First ballet class
Daring to love
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I climb up the stairs of the Dance School, full of trepidation. What if it’s just too hard and I’m no good at it at all? What if the other girls are full of themselves, self-assured, and sneer at my clumsiness? Oh, the humiliation! What if the teacher is too strict and doesn’t like me and tells me to go home and never bother coming back? Oh, the embarrassment! What if…? Thankfully, the staircase isn’t that long, and I’m finally at the door, so I can’t keep going round in circles through the torture of my fears and uncertainty.
I have always wanted to dance. The gravity-defying grace of ballerinas conquered my dreams and most secret desires long ago. When I was 5. But it has been so hard to work up the courage to actually do it. And to find the time. Well, now I’m here. Just one more step.
I take one last deep breath and open the door. I take a step in, then two, and then it’s too late to go back. The teacher greets me, and here I am — at my first ballet class.
Our teacher is young, smiling, and male. Very, very far from the scary stereotype I expected — the never-smiling, middle-aged Russian ex-dancer with perfect posture, cold blue eyes, and severely pulled-back hair. John is friendly, funny, warm, and accommodating. He shows me where to take my place at the wooden barre, plays music from his iPhone, and shows us all the basic foot and arm positions, peppered with tons of confusing, similar-sounding French words. And off we go! Pliés, pirouettes, fondus, frappés, and gallops.
Yes, it’s hard. Painful, even. Yes, some of the other girls are super cool and super pretty, and super elegant, and super good at this. Superior in every possible way. But they don’t sneer, and nobody laughs at my petty efforts. And even if they did, it wouldn’t matter, because I’m having too much fun to care. In fact, everybody seems to struggle to get the movements exactly right. Some girls stumble even more than me. The boys seem to have a particularly hard time getting the curve and angle of their arm positions right. We all exchange worried looks in the mirror when John moves on to the next level of ballet routines — arabesques and jumps. Impossibly pretty and light. And then we jump and smile, and giggle and jump more — higher and faster.
Light-headed and dizzy from the pirouettes, I catch a reflection of a happy, smiling face in the mirror. A sparklingly happy girl who looks just like me. Is it really me?! The girl in the mirror radiates joy, effervescent happiness and freedom as she whirls her skirt almost gracefully. Liberated from gravity, fears, prejudices, negative thoughts, and expectations of failure, she pirouettes and giggles, stumbles occasionally, but quickly gets on with the next move, breathless and wide-eyed. Just like any other five-year-old girl at her first ballet class.
And here’s the catch: I am not five years old! I’m not even 15, or 25. Or 35, for that matter. I am 47. And yes — this is my first ballet class ever.
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And I love it! Crazy? Possibly. But who is to say what can and cannot make us happy?! I didn’t know ballet would be such fun, but it has turned out to be one of the best things to happen to me in a long time. I didn’t know I could feel so happy and five-year-oldishly carefree, but there you go. I am!
It all started a few weeks ago with a colleague of mine, a thirty-something mother of two, who said one morning over coffee that she’d discovered a dance school right next to her bus stop in the city, and that they ran ballet classes for amateurs of all ages. She had done ballet as a girl, for many years actually, and loved it, but then other things got in the way, life happened, and she forgot all about dancing. Now she wanted to try this new class. I encouraged her, and secretly envied her courage to try again at something she loved, even though it would be hard to manage alongside her family commitments and the changes in her body. ‘Do it!’ I said again. ‘Try it, at least!’ And then she surprised me: ‘Come with me! It’ll be fun.’ I could hardly say anything; my dismay had robbed me of words. Who? Me?! Did she know how old I was? Had she seen the heavy curves of my body? How was I supposed to get up on my toes? No, it was impossible. And anyway, it would be so embarrassing. No way!
‘I just don’t dare go there alone. I’d feel much better with a friend. Would you come at least once? Just for the heck of it?’ Her eyes are pleading now, but I simply can’t. Ballet is something I adore, love, and admire. I can’t insult it with my clumsy attempts. ‘I’m sorry. I can’t.’
We don’t talk about it anymore, and I soon forget. Or at least, I think I’ve forgotten. But my scheming subconscious doesn’t. I have strange dreams that wake me in the middle of the night, and I lie there unable to get back to sleep, thinking about all sorts of things. Memories flood my mind. Memories of a different me — a younger, more daring, braver, happier me.
Then, a few days later, I came across a quote and suddenly remembered an interview I once read with my favourite writer, Ray Bradbury. An interview in which he said that the secret of life is being in love. That life should be a love affair. That we should do the things we love and love the things we do. And that we shouldn’t let anyone tell us what is worth doing, or what is good for us. Back then, I was so impressed by his words that I actually followed his advice and made a list of the things I loved, and tried to do those things. Every one of them. Because they make life meaningful and worthwhile. They make us happy and rich in memories.
Suddenly, I wanted to see that list again. Where is it?! I frantically rummaged through notebooks and papers, looked in drawers and boxes full of scribbled notes and forgotten writing projects, checked everywhere. I kept searching for days and simply couldn’t rest until I’d found it. Eventually, it turned up between the pages of a book — a small piece of paper with three columns of single words. And there, among all the other things I hold paramount in my life and love dearly — books and music, cooking, my daughter — was the word ‘Ballet’.
Yes