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\"I'd get there at least two hours early to line up. I wanted to make sure I was in the first group,\" Mesher says of her Rockettes audition process. \"I have the mentality that if I'm going to get cut, I want to get cut first. Then I have the rest of my day.\"

A basic classic Rockettes combination is rapidly taught, then performed in smaller groups. The people at the front of the room confer and cut dancers. The process repeats with a jazz combination, a tap combo and then another jazz number with more specific stylization, with cuts made all the way through. \"It's your career at stake,\" Mesher says, \"and this is such a dream for so many people, myself included.\"

Roughly 40 of the 400 to 500 women who waited in line are still standing. They're sent home with instructions to return the next day for callbacks.

That day is shorter but in many ways more intense. Those auditioning repeat the combinations from the previous day, with the added pressure of knowing the artistic staff is looking at whether they've retained the corrections and details they've already been given.

They'll then learn a new combination or add material to one they already know. A few more cuts are made, and then it's down to the remaining women -- usually around 20 -- who are told they'll get a call in the next couple of weeks.

Mesher first auditioned in April 2018, toward the end of her junior year at Pace University. \"I was just going in to see how I would do,\" she says of that tryout. \"I know that it takes most girls a couple of years to get this job, so I wanted to start making that work happen before I graduated.\"

She had already begun forging that relationship the previous summer, when she first attended the Rockettes Summer Intensive to train with the troupe's artistic staff.

\"I like to see women evolve a little bit in the audition process,\" says Karen Keeler, the troupe's creative director, \"whether that's through several different auditions or just from the day and the callbacks.\"

Much to Mesher's surprise, she made it through to the final round of callbacks her first time out. She didn't book the gig, but \"getting all the way through was a huge honor. I never went in expecting to get that far.\"

\"Sydney instantly had a keen understanding of the precision and consistency required of this work,\" Keeler recalls. \"She was willing to give it everything she had.\"

Encouraged by receiving a callback, Mesher attended the Rockettes Summer Intensive for a second time. Then she auditioned again, just before the start of her senior year. She didn't get the offer that time either, but it was all going according to plan. \"I wanted to get my degree, and then I wanted to become a Rockette,\" she says.

At the end of this past January, Mesher broke her foot while dancing when she landed a jump wrong. The injury required surgery, crutches and a boot and kept her out of the studio for four months during her final semester of college.

While this was far from Mesher's first significant injury -- during her senior year of high school, she cracked her L4 vertebrae and had two herniated disks -- it was, she says, by far the most challenging.

\"It was one of the darkest places in my life,\" Mesher says.

\"You're on crutches, and being on crutches in New York City when it's snowing and freezing out, it was challenging even just to go outside. I tried to avoid moving unless I had to.\"

Complicating matters were the crutches themselves.

\"That was one of the first times in my life that I really faced adversity with my hand -- having to hop and being able to only use one hand,\" Mesher says. \"I had to figure things out in a different way.\"

And there was an emotional toll in being unable to do what she loves and watching her friends perform their senior solos.

\"But I came out determined,\" Mesher says. She worked with a personal trainer to do everything she could to keep the rest of her body in dancing shape and began physical therapy on her foot earlier than was required.

The next New York audition for the Rockettes was in April. She wasn't out of her boot in time for that one, so instead, she went to Atlanta at the beginning of May.

\"I did the audition two weeks out of my boot,\" Mesher says. \"Looking back at it now, that was absolutely insane.\" Audition No. 3 didn't yield a spot, so after graduating with her bachelor's degree, she headed back for her third round at the Rockettes Summer Intensive.

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A post shared by Sydney Mesher (@sydmesh) on Dec 23, 2019 at 8:46am PST

Audition No. 4 was in New York in August, and Mesher once again made it to the final round.

Keeler is in the habit of sleeping on the final decision, waiting until she knows in her gut that she's making the right call about whom to hire. After Mesher's audition, Keeler kept thinking about how she executed the choreography, how she handled herself and how she came back better each day. \"I knew she was ready for this challenge,\" Keeler says.

Mesher got the call while visiting her parents in Portland. She and her mom were in separate cars in a parking garage, on their way to work out in the same facility where she had grown up taking dance classes.

