I had to take ballet lessons when I was young. Hated them with a passion. I used to spend hours daydreaming about what it would be like to dance like a professional ballerina. So graceful and light-footed, ballerinas seem to me like angels bringing heaven down to earth, showing us what spirits look like when they move. Although I love to watch ballet, I have always abhorred the idea of joining in the dance. I am a klutz. I was born with an unavoidable tendency toward total lack of balance. At the time that I was taking ballet – did I mention I hated it? – I was all preteen knobby knees and elbows. I felt horribly, excruciatingly inferior every time I went to class. Just stepping out onto the studio floor felt like an insult to the beauty of the craft I reverently dreamed about. There are few things worse for a kid then to want something so badly and be reminded consistently and thoroughly that it is an impossible dream.
My mother made me do it. She signed me up for 4 years of consecutive torture. It was perhaps one of the hardest and greatest gifts she ever gave me. My mom knew movement was a challenge for me in the best of circumstances. She also knew that gracefulness was not something I would ever grasp in any measure unless it was drilled into me week after week in the repetition of classical ballet training. I argued and bawled and screamed and begged to get out of classes, but mom was adamant and she never budged. I look back at those days and know with the distance of time and the wisdom of adulthood that she did me an enormous favor in refusing to relent. I am reminded of this each time I pour a cup of tea and notice my pinky delicately lifted, a dancer’s hand floating gracefully through the air.
Still, I am reticent to participate in anything even remotely resembling a dance class. My BFF Tamara is a dancer. She is in many ways a bridge for me between what I am, and what I want to become. It is because of her that I work part time for a non-profit performing arts company. I have watched her perform in full-length ballets with this company for years and had the privilege to watch many of the students of this company become professional dancers. However, a thin cast hampered this year’s production. They needed dancers and suddenly opportunity was knocking at my door.
“The nobles just walk, and the ladies wear long skirts,” she said. “You can do that.”
Seeing that they were desperate, and knowing that ballerinas are human too, I decided that I could probably risk a “walking dance” especially if I was wearing a tent for a skirt and no one could see my shuffling gait. I was pretty sure I could be a ballerina from the waist up. And besides, I’d seen the principal dancers in this production and I knew no one would be watching me once they took to the stage.
So, before I could chicken out, I volunteered to join the cast as a Noble Woman. Suddenly I was going to be a dancer and share the stage, in a public performance, with people who could actually float like angels. What was I thinking?
Check my blog next week to find out what happened next in Part 2 of Twinkle Toes Redeemed.
