Ever had a class where despite all your best efforts to get warmed up, to get your head in the game, to have a great class just start to fizzle from the outset? I’m pretty sure that if you have ever taken a dance class, that you have had just this experience. Sometimes the ballet gods are busy with, you know, more important things, like world peace starting with the Bolshoi.

Okay, so the other day, I had two left feet that were not being very friendly with each other nor any other body part for that matter. Now this is not that unusual as I normally move about like I have two left feet that belong to someone else but it was particularly distressing in ballet class. Just as I was about to begin to mentally chastise my feet for insolence and tyranny, my eyes caught my arms in the mirror. The mirror that I have so despised up this point came to my rescue. I have nice arms. I have one obstinate finger but even that can be coaxed into some fairly decent behavior.

I spent the rest of barre enjoying the most luxuriant arm movement that I was capable of. Arms, arms, arms. Let me also point out that up until a couple of months ago, I kind of considered the barre arm as dead weight, I mean, aren’t you supposed to cling on for dear life and not fall over by keeping it kind of rigid like a support girder!?! I guess not. Honestly, my feet never really joined the party but I was too busy enjoying the company of nice arms to really noticed too much. And much to my pleasure, I walked out of class happy and with a few compliments to boot.

My point is that even on a bad day, we can save ourselves from experiencing a “bad class” which you know, I haaaatttteeee. I hate when we tell ourselves that we’ve had a “bad class” instead of realizing that we are human beings not robots. Everything isn’t going to fire off exactly the way that we would hope that it would each and every day. It is what it is. Maybe if our feet aren’t working, we can spend that class time focusing on our arms, or our head, or our core… there are so many things to work on in dance class that surely we can find something positive for each and every moment that we get in the studio. After all, we are so very lucky to have dance in our lives, aren’t we! Let’s not waste time mentally screaming at our feet when we can be dancing on them!