\"It was like a movie moment,\" Mesher says. \"We ran to meet each other in the middle. I completely lost it. I started bawling and ran into my mother's arms.\"

Four auditions, three summer intensives and one broken foot later, she was going to be a Rockette.

Being a Radio City Rockette is one of the most coveted jobs in dance. There are 80 spots on the line -- two casts of 36, with four swings/dance captains for each.

For the auditions held every April and August in New York, the line of hopefuls wraps around the building, located in Rockefeller Center. In total, roughly 1,000 women auditioned this season. Only 13 of those were offered positions, including Mesher, and that number is unusually high.

As if that weren't enough, some determining factors are out of the dancers' control. For example, the Rockettes won't consider anyone shorter than 5-foot-6 or taller than 5-10½, and the gradation of heights in the line is carefully controlled to create the optical illusion that the women are of identical size.

No matter how well you perform or how much those making the decisions like you, you can lose out on the job simply because there aren't any open slots for someone your height that season.

\"When you commit to being a Rockette, you have to give up wanting to be a soloist or a star,\" Keeler says. \"You have to know that the whole is more important.\"

Uniformity is the name of the game, and something as seemingly insignificant as a chin tipped at not quite the right angle can throw off a performance. The choreography dictates even the speed at which the dancers flick their fingertips. Those missing inches at the end of Mesher's left arm, in other words, could have presented a sticking point.

It's not, however, an impediment to Mesher's ability to do the steps. \"I'm not the type of person who would audition if I didn't think I was capable,\" she says. \"The last thing I wanted to do was have people make alterations for me.\"

Challenging as it is, the choreography for the Rockettes is almost entirely self-contained. And Mesher has nearly two decades of experience making whatever small adjustments she needs to in order to smooth and disguise the difference. \"This is all I've ever known,\" she says.

Since becoming a Rockette, Mesher has received emails and direct messages on Instagram from families that have found out about her through the Lucky Fin Project. The nonprofit works to raise awareness about and celebrate those with symbrachydactyly or other limb differences.

The organization posts her show schedule for community members who want to take their children with such disabilities to see Mesher perform. \"I try to meet them outside after the show and get a picture with them,\" Mesher says.

Lucky Fin also helped make it possible for a young fan born with one hand to meet Seattle Seahawks linebacker Shaquem Griffin last year.

\"It brings people [together] who are going through the same things and makes it more normal,\" Mesher says. \"I wish it was something I'd known about growing up.\"

Mesher is becoming the role model for dance that she didn't have growing up. But her feelings about being seen as a symbol for the disability community are complicated.

\"I do have things that have made my life more challenging,\" she says. \"I sometimes struggle with tying my shoes, but in the grand scheme of things, that's not really a big challenge. I have an issue with acting as if I've gone through this incredibly hard life.\"

Mesher's interpretation of the choreography is the same as that of her fellow Rockettes. The only tweaks are to the props and wardrobe.

She carries one set of bells instead of two for an act. And Mesher worked with the props team at the beginning of the season to make it easier for her to carry and dance with a large toy block for a scene set in Santa's workshop. If she's wearing gloves in an act, the material is adjusted to fit over her left arm. The left sleeve has been shortened on costumes as well.

\"I don't think of Sydney in any other way than being a talented young woman who got hired as a Rockette,\" Keeler says. If the steps call for the dancers to wave at the audience with their left hand, Mesher extends her arm and waves.

During the first night of preview performances, Mesher's parents and sister overheard a person in the row behind them pointing out \"the girl with one hand.\"

After the show, they realized that the person who had been whispering had brought a young girl to the performance who also had one hand. They brought her to the stage door to meet Mesher after the show.

\"It's all about the next family,\" Page says. \"Somewhere out there, there's a little girl like Sydney who dreams of being a Rockette, and when she puts her head down at night, she's got doubts. 'Can I really do it?'\"

\"They're going to see the Rockettes maybe, and maybe Syd will meet them, and that little girl is going to realize, 'I can do it too. I'll fight through all the tough things. But nobody can tell me no.' \"

This story originally appeared on espnW.com. Disney is the parent company of ESPN and “Good Morning America.”

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