It’s only been about seven or eight months since I started going like gangbusters to ballet classes, multiple classes, every week. Before that, it was sporadic at best with not a lot to show for it. Since I started working with Awesome Ballet Teacher, the changes have been just short of miraculous – I’ve learned so much so fast and the changes in my body have been incredible – I get stopped all the time by people asking me what I’m doing and they are always shocked to hear its ballet and not some kind of boot camp training or pact with the devil.

Still every couple of months or so I question what in the heck I think I’m doing taking ballet lessons. I can’t help myself, I’m overly rational and feel the need to dissect everything to death and back. What am I doing? I mean, the reality is that it makes no sense whatsoever for a grown woman to be dressing up in tights and  leotard in (sort of) public several times a week to try to learn how to spin around on one foot. It really doesn’t. When you factor in the costs of lessons, parking, and gas, along with the cost of the leotard and the tights, etc. this whole thing does get a bit pricey. Add to that the costs forgone, that is, the cost of my time for which I could be doing something else, like taking more consulting or lecturing jobs, working on my dissertation, or just sitting around watching TV and uh… doing whatever it is that people do who aren’t in ballet class three to four nights a week.

I really start to see the frivolity of the whole thing. After all, I could just go for a run, ride my bike or go to the gym for exercise like normal grown ups do. I mean, really, when you think about it what could possibly be more ridiculous than a gaggle of grown women with a lost looking guy or two thrown in there trying to pas de bourre around a dance studio looking like an overgrown, out of control romper room gone awry?!

There is always a day where I convince myself that my time would be better served doing something that has a payoff. I mean even when I ran there where marathons to complete and metals to win. Somewhere in some dusty boxes are trophies and awards for accomplishments and triumphs.  I’m never going to be a ballerina, I’m never going to perform, I’m never going to be able to do anything remotely awesome in pointe shoes and a tutu. I sometimes have myself completely convinced that when I finish my current series of ballet classes, I’m not going to renew because I need to be a better steward of my time and efforts. I’m usually in my car sitting in cross town traffic when I make this astute decision.

Then… then I finish ballet class. I grab my stuff out of the cubby and sit on the floor with my fellow not-real-ballerinas-in-training and not one of us can stop smiling. Awesome Ballet Teacher gives us updates while we thrown on jackets, cover ups, and change our shoes. I’m hot, sweaty, just starting to get post workout soreness; I’m also happy, inspired, and amazingly energized. I thank Awesome Ballet Teacher and step out into the cool evening, head down the stairs and off to my car, I know that I can’t give this up. There is nothing else like ballet class high, this is my payoff, this feeling that almost can’t be explained in words but that we acknowledge between us, we few ballet class addicts, as we walk out that door. It’s the way that ballet is challenging and somehow relaxing at the same time, the way it makes you stronger and yet limber too, its technical and creative, its painful and pleasurable. Ballet is the price and the payoff. I don’t need a spotlight or a tutu or applause. All I need is a sprung floor, a barre, an iPod loaded with beautiful music, and, of course, an Awesome Ballet Teacher. I can’t give this up. There could not possibly be a better use of my time.

Three excellent classes this past week. And I might have learned something that my teacher has been battling to get me to understand for the past eight months or so. Ready for it, it’s a lot bigger than I previously expected – stop looking down. Stop it!

First of all, when you lift your chin up, voila! it corrects the line like you wouldn’t believe. We were working on arabesques on releve at the barre and Awesome Ballet Teacher has one of the girls go up as an example and like pretty much all of us had been doing, her chin was down. With one slight, gentle move of his hand, he raised her chin and it was a complete transformation, she looked fabulous. Her leg didn’t get any higher but her chest did and the whole line was positively beautiful. Getting my chin off of my chest lengthens the neck, the shoulders, and the chest. It also allows my chest to open up so that I can expand into the movement rather than sink into my hips.

Not that I was ready to give up my floor and feet watching ways entirely but when we started doing across the floor exercises, Awesome Ballet Teacher challenged us to cross the floor without looking down once. As I reached the other side, Really Talented Classmate leaned over to me and said, it’s easier if you look at yourself in the mirror in front of you to stay up and in a straight line. Okay. So no looking down and looking ahead into the mirror. It was easier. Where did I think my feet were going to be? They pretty much stay under me, I mean, they are attached, they can’t really run off too far without my okay. I’m sort of in charge of where they go and I don’t actually have to see them in order to control them.

“You’re being very cautious, too cautious, you don’t have to be so cautious.” I was being terribly cautious, I was watching my feet, trying to calculate my steps and orchestrate my movements hoping to get them right. But as soon as I stopped looking at the floor and my feet, as soon as I took a chance on dancing a step instead of achieving a correct position, I was able to really move across the floor. No, the movements do not look that great, I can readily see that, but there is more fluidity and I can feel the movement in my body. My brain may not get it but my body is starting too! I realize that I am no longer worried about watching my feet and my chin does not want to immediately hit my chest so that I can look down. I’m just going and its starting to feel like dancing.