Amanda starts up ballet lessons

Last Updated on Monday, 4 July 2011 08:56 Written by Sundial Clinics Monday, 4 July 2011 08:53

I have wanted to do ballet for years but always considered myself to be 20 (cough, cough) years too late. I did do ballet as a little girl but for some crazy reason gave it up as soon as I discovered ‘disco dancing’. Of course I am aware that it could never have been my vocation; I am too short, uncoordinated, have a tendency to giggle rather than concentrate, and as one physician described me I was “…clearly built in a hurry last thing on a Friday afternoon”. But I cannot help but think that a ballet background would have helped me not only in my different sports but also in life. I long for the long graceful posture of such dancers and perhaps even the sculpted body.

And now thanks to the success of ‘Black Swan’ at the cinema more and more dance schools are teaching adult ballet so I began my quest to make up for lost time and this is my blog of my journey…

18 June

Last night was my first lesson at ballet…well my second really but the one last week couldn’t possibly count as I was thrown into a far-from-beginner adult class and despite having immense fun throwing myself around I didn’t leave with an awful lot more knowledge than I padded in with.

Last night’s class was with a dance school near to my family home (crafty ploy so that I would have someone to ‘puppy sit’ for me on occasion!) and there were only 3 of us which meant that we each had more individual attention. It must be said that I knew I had found my warm, happy place when the lady next to me tried to do a plie (a graceful version of a little squat to you and me) and her knees let out an almighty chorus of cracks and crunches. What a wonderful welcome to adult ballet.

There is something so comforting about knowing that you are not in a gym class filled with highly pumped, thigh pinching women, all desperate to achieve a greater calorie burn than the previous class, and all throwing themselves around the room or peddling away on their spinning bike with a half glance at how much faster / sweaty they are in comparison with their counterparts.

There is also a great delight in knowing that aside from the ballet shoes you no longer need to wrestle into a leotard and tights nor wear a tutu (despite favouring wearing one with boots on a night out I would never dream of being seen in one in its rightful place in a ballet studio). Instead it is a casual attitude that you wear whatever you can move in comfortably; which is a relief that I do not have the usual expense of needing to buy new clothing for this latest sporting pursuit. However last night there was absolute sheer panic and copious amounts of swearing as I realised that I do not own a single pair of modest-saving shorts to wear over my new ballet tights and so had to make do with a pair of my cycling ¾ trousers with ‘Ron Hill’ emblazoned up the leg. Not very Swan Lake at all.

The lesson last night focused on barre work. To the uninitiated that involves holding onto a bar at waist height and practicing footwork and posture in given patterns. It is a chance to learn how to adopt the correct posture, breathing and muscle coordination for ballet. Despite being very flexible and having done years of martial arts for good balance I soon discovered that I have inflexible feet, rounded shoulders, a habit of holding my breath when concentrating and an overly arched lower back. It was almost as if correcting one thing knocked out another in my body, and I spent most of my time trying to follow the others whilst trying not to look like a duck. Thankfully the 8 years olds from the previous class had left the building.

I did love the barre work though, and at the end I was very sad to move away from its support. To end the class we tried pirouettes as apparently “you can’t say that you did a ballet class without trying a pirouette”. I beg to differ. Still I had several attempts and managed to not end up on the floor (and even frightened the teacher at one point when I became over zealous and she remarked that she was afraid that she was about to loose me).

This morning I am very achy in muscles that I forgot I owned which is a wonderful feeling to have and one which I did not have after the previous class in the other school (must have involved more giggling than dancing). On reflection I am far from graceful and lack all things resembling poise and grace but I am truly addicted and cannot wait for the next lesson on my ballet journey.