Tag Archives: #BalletBlog

My 1st ballet class in 4 years

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So, my friends, I signed up for a Monday, 5 week course in a town that is about 45 minutes from where I live. As it is, adult ballet is not really a thing in North Carolina and adult ballet classes are hard to come by. Charlotte Ballet offers classes but that’s more than an hour drive and the class is only half an hour so mathematically that doesn’t really make any sense. This dance studio offers a number of classes for adults: ballet, tap, modern, contemporary. It is a really nice big studio in a really nice, well lighted area with tons of parking. I’m still a Californian by birth so free parking is like holy grail, peeps, it just makes us Angelinos so very happy. I dug around in the moving bins that are (still) squirreled away in my attic and found my flatties. As I was still feeling really trepidatious about the whole thing, I didn’t pull out all my ballet stuff. I retrieved two pairs of flatties, a pair of dance socks, two of my favorite cover up tee shirts, and two small hand towels that I got in Japan at a trip to the World Ballet Festival. 

Today is cold, it’s rainy, and I’m not sure that any of this is actually a good idea. I hate driving in the dark here because it can get really dark, I mean, like dark. When you are from the city you don’t understand the darkness that comes from long stretches of farm land without city lights, street lights, or, um, other signs of life. Now, bear in mind that I don’t even live in the country-country. We thought we did but when we referenced living in the country during our first year here, we got laughed at and corrected. We are actually townies as we live in town and the town we live in is actually considered a medium sized city with lots of shopping and places to eat despite the fact that virtually nothing is open on Sunday. Also, deer. I really really really do not want to hit a deer. We have tons of deer in our neighborhood, we like to leave corn and apples out for them and they will walk right up into our backyard. It’s brilliant and I love it. And I’ve been instructed by those who know to never ever turn the wheel or try to swerve away from a deer in the road, that’s how people get killed. Not swerving to avoid them is how deer get killed, that’s for sure. When it is cold they tend to run around to get warm. I love seeing them run around our lower backyard but I do not relish seeing them run across the road. So driving at night, in the cold, makes me really nervous. My first class, which was tonight, Carboy decided that he would be the prince that he is and he drove me and waited in the car park. I don’t expect him nor would I ask him to do that regularly but it was a lovely thing for him to do and since I was on the verge of backing out, I accepted and we headed out to the studio.

To my surprise when we got there, there were lots of ladies! When I first started taking class in LA, they were pretty empty. After that (dumb and unwatchable) movie Black Swan, things picked up and then ballet classes started to really trend in LA so toward the end, classes were packed. Everyone was really friendly and helpful and our little lithe ballet teacher was all smiles and happiness and even though I felt like my feet were made of lead and I could barely touch my toes, it was great to move to music, with other ballerinas, in a big lovely studio, and I was happy. The beginning ballet class was before Christmas so this was more of an intermediate class. No worries, I just dug into the movement and the music and followed along as best I could.

Tomorrow, North Carolina is battening down the hatches for a storm that will be passing through on its way to New England. Schools are closed and everything is cancelled so we will hunker down and pray that the rain and the wind are gentle to our much loved homestead. Sometimes when a ton of rain soaks the ground and then wind whips around the tree tops, it can bring them down. So that’s not fun. And there is an outside possibility of tornados as well. Perhaps that is my least favorite thing about living in NC is that we do get an occasional tornado warning and we have to head down into the basement. But I am grateful that we have a nice basement that we have set up and stocked for these events but I do hope and pray that we don’t end up there tomorrow. Tonight I am still glowing in the light of a really fun cello lesson trying to find 4th position on my A string and a great ballet class trying to find my legs again. So, I guess, here I go. Again.

x Lorry

Almost 10 years between classes in my dance class journal!

Creating a space for ballet

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I’ve started doing some basic ballet exercises again. Not really a self class or a practice. Just a few moments here and there throughout the day for some plies and some tendu’s. Perhaps one of the biggest challenges for adult dancers who have suffered a break in practice, either from an injury, a pandemic, or any other manner of life challenges, is the mental part of getting back to dance. If you, like me, have put on weight, lost flexibility, have a variety of new challenges, the big part to starting again is to create a space for ballet. I’m not talking about an actually space to dance although I think that is a part of it. But, to create that space for ballet as an important part of life again. So much has happened to all of us in the last couple of years, we are all out of sorts. I think it’s okay to give ourselves permission to embrace movement and music as important again.

I have a small step ladder in my study. I use it to reach my bookshelves because I’m short but it’s actually also a perfect baby sized barre. Every now and again when I’m in my study doing work I find myself at this little barre just going through a few exercises that I remember from ballet class. No music, I just count. It feels good and each time I do it, it feels better. My body remembers and it doesn’t. Things feel clunkier, stiffer, but I push through it and hear the voice of my ballet teacher saying “fight for it” so I do. I hear the last ballet teacher that I had right before lock down, after the class he told me that everything was there. It was a meaningful statement to me because I had just confessed to him that I had been out of class for literally years and it was a lone class but a truly wonderful and necessary class for me. At the time, I was ready to get back to class but it was not to happen because just weeks after returning home to Los Angeles from London the world shut down and my return to ballet class in 2019 never happened.

My little step stool, oh sorry, my baby barre.

And now I find myself in Albemarle, North Carolina, where ballet classes for adults aren’t really a thing and it’s been another year that has gone by since I arrived here and found myself not mentally nor emotionally ready to dance after all. The little step stool is beckoning me though and the ability to take classes via Zoom mean that even at a distance, even without a studio, ballet class can happen again. And who knows, maybe I can find a studio that will be open to teaching adults in the near future. It’s not just about having a place to dance, it is very much about creating a space in my heart and mind for ballet again.