Many ballet academies have a summer program of classes meant
to fill your need for disciplined dance when the company is taking a break from
their usual rigorous studies. If you’ve ever taken an introduction ballet
class, you might be accustomed to a collection of people who either took ballet
as a child twenty years ago, or some mature students who just seek a means of
staying fit, toned, and mentally challenged. But when I walked into the ballet
on Tuesday night, two students from my winter introduction class were coming
out of the first class of the evening, looking a little shell-shocked. When I
indicated I was taking the next class of the evening, I was wished good luck.
Good luck? I gripped my pink leather slippers tighter in my hand and marched
forth. Upon entering the studio, I noticed triple the attendance I was
accustomed to. Upon closer inspection, I noticed some “students” had their
pointe shoes. Huh. Then I noticed some faces that I recognized from the stage at
recent performances I’d attended. “Oh, hi,” I said to my instructor from my winter
course. And then I realized. She was there as a student. The piano player was
poised to nimbly move her fingers across the keys to deliver allegretto and vivace.
The dance instructor, whom I also recognized from the stage, walked in and
announced that the class was scheduled to start at 7:15, but she was greedy, so
we would start immediately. No stretching? I found a place at the bar, in a
corner where I’d hoped no one would pay much attention to me, but the lighting
was not in my favor. The instructor took position at the barre, with her long,
messy blond hair already showing signs of effort. She rapidly went through a
number of moves in ballet shorthand, indicating what phrase we would start with,
yadda, yadda, yadda. I absorbed nothing. I began daydreaming of cheese. I
looked to the young woman to my right and judged her a fairly good person to
imitate, but when the music started, I realized the human body isn’t entirely
equipped to move in that way, at that pace. After a number of tendus, pliés, and grande pliés, I wiped my brow, while the instructor
indicated that she wasn’t pleased with the lack of articulation. ‘I can do
this,’ I said to myself. I stretched my ronde de jambe further, dropped my
shoulders, and tried to make a perfect curve with my right arm, when I noticed
my grip on the barre would cause an injury if it were a partner. The instructor
continued to rattle out instructions at machine gun speed, while I did relevées and fondus. I wiped my
brow again. I tried to remember the fundamentals I’d learned in earlier
classes, of posture, and of a string extending from the top of my head pulling
me towards the ceiling, but I still felt 5’4”. The instructor, I began to refer
to her in my mind as Madame Satan, asked us to move to the middle of the room,
without the support of a barre. I’d hoped that all my crunches in the past few
months would pay off with some real balance. (What kind of cheese, though? A
cave-aged Manchego, drizzled with truffled honey?) A dancer from the corps de
ballet took up position next to me in the back of the room. Really? Do you just
want me to make you look better? We pirouetted. Or it might be more accurate to
say that Miss Fancy Feet next to me did her pirouettes and mine, which gave me a better appreciation for her taking
position next to me. We arabesqued. We did our pas de basques and our balancés, and I wiped perspiration from
my eyes. We moved to the part of class where we executed a phrase that would
take advantage of the diagonal distance from one corner of the room to the
other, four students at a time. Then we moved to the other corner to execute
the same phrase starting with the left foot, which is to say, do everything you
just did, but the other way around. This would have been fine had I gotten the
first round correct. (How about a Neufchatel with strawberries?) Did someone
give the piano player espresso before class? At this point, I’m certain I
merely looked like I was sleep-walking. The names of positions and movements
had stopped having any meaning. I was grateful, when we finally assembled in
the middle of the studio, to perform our ritual reveré.
My advice to you; if you are taking a “beginner” ballet
class, and notice some students sporting pointe shoes, gather your things and
back out of the room, slowly and quietly. And go eat cheese.
