beginnings, that makes her so attentive to people. Even before dance entered her life, she was already a girl who observed, listened, and allowed herself to be transformed by everything she encountered.
When Music Finds Sharon
There are encounters that change a life without making a sound. For Sharon, it happens in front of a movie screen. She has just seen Ballerina, An animated film that for many children ends with the credits; for her, however, it's the beginning of something destined to accompany her every day. As soon as she leaves the theater, she looks at her mother and says, with the casualness of someone who isn't making a wish but making a decision:
«Mom, I want to be a dancer.»
That phrase isn't just a fleeting enthusiasm. Her mother immediately understands that this isn't just another childhood passion. She recognizes in that phrase an unusual determination, destined to resurface every time Sharon faces something she loves.
Her first encounter was with classical dance. Sharon studied hard, practiced, listened to her teachers, and grew rapidly, but deep down she felt that that language, while teaching her discipline and technique, still couldn't fully express her.
One evening, she's at home with her mother. As often happens, they start watching dance videos on YouTube. Choreographies from all over the world flash across the screen until a hip-hop group appears. Sharon stops talking. She stares at the screen without taking her eyes off it, and after a few seconds, she breaks the silence with just two words. "This is it."«
At the Notorious Dance School Sharon feels like she's finally in the right place. Every movement seems to belong naturally to her body, and each choreography offers her a different way to express what words often fail to express. Her mother still remembers the enthusiasm with which she left her first lesson and the immediate phone call to her father.
From that moment on, dance becomes the rhythm around which the family's days are organized. School, the Auckland traffic, homework completed in the car, dinners hurriedly consumed before returning to the rehearsal room: everything is centered around that appointment, which Sharon never experiences as a sacrifice, but as the most anticipated moment of the day.
Yet no one, listening to these stories, gets the impression that all this is a sacrifice. On the contrary, dance seems to be the place where every effort takes on meaning.
Hip hop remains her most natural language, but curiosity pushes her to continually experiment: jazz, contemporary, lyrical, robot, heels, tap and even Latin American, which she started shortly before return to Italy.
The victories arrive, the trophies increase, and the talent is recognized by teachers and judges, but it is her mother who reveals the detail that changes the way she looks at Sharon's entire journey.
«"At a certain point, the competitions almost bored her. Not because she felt better than the others, but because she didn't dance to win."»
Her words explain who Sharon was far better than any medal. For her, the stage was never a place to prove something to others, but a space where she could express herself with a sincerity that those who watched her still remember today.
Even before becoming a girl's dream, dance had already become her language.
Her first teacher doesn't teach dance
Dance changes Sharon's life and, almost without either of them realizing it, ends up changing her mother's too. At first, her role is like many parents': she accompanies her daughter to class and waits for practice to finish, observing the world from a chair at the edge of the room.
As the years pass, that gaze changes. Her mother learns to distinguish a precise movement from a still-uncertain one, an authentic expression from a constructed one, a detail capable of transforming an entire choreography. Sharon notices this early and begins to seek that judgment with ever-increasing trust.
Thus, she begins to recognize a well-executed move, an expression that complements the music, a detail that could be improved. Sharon soon realizes that her mother's gaze isn't just the affectionate look of someone who would applaud her anyway, but a sincere, attentive judgment, from which she knows she can gain something. That's why every new choreography goes through her first, and every video recorded at the end of a workout ends up on her phone, almost always accompanied by the same question: "Mom, tell me the truth, what do you think?" It's a question that's repeated for years, until it becomes part of their way of speaking.
Sharon isn't looking for a compliment. She's looking for an honest opinion. She knows her mom looks at her with love, but she also knows she won't hide a mistake just to protect her. So, over time, the post-workout videos become almost a little ritual between them.
«"In the end, I became his judge," her mother says with a smile that conveys the full extent of their close relationship. Sharon trusts that judgment precisely because she knows it comes from love, not indulgence.
This constant competition teaches her that talent is never a destination. After each competition, Sharon rewatches the videos, looks for ways to improve, and resumes training with the same curiosity as the day before. The discipline with which she approaches dance, however, doesn't erase the lightheartedness of her fifteen years: outside the rehearsal room, she remains a girl who laughs with friends, fills her phone with photos, and dreams of the future with the enthusiasm of her youth.
