HOW RETURNING TO BALLET AFTER 20 YEARS IS MAKING ME A BETTER ARTIST, WRITER, AND PERSON.
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Confession: At age five, I was kicked out of ballet.
It had been a short run; maybe a class or two. I can’t recall my teacher’s face or the location of the studio. All I remember was a mirror, a bar, and being told to plié, plié, plié until I was literally bored to tears. Where were the jumps? The twirls? The lifts? The general lack of theatre seemed an egregious oversight of some kind, and I made my dissatisfaction clear. By the end of (my last) class, the teacher acquiesced to my repeated demands for choreographic freedom. With the other dancers as my unwitting audience, I was allowed to take center floor and improvise a solo. This, apparently, was a one-time accommodation. I was not welcome back.
Though I tried other sports growing up, none of them stuck. Let’s just say this: I am not a born athlete, and the participation trophies I received along the way did little for my adolescent self-esteem. So what? I was an artist. An intellectual. Too smart, too busy, (and eventually too self-conscious) to play sports. Over time, I came to think of myself as uncoordinated, introverted, and generally reserved. Certainly not the kind of person to put on a show, let alone perform an unsolicited solo. And so when I decided to return to ballet a few months ago (I had turned 25, it’d come time to get moving), I expected to enter the studio of my adulthood to be shown just how different I’d become from the little girl who’d been kicked out of class all those years ago. Instead, I met her all over again.
Of course, I have grown some. I would never intentionally disrupt my instructor, a woman I very much respect—I’ve even learned to love the repetition of pliés—but I’m not reserved either. I’m not shy and or even uncoordinated. I may not be vying for a solo anytime soon, but when at the start of class no one else wants the front-and-center spot at the bar, I don’t mind taking it. I still like speaking up, too. I ask and answer questions, I banter and make jokes!
It’s so easy as we get older to underserve our potential, to limit ourselves, always to our own detriment. We toss out little self-deprecating lies all the time: Oh, I’m not athletic / flexible / coordinated enough. I could never do that, I’m too shy! And eventually, we believe it! It’s often not until we give ourselves the chance to prove otherwise that we realize we’ve been selling ourselves short all along.
I had started ballet with the idea that I needed to change something about who I was. To “shape up” and start taking better care of myself. To trick myself into working out, even if I felt unlikely to stick with it—after all, I’d given up so many times before. But after so many hours of pliés, cambrés, and relevés—trying, failing, and flailing but always returning to the bar—I began to realize that there is little difference between becoming who I’d like to be and rediscovering who I always have been.
And so it makes sense that not only has ballet made my body stronger, more muscular and more flexible, (I still can’t do the splits, but I’m closer than I’ve ever been) it’s also made my mind more flexible, agile, and able. It’s made me feel confident again, not just in my physical expression, but in my creative expression as well. When I write the words come more easily. When I draw, my lines are more lucid. I can more readily enter into the zone—that sacred place all artists seek constantly, the state of supreme focus where all else falls away save for the act of creation. After all, what is dance if not an active form of this same meditation? If I lose focus in class for more than a second, I loose track of the combination, close my tendu in the wrong spot, and I’m lost. When I’m dancing, there can only be dancing. It’s given me back the gift of my own attention. God, how I’ve missed that! I’m so gratified to find that the discipline expected of me at the bar has bled into other areas of my life as well: the house is staying cleaner. I’m eating healthier and getting more done.
To dance ballet with grace requires one to be both an artist and an athlete. While I’ve always believed myself to be the former, the latter is, for the first time in my life, beginning to feel within reach. So here’s to trying and failing and trying again; there is always so much more to discover.
What I’m Reading
- The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron
- The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp
- Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thich Nhat Hanh
(I’d recommend all of these to any and everyone.)
What I’m Working On
- The next issue of my comic “Claire’s Not There”
- (You can request a copy of the first issue here!)
- A handful of short story drafts—all of which I hope to share soon!