Something that I’ve kept very quiet about up until… Well, this year, is my love of dance and especially ballet.

I really truly adore to dance.

The only problem is that I’m extremely bad at it. As in, falling over my own two feet in a normal aerobics class bad. And I’ve felt like to even mentioned my interest to other people was to infringe on the art of dance.

Well, I don’t know what happened, but this summer I finally decided that wasn’t going to stop me anymore, and signed up for a beginner ballet class.

I’ve now completed about half of my first semester and I have some reflections about it.

 

Many of the “worries” I had before I started have been realized.
I really really don’t have any natural predisposition for ballet.
I have weirdly aligned hips, so I’m knock-kneed and have extremely little natural turnout.
And very little coordination. It’s actually the reason it took me so long to learn how to drive, I kept getting confused when I had to drive (do physical things) and keep an eye on the traffic at the same time.
I’m not unmusical, per se, (I am a singer, after all) but I don’t have much sense for rhythm either. If I don’t count obsessively, I get super lost.

And don’t get me started on flexibility. Right now my biggest problem is my back that prevents me from doing other streches properly.

Part of me had hoped that I’d just imagined all that, and I’d just be a natural. We have some people in my classes, they just have amazing turnout, great postures (skinny!) and it can make me so jealous sometimes.

BUT (and this is the big but)

God HOW I try. It’s extremely tiring working against my body all the time, essentially, but there are few times I’m more focused than when I’m in class. And if I hadn’t read beforehand that corrections are a good thing I’d probably be crying after every class, because it seems I can’t do ANYTHING right, the way the teacher keeps correcting me.
And I’ve done so many releves that I’ve overworked the muscles in my right foot (my weaker foot) because my body simply isn’y used to it.

And it makes me wonder why I love this strange artform so much, when there’s nothing in it that suits me, really.

But I DO love it.
I thought that maybe once I started class, I’d realize it was a temporary crush or something. But even when I get so frustrated because I can’t even get my heels to touch in first, whenever I get out of class, I feel a little bit lighter.

I just adore it. All of it. I want to know and learn everything. Oh, I can’t describe it; it’s like there’s a hole in me that I wanna fill with all the knowledge and I just wanna fit all the puzzle pieces together.

I didn’t really have a point, I sort of just wanted to preserve these thoughts for myself.

Back to studying.