My mom believed in dance and music classes for young ladies. Maybe she’d read too much Jane Austen, her favorite writer. She subscribed to the idea of ladylike accomplishments, which included playing a musical instrument, learning to sing, and dancing like a ballerina. I started lessons with the harpsichord (my dad was an Early Music aficionado) and then piano, and in later years I picked up the guitar (quite badly) in order to play in a band. I was enrolled in choral groups for a decade. Music transformed from a chore to a delight.
Music stayed with me all my life, in some form or another. Not so dance. My mom started me in toddler mommy-and-me classes and then, when I was around six or seven, she enrolled me in a ballet class with a formidable teacher named Madame DeFazio.
Madame ran a strict, old-skool class. Pink tights and black leotards were de rigueur, hair was to be put up in neat ballerina buns, and heaven help you if you were late to class! She ran her small studio in a posh residential neighborhood, out of her airy basement which had been outfitted with high windows, mirrors, and barres. We also had a live piano accompanist, a white-haired man named Carl. I never realized then how spoiled we were for music.
I’m sorry to say I did not appreciate these lessons, which I struggled through until I was about nine. Even at that age, I was not flexible, nor did I have the long, graceful limbs that natural ballet dancers are lucky to be born with. I always felt supremely ungraceful and clunky and chunky and I watched with longing as other girls who had started at the same time as me went on to bust out effortless pirouettes while I struggled with not getting dizzy during the plain chaînés turns. Plus, those pink tights were awful.
I hated it.
I complained so much and so loudly that eventually my parents gave up and let me drop the class.
I had lots of girl friends in grade school who were obsessed with ballet. I never understood it. One girl had posters of ballerinas and pointe shoes all over her room. Another started taking dance classes nearly every day. I was mystified. To me, ballet had been pure torture.
About a year ago, however, I started thinking about ballet again. Perhaps it was the proliferation of all the barre classes in my neighborhood that prompted those memories. I started looking up adult ballet classes in my neighborhood. But I always talked myself out of it. I was too old, I was too out of shape, I would look ridiculous. I started training in Pilates instead — but that only made me more curious about ballet. I began reading blogs and stories of other dancers who began as adults. Some even managed to start dancing on pointe, which I’d thought impossible unless you started in your teens. I got inspired.
Finally I found what looked to be a low-key, absolute beginner’s class offered through a local community college that started over the summer. On a whim, I signed up, reminding myself I could always cancel and request a refund. I didn’t cancel. Two weeks ago, I went to my first ballet class in over thirty years.
I was shocked to discover that I loved it.
I finally get why all those girl friends in elementary school loved ballet. I couldn’t figure it out at the time because I was too focused on the fact that it is hard. Yes, ballet is really, really hard. It is supposed to be hard. It is about discipline and precision, while appearing to be able ease and grace. As I kid, I felt only frustration that I couldn’t just do it. As an adult now, however, I relish the difficulty. It’s what makes the art form so exciting and interesting. The most surprising thing about ballet, to me, is how mentally and intellectually challenging it is, in addition to being physically hard. I found my mind always working, always trying to solve the puzzle of matching arms to legs and feet, remembering the correction, listening to and trying to express the music. I’d heard rock climbers say similar things about their sport — that it’s an intellectual feat as much as a physical one. Ballet is so much about engaging your brain and I love that.
Even when I don’t do well, even when I completely fail to understand a step or sequence, I still feel this high afterwards. My brain is soaking in the information and my body is testing out and stretching out its limits. It’s exhilarating.
I probably won’t go so far as to decorate my house with posters of pointe shoes, but I kin understand the impulse for the first time. When you discover how awesome ballet is, you kind of want to surround yourself with it all the time with the reminder of how completely satisfying it is to engage your body and your brain.
Thanks, Mom, for planting that seed so many years ago.