Coming Home to Ballet- Part 2

I start on a Thursday evening with Ballet I at Kip Martin’s Dance Symmetry Wellness. Kip greets me warmly.  I tell him that it is my first class in thirty years. “Welcome back,” he responds. Immediately I feel comfortable. Turns out that this old brain has remembered quite a bit of ballet— it was only my body that isn’t  as cooperative.   The barre work was more complicated than I expected, but I was able to follow.  Kip got  me through my biggest fears- turning and jumping. The jump was a complicated one and I was sure I couldn’t do it, but with his expert advice, it happened. This is a good start, I think.

For my next class, the following Tuesday,  I find myself wandering around a construction site searching for   the entrance to the School of  Philadelphia Ballet  on N. Broad Street, which I eventually find. This Beginner class , held in a much larger room, is packed with a variety of ages and experience levels. The teacher seems pleasant and doesn’t  seem all that particular during fairly simple barre exercises, but out on the floor, there is way too much jumping  ( at least for me). Here he is very particular about the jumps and has us do them over and over. Of course I am trying to keep up with the younger and more energetic students in the class.      ( Maybe that is not so smart).  In the middle of our jumping marathon,  I feel “something” happen to a muscle below the knee.  Uh oh. Not good.  So I stop jumping. The class ends abruptly after the jumps, unlike the beautiful and traditional réverénce at the end of Kip’s class.  I leave with a dull ache, but walking seems fine  until I  have to to climb the two flights to my apartment. Apparently I have done the “something” to  the stair-climbing muscle and now it’s painful.  I take some Tylenol and hope for the best.

After a few days, the leg starts to feel better and I am getting antsy from not dancing so I go for my third taste of the ballet sampler at Koresh’s. Koresh is the place where I have taken the most classes in my almost seventeen years in Philly. It is where Suzanne introduced me to Sammy’s hip hop class, even before I moved here. It is where Kat’s great tap class happened. Koresh is a professional school with a wonderful company and well-trained  staff and dancers. But the level is high. I go for the Beginner class ( there are two levels before this- Intro and Transition to Beginner) but I am optimistic.

This studio is the most beautiful so far and elegant with its fancy chandeliers, and I want this one to work out. It’s a large class of mixed abilities, again, mostly younger.  There are a few seniors like me, so I am hopeful. The teacher Eva  is soft-spoken and sweet and obviously extremely talented and well-liked. However,   I can’t  always hear or see ( it’s a huge room) her explanations and demonstrations of the barre exercises. My only chance is finding a couple of dancers I can follow. This is easy in this class as there are obviously many who are way beyond beginner.  I modify some of the barre exeercises as my leg is not 100% yet and feel okay until I volunteer to  help move the portable barre from the center of the room. As soon as I lift it, I know I have made a mistake ( way heavier than expected- cast iron?). And uh oh, now I’ve done “something” to my back.  On the floor, I take it easy.  When we  get to the leaping and jumping, I decide to watch rather than do,  as graceful, experienced dancers fly across the  floor. I take a good long look at myself  in the mirror. And decide I look like a potato. A dancing potato in a sea of carrots, but I don’t care. I don’t care if I can’t do all the steps  I used to be able to do, because this is such a beautiful dance and I will learn eventually if I just stay in the room.

There were so many times when I threw myself into a new dance in NYC or a combination was challenging and I would look at the door and think about running out. Giving up. It would be so easy to leave. Learning a new dance takes time, and re-learning ballet will take time too.  If I stay in the room, in the game, in life, I have  a chance. If I run out that isn’t possible.

So, I take a few weeks off to rest my body. So far, I’ve done three classes and have two injuries. Not the start I wanted to have, but I will persist.

To Be continued….