Confessions of a Ballet School Drop-out!

 

I always thought it would be fun to travel back in time and revisit some of my favorite childhood memories.  My happiest memories were that of taking ballet classes. Well, I am here to tell you that it is possible to go back in time…kind of.    Not long ago, I dared to join my local community center’s ballet class for adults.  As a child I had studied ballet for eight of my young years.  I was even promoted to Pointe, i.e. Toe Shoes for my last two years, which is the equivalent of a black belt in ballet.  I loved to dance; however, at the tender age of thirteen I gave it all up, after my parents had moved me away from the quaint town I grew up in, and my beloved ballet instructor.

After the move, my parents enrolled me in a prestigious ballet class in my new town, but on my first visit there I encountered some mean girls who made me feel unwelcome.  It was too much to deal with, having just moved away from the home I loved and all of my childhood friends, so I quit; just like that.  Note to parents:  Don’t let your child give up an eight year investment over being dissed by some snobs. Anyway, it appears that low self-esteem is a rite of passage for thirteen year old girls, so I’ll move on with my story.

Fast forward to middle age, and here I am about to walk into my first ballet class in at least three decades.  To my pleasant surprise most of the women in this class are around my age, give or take five years.  “Awesome!” I think to myself.  No pressure here, we are just a bunch of ladies trying to be little girls again; this will be fun- a piece of cake…wrong!  I quickly introduce myself to the instructor and she asks me if I have had previous ballet experience.  I explain that as a child I had extensive training for eight years, the last two on point shoes.  I may have over sold myself because she had a look of frustration when I tried to follow her simple commands and forgot everything she had just demonstrated for me to do.  Every move of my body took so much effort!  I felt myself starting to sweat.

I told myself to calm down; after all I was a grown-up, with significantly more weight on me than I had in grade school and junior high.  I tried to do a simple plié and encountered many disapproving looks from my class-mates as my knees and ankles cracked with each move.  I could swear there was a microphone at my feet! I purposely positioned myself behind a woman that appeared to know what she was doing…surely I could just copy her. That seemed to work until we were told to face the opposite direction, which brought me face to face with my own reflection in the floor to ceiling mirror!  I became distracted with a barrage of negative thoughts such as; “Ugh!  When did my thighs get so big?  I’ve got to lose some serious weight here! I used to look so cute in my ballet outfit… when I was ten!”

Tired of chastising myself, I tried to refocus on what I was doing.  Though sluggish, I felt my ballet muscle memory starting to kick in.  All at once I remembered how to position my head, arms and feet.  Ballet is very technical; every move of your body has a purpose and a rhythm to it, and just to add difficulty upon difficulty, it’s all in French!

I thought: “Hey at least I will get a chance to hang out with some nice women and maybe make a new friend or two.”  I noticed that several of the women seemed very friendly with each other. “This looks like a nice bunch,” I thought to myself and at the break I attempted small talk with them.  “Boy, you ladies are really good at this, I can’t believe how rusty I am, how long have you been taking ballet?”  The response from the five of them was a bothered stare and silence. One of the ladies finally responded by suggesting that I should take some other class.  Oh come on…really?!!  There are mean girls at my age!!!  My initial reaction was to walk away. Within seconds I felt all of the same rejection I did as a thirteen year old.  “That’s it!  I said to myself, I’m not coming back, what was I thinking? I can’t do ballet again, this was a stupid idea, I’m going to quit!”

And just like that, I realized that I was on the verge of making the same mistake that I had made as a teenager.  I couldn’t allow myself to do that.  I signed up for eight weeks and I was going to stick it out even if it killed me!  After-all, who did these mean girls think they were?  This was a community center for goodness sake!  The London Ballet Company wasn’t calling for any of us!  With that resolve, I returned the next week and made a friend.  She had overheard the mean girls the week before, and came to encourage me.  To this day we keep signing up for ballet month after month because we enjoy the struggle together.  It’s been five months now; I’ve lost ten pounds; I stand up straighter, and my husband says that I move like a ballerina…and the best part is I have a new friend.  Whoever said; you can’t change your past- was right about that; but you can learn from it, and I think I just did!

"Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it.  But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead."
Phillippians 3:13