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!

I’ve gotten used to certain places at the barre. I usually prefer perimeter barres over free-standing barres and I usually like corners. I also prefer the least amount of mirror possible. If I can stand by a window or a wall, I will gravitate toward it. Even if your preferences are 100% different, you know what I’m talking about – you find “your place” and there is a sense of comfort about it. I’ve always been at war with the mirror, we’ve never been friends, not even freniemies. No likey mirror, no likey. And that has been a big determiner to where I stand. I’ll even deal with minimal amount of room and just adjust in order to keep my place.

A couple of weeks ago, a friend that I haven’t seen in a long time was in class. She beckoned me over and after a series of hugs and quickly catching up, she asked me to stand in front of her. This put me in a totally new place in the studio – a corner that I’d never gotten near. It is the corner with full mirrors and not just any mirrors… the FAT mirror. But one does not abandon a fellow ballerina in her first class back after a long time away! That would be kind of cruel, us ballet peeps have to stick together after all. So there I was standing in front of these big, FAT emphasizing, full length mirrors; standing right in front so that there was nothing to look at but me, me, me in that FAT mirror.

Want to hear something crazy? I like it. The ability to self-correct was amazing. I discovered so much about the difference between where I thought my arms, legs, hands, and feet were positioned versus where they actually were! and the ability to make those adjustments with a simple glance in the mirror… why did I resist this all this time? Well, of course, because I have body image issues and I still do but this amazing thing happened that night and has continued to happen class after class… I still judge myself harshly before class but as I start to warm up and class starts, my attention diverts from my unwanted poundage to my dancing, to seeing myself move and to matching up what I see with how it feels to move.

I have a new little corner in the studio surrounded by mirrors and I like to look… who would have thought!?! Practically by magic, I have learned to harness the power of la glace and it is amazing what there is to be learned. It’s about watching my form and watching the effort that I put in to my technique, not about worrying if I look chubby. I actually can concentrate on dancing rather than focusing on the size of my thighs – even when I’m actually looking at my thighs!

Here’s a thought… what if we begin to think that when we look in the mirror that there are dancers looking back, not girls with tummies or thighs that we don’t like; that we begin to see ballet dancers moving and dancing instead of boys and girls that are just making believe. Let’s try it, I think that we will like it!