Confessions of a First Grade Ballet Dropout

June 17, 2014 – Confessions of a First Grade Ballet Dropout

I’ll freely admit it – I’ve always harbored a secret desire to be a dancer.  This is despite a less than stellar introduction to dance performance.  Let’s start with kindergarten.  Like many little girls in the 1950s, I took ballet lessons.  Old black and white photos of myself in my recital costume make me cringe.  It’s obvious that I didn’t have the physique or the talent.  Thankfully, I dropped out at the end of first grade.  (I can’t find the photos right now, and even if I could, I’d spare you the sight of them.  In fact, next time I come across them, I think I’ll burn them.) 

Thus began a phase of my life that lasted for several decades, during which time I never considered that I might have the ability to learn any form of dance.  The years from sixth grade through junior and senior high school were especially difficult.  In the early 1960s, I tried gyrating to the twist but never overcame my self-consciousness.  A streak of masochism led me to attend school dances where I was destined to be a perpetual wallflower.  (Of course, my lack of social skills didn’t help matters.)  My luck wasn’t any better at the socials held weekly at the summer camp I attended during my teens.  A new opportunity presented itself when I went away to college.  There, the omnipresent marijuana haze camouflaged whatever passed for “dancing.”  

In my late 20s, my latent desire to be a dancer began to emerge.  Given my track record with social dancing, I wasn’t about to embark on any type of dancing that required partners.  Instead, I chose two less familiar forms of dance:  classical Indian dance and belly dancing.  Needless to say, while I enjoyed the experience, I never attained performance level – not that I intended to be a performer. 

My next step into the world of dancing was a huge leap.  When I was working at “real” job in Boston in the early 1980s, I signed up for disco lessons with a friend (male).  To my surprise, I wasn’t half bad.  But I never used my skills in public since none of the men I subsequently dated had the slightest interest in disco dancing.  Not long after my foray into the world of disco, I got married, moved to France and had babies.  The only dancing I did for a while was to nursery rhymes. 

Hoping Elisa hadn’t inherited my dance gene, I enrolled her in a ballet class in Fayence soon after she learned to walk.  It turned out that she loved ballet and showed a real talent for it.  Ten years later, she decided to hang up her toe shoes, but her success inspired me to give dance another try.  This time, it was ballroom dancing.  Elliott and I signed up for a series of group lessons through the Fairfax County recreation department.  For six weeks, we stumbled through the waltz, foxtrot, and a few other forms of torture. Elliott claims that he was a good dancer in his younger days.  Perhaps he was.  All I remember is that there was a lot of snarling and swearing involved. 

After that experience, I gave up on dance again until I started paying attention to the way my Latin American students were dancing in the classroom.  When I heard the salsa music, I couldn’t keep still and they were more than happy to show me how to do the steps.  Thus began my love affair with salsa dancing.  Although I couldn’t convince Elliott to join me, I started going to a club in Arlington that gave salsa lessons.  Half a dozen lessons gave me the confidence to dance around the house, but I still haven’t put my skills to use in public. 

My focus now is less on learning to dance and more on becoming knowledgeable about dance.  This past year, I attended several dance performances (ballet and modern) at the Kennedy Center, George Mason University, and Wolftrap.  In addition, this summer, I’m taking a university class in dance appreciation.  In just a short time, my professor has helped me expand my understanding not only of the mechanics of dance but the varying roles of dance its cultural context.  We’ve read about and viewed dance that is an integral part of non-Western religions (the Yoruba, Hindus, and Sufis).  We’ve also learned about another type of dance, the “court” dances of Louis XIV, Ashanti chiefs, the Japanese imperial court, and Java, which are used to express and maintain the political structure.  It’s all fascinating, and there’s much more we’ll cover in the next few weeks. 

Who knows?  When the class ends, I might even sign up for ballet again!