On the Unexpected Benefits of Ballet
It’s nearing the end of class and my shins are killing me. We had devoted quite a bit of time to working on allegro, which means a lot of quick movements and jumping. Hence the burning shins.
I’m part of a small group of adult women learning ballet, each a few years into our ballet training journeys. This class is particularly intimidating because it is focused on mastering a suite of about 20 different intermediate-level exercises. It strains both my memory and my body in a way they’ve never been challenged before.
We’re tired, sweaty, and discouraged; the petit allegro enchainment exercise isn’t coming together. Our instructor is stern but encouraging with her group of newly minted intermediates.
She shares:
Ballet is an ego journey. Everyone goes through periods where they feel like they’re not making progress, but I promise you progress is happening. To get better, the only thing you can’t do is nothing.
I drove home afterwards feeling strangely quiet, turning over my instructor’s words in my head. How often in life we are faced with challenges that strain our sense of self.
As a former nationally-competitive athlete, it is humbling both to have lost physical skill in adulthood and to begin training to recover what I can in an entirely new realm.
As someone attempting to get a new business off the ground and build a client base from scratch for the first time, I often feel like a clumsy novice dwarfed by experts.
As someone who routinely struggles with unsteady mental health, I know that taking any action at all can feel like a risk or a drain that alarms and confuses my body.
As someone who has survived the loss of a loved one, I know that joy and meaning in life are possible despite crushing evidence to the contrary.
In each case, the way forward is a step at a time.
Get in the car.
Go to the parking lot.
Open the door.
Put on the slippers.
Walk into the studio.
Hand on the barre.
Dance.
Ballet has given me a safe place to practice my arabesques—yes—but I’m also stretching and expanding my ideas of what is possible. When I’m floundering and out of step, when I’m on stage and move to incorrect choreography, there’s no taking back what’s happened. But I can choose to meet it with poise and grace. I can come to class and joyfully discover new ways to mess up a pirouette every day until it happens as if by magic—progress.
What is something you’ve discovered in life that challenges you in ways you never thought possible?