The Ballet

If I had to choose something to define myself by (which, by the way, I find an incredibly silly notion), I would have to choose Dance. Not dance, no I'm talking about Dance, with a capital DANCE. I just really, really like to dance. I like tap, love blues, am passionate about Latin, and can't imagine life without ballroom. I've been dancing for 19 years now. My very first experiences with dance were when I was 2 years old. I performed a tap routine to The Beach Boys' "Dance, Dance, Dance," dressed in a blue and silver sparkly costume that I think I still have. I didn't discover ballroom till 16 years later, as a freshman in college, but it has become incredibly essential to my life. It's where I met a good number of my best friends, where I learned the meaning of true self-confidence. But I never would have discovered the joys of the Madison ballroom scene without my years of ballet. Ballet was the catalyst I needed to really truly become a dancer.

I started late, when I was (gasp) 11 years old. There were girls in my class who were 3 and 4 years younger than I who had been doing it longer. I was humiliated at first, but I stuck it out. I just kept imagining the performance that had convinced me I needed to learn this beautiful art, a performance of "The Nutcracker" I had seen danced by the Central Wisconsin School of Ballet, who had imported a few amazing dancers from Moscow. I stuck it out for years, forcing my very much unflexible body to stretch and obey. It sounds silly, but making my arms and legs and feet and hands do what I wanted was an incredible thrill. I was at that horrible, gawky pre-teen age, but somehow I was able to master my ungainly limbs and pretend to be graceful, at least on stage. As I got older, ballet got more and more important. When life got confusing or upsetting, I knew I'd always be able to execute the perfect grand jete or pas de buree. Also, performing is FUN! I just really liked it.

When I got to college, I had to give up ballet. I just didn't have the time to keep up as I had. I couldn't practice 5 or 6 days a week anymore. It was horribly depressing for about a day and a half. Then a friend dragged me to a ballroom social and that was that. I found my new passion. But without the ballet training, I never would have been able to learn ballroom as quickly and painlessly as I did. I will always remember my ballet training as giving me the tools I needed to succeed, in more ways that I ever could have imagined.

Going to see "Cinderella" performed last week was by far one of the highlights of my semester abroad. Watching the dancers on stage, I could remember the feeling I'd had as a 16-year-old, dancing on my high school's stage en pointe, my toes blistered and bleeding, my costume itching, and loving every moment. Ballet gave me so much. Sure, it repeatedly broke both my little toes and destroyed all nerve function and permanently screwed up my feet, and caused me to fall and break my tail bone which had to be painfully operated on, and some of the costumes were not flattering in the least and I will probably never live down those pictures, but hey, I loved it. I could appreciate the difficulty of the dancer's moves as they reenacted the familiar scenes of "Cinderella," could cringe in sympathy with each creak and thump, could marvel at the beauty. I will never again be a ballerina, but I will always, always love ballet.