New Ballet Teacher: “*French French French French French French French*, close to fifth and rest.”

I think he says that “rest” at the end as a tease because no sooner are my feet flat on the ground when he says “turn” and then there is an onslaught of more French. Shouldn’t “rest” involve getting to sit down, have a drink of water, toweling off sweat… that sort of thing?!

“This combination is very slow, one and two and three and four, very slow stretching up from the top of our heads…” he says in a soft sing-song-y tone walking down the line of the barre. Then he gets to me and, this is why I DO NOT play poker, seeing the look on my face and says, “Well slow but not really that slow. It’s a single graceful movement but yeah, you are moving through it at a good pace. See that’s the illusion of ballet, that everything is moving slowly and easily but in reality you are working hard and controlled. It’s not really slow, it’s your job to make it look slow.”

And the man must read minds or maybe I have a bit of a habit of making faces… “…close to fifth and rest. This few seconds that you get to rest, that’s real, that’s ballet… and even that is not really resting because you are still holding a position, right? You are in fifth with arms in preparation, standing tall, standing strong, that’s powerful. But it is the few seconds that you have as a dancer to find your center before moving on, but you’ve got to be ready to move again! That is what preparation is all about, right?”

Yeah, it is. Rarely in ballet as in life, do we get to “rest” in the sense that most of us would like! That few seconds of “rest” we still have to stand tall and powerfully, we may only get a few seconds to center ourselves before having to dive back into the fray of partners, jobs, kids, family, friends, pets, house, school, and on and on. Such is the chaos of life, but in those few seconds we can stand, breathe, and using our own brow sweat as hair product push back that stray hair from in front of our face and slick it back down, turn, and dance some more. Okay, I get it ballet teacher, I literally only a get a moment of rest so I better use it wisely but the point is that I am here to dance not to rest and I am here to live not to sit out my life.

Okay, everyone, rest… now turn,other side, we have more dancing to do.

My ballet teacher teaches drop-in classes, privates, and series courses. I do all three as much as I can. A new series course began tonight. A friend from my Wed series class and I signed up together. This class series is at a different studio from the usual location so I made sure to leave early to give myself time to find the place. I climbed the stairs and walked through the door to find my teacher smiling and getting his iPod ready. I  immediately spied cubbies and went to put my things away, take off my warmup, and stretch a bit. Next thing I know, I turn around and someone released half a dozen or so Urban Outfitters models in my ballet class! Tall, skinny, and no more than twenty-five, they all wore cutesy leotards with strategically placed cut outs and pink Capezio slippers right out of the packaging with the laces tied in huge bows. In that moment, I felt so incredibly short and chubby. The comfort level that I felt in my new coral leotard and matching pink and coral dance skirt vanished. Only an hour before, I had put the outfit on for the first time and almost felt kind of cute. Now I was contemplating putting my baggy warmup overall back on but class was about to begin before I could make up my mind.

I grabbed any space at the barre, not really caring, just wanting to get on with it but my teacher moved me to the end. “I need you to lead this side of the room,” he said with a smile. I think I smiled back. He called out the sequence of the combination and counted out the tempo. Then music flooded the small, hot studio, in the background was the even sound of my teacher’s voice, counting, making corrections and nothing else mattered. An hour and a half later I was soaked in sweat, my thighs were burning, my feet were starting to cramp, and I was happy. I looked over at my friend, Joanna, and we shared a smile and basked wordlessly in each other’s post-class glow. I looked around and was confused to see the lack of dance-glow in my new classmates, most of whom just grabbed their stuff and headed out toward the parking lot as quickly as possible. And in that moment, I felt sorry for them. No one can give you the joy of dancing, you either discover it there in your soul or you don’t. I may not be Ford model material, but I do know the pure joy of being ballet, of moving inside the music, and of experiencing the juxtaposition of being both freed and completed when I dance.

I was proud of myself tonight. Yeah, I let myself down by comparing myself to others and determining that I lacked for a moment. Then that moment was gone and I was able to pull it together and focus on what’s important. I had a great class. I worked hard and I made progress. I got to work with a teacher that I greatly admire. I got to dance. Today I got to dance. Any day that I get to say that is a great day and I will not mar it by being petty and ridiculous. Today I got to dance and I am happy.