Variation Under Nature

So after I saw the movie Black Swan last fall, I felt an overwhelming urge to learn ballet.  For some reason watching Portman ballet herself to death made me want to do that.  Except for the dying.

So here I am.  A few months later.  Taking my first ever adult ballet class.  No idea what to expect, I arrived early to register and to hunt down some slippers. I borrowed some hugely over-sized safety-pinned ugly black slippers from the office lady…the same lady who also gave me a tour of the school. I’m at the Kansas City Ballet School.  The way I see it is – if I’m gonna do ballet, I’m gonna DO ballet. No messing around with fake ballet-y0galates crap.  I want the real deal.

Within ten minutes of arriving, the Director of the school was asking me to “please not take photos with my phone because of social media being so out of control.” Lesson #1 – no pictures.  Lesson #2 – wear real dance clothes, not pajamas.  The girls were still inside the studios, while their matching Vera Bradley bags waited on the floor outside the doors. I peaked in the window to see the young ballerinas in pink and white leotards, hair pulled tightly into buns, obediently following their instructors, just like you would imagine. None of the students looked much older than fourteen.  Mothers were sitting, waiting patiently outside the classrooms.

Ok, the girls were not quite that young, but close. I spied one lady dressed in ballet get-up who I suspected was not a mother, but was also there for the adult beginner class.  I sat on the floor near her and tried to look busy with my Blackberry.  Soon the classes released and the girls poured out, quickly gathering up their belongings and rushing down the hallways.

I proudly entered KC Ballet School Studio 4.  Open floor, bars, a piano, mirror walls…it looked like, well you know, a ballet studio.  After a few minutes, about a dozen students had arrived, including two men. The instructor was starting class and no one seemed to notice that I was an incompetent ballet rookie. So I decided to announce to the instructor and the rest of the class that it is my first time and I apologize in advance for ruining the class for everyone else, but I’ll do my best to follow along.

For those of you who don’t know, the different positions in ballet are called out by number…first position, second position, etc.  I guess there are five. Lesson #3 – learn the positions.  And there’s a lot of French words like plie, releve, and fondu.  Yes, fondu.  I get hungry when I hear it too.  So I did my best to follow the instructor’s lead and I have to admit I did pretty well.  I decided that ballet is nothing more than choreographed stretching in increments of eight with piano accompaniment.

Class was ninety minutes, but I’d say thirty were warming up/cooling down. The other sixty were straight up flexing, kicking, pointing, bending, turning, stretching, reaching in all sorts of ways that probably most people’s bodies don’t allow for.  In all seriousness, I loved it. I absolutely loved it.  It was certainly not easy, but with focus, strength, determination and some flexibility, ballet can be loads of fun. Lesson #4 – trim toenails. The only thing that got me was the pirouette, which is a spin on one leg’s toes that I am pretty sure defies the law of gravity.

Yikes! Bendy. Lesson #5 – bring water bottle.

What I love about ballet is, if only for ninety minutes, I get to imagine that I am a sugar plum fairy princess.

Even though I am certain that I much more accurately look like this.