Perhaps it is precisely in this balance between rigor and spontaneity that the Sharon that everyone remembers is built: a girl capable of demanding a lot of herself without ceasing to find joy in what she loves.
Between two worlds, one future
On Sharon's phone there is a little video montage of her raising the cup of Friends by Maria De Filippi. It's not a prediction or a game of vanity. It's the way a fifteen-year-old girl tries to give a concrete image of the future she dreams of.
«Mom, I can audition in two years,» she repeats.
He even has a video on his phone where he imagines himself lifting the show's trophy. He smiles as he watches it, but that short video captures his approach to dreams: first he imagines them, then he tries to build the path to achieving them.
For Sharon, returning to Italy isn't just about reuniting with her family or revisiting the places of her childhood. It means bringing home everything she learned while living between Australia and New Zealand. That project encompasses the little girl who, at three years old, asked for a ticket back to Avellino, and the young dancer who dreams of stepping onto an Italian stage without giving up anything of the journey she's traveled so far.
That future is already clear in her thoughts. Sharon talks about it, imagines it, prepares for it with the determination of someone who believes the time ahead is still fully lived.
Love comes on tiptoe
At fifteen, you fall in love with the same ease with which you experience all the important things in life: without imagining that one day someone will tell you about them.
It's the same for Sharon. At school she knows Max Fursekee, A boy who shares her age, the same light-heartedness, and that ability to look to the future as if he had all the time in the world ahead of him. He plays basketball, she divides her days between school and dance. Their lives intersect without grand gestures, between texts, outings, and afternoons spent together, until they become part of each other with the spontaneity that only belongs to first love stories.
Even the families end up getting to know each other. Sharon often talks about Max, bringing him into the stories of her days, as all teenagers do when someone begins to occupy a special place in their lives. It's a simple love, made up of everyday routines, of still-immature plans, and of that discreet happiness that doesn't feel the need to be constantly talked about.
Then comes a day that no one ever imagined they would have to remember.
While vacationing on Mount Maunganui, New Zealand, a landslide engulfs Sharon and Max. Rescuers are able to reach the boy first. Sharon is found days later. She is fifteen years old.
It would be easy to let this story end here. It would also be the simplest way to tell it. But that would mean reducing Sharon to the day her life ended, while everything her family continues to show me tells the exact opposite.
In the months that followed, Mom and Dad made a decision that spoke volumes about how they chose to navigate their grief. They didn't build a place to remember Sharon, but rather created opportunities for other kids to continue cultivating the same dreams that filled her life. Thus was born the’Sharon Maccanico Association, founded with family and friends with the goal of promoting dance, sports, inclusion, and youth development, turning every initiative into a concrete opportunity for those who come after. It's an organization built entirely on volunteers, where memories never become nostalgia, but translate into projects, meetings, support, and a future.
It's the same choice that I find in every corner of their house.
There's Vanilla, the dog who arrived when the family moved to New Zealand. At first, her mother thinks she can't keep her and searches for someone willing to adopt her. Then she discovers a video Sharon recorded, in which her daughter talks about abandoned animals and how much she wishes every dog could find a family. That video is enough to change everything. Vanilla stays.
Even today, she continues to search for Sharon throughout the house, as if waiting for the sound of her footsteps. The family watches her and smiles, because in that gesture they recognize something that needs no explanation.
Before saying goodbye, Mom goes back to the request she had made when we first met.
«"Talk about it in the present tense. Because Sharon is alive."»
At this point in the story, I realized it's not a request. It's the only possible way to tell it.
Sharon lives on in every boy who has the courage to pursue a dream, in every dancer who steps on stage without thinking about the trophy but about the freedom they feel when the music begins, in every person who chooses kindness over indifference, in every child who receives an opportunity thanks to the organization that bears her name.
She lives on in the Italy she never stopped loving. She lives on in the eyes of those who loved her and continues, every day, to tell her story in the present tense.
This is the most authentic mark a person can leave: continuing to change the lives of others even when they can no longer be met. And then, yes. Sharon lives.
