Ballet Heals All Wounds
Ah. That, my friends, is a sigh of relief. Ballet classes have started up again.
I am starting the new semester with brand new, custom-fitted shoes (which are somehow missing in the black hole that is the apartment…but they’ll be found soon), a black leotard, fancy pink professional tights, and a fancy professional skirt. I feel like a true dancer.
That is, until I actually dance. I got rusty even though I practiced over Christmas.
But it’s a beautiful thing, being in class again, running around every weekday. I’m out of the house, I’m doing things, I’m socializing, and I’m loving it.
Especially Monday nights with the S.E.A.L. She was in true form this past Monday - trust me, I can feel it in my calves, which are too painful to touch at the moment. My Wednesday class is with Chrissy, who I like to think of as my body double in another life where I had never consumed chocolate, meat, bread, ice cream, cake, tortilla chips, or cheese. Yes, she’s the one who has the exact same bone structure and height as me, but must weigh some number I haven’t seen on the scale since the fourth grade. I feel like a linebacker when I stand in fifth position next to her. And Thursday I have Lisa, who is the most soft-spoken person I’ve ever heard - you can barely hear her call out combinations, and that’s before the music starts playing.
She was in The Nutcracker. Sigh.
(Which I think Matthew secretly loved, by the way.)
And on top of all this frappéing glory, I chit chatted with a girl in class who I have a lot in common with. She’s 22, just graduated in December, majored in political science and communications, plans to go to law school in a year and a half, took the LSATs, and did her internship at the CIA and NSA. She even knew about the metro!
Except this. I asked her why she was taking ballet, and she said she had to work out some aggression because her husband is divorcing her. He served her the papers on her birthday.
As completely foreign a concept as that is to me (she’s a year younger than me!), I understand. I go to class for the same reason most days. I love the feeling of being completing engaged - unable to think or worry about anything else besides what comes next, if I’m pressing into the floor, if I’m centered. You are so aware of what your body is doing it brings your mind to a better place. It’s beautiful, freeing…almost spiritual. Ballet makes everything better.
And besides, she could probably use a friend now. I know I could, too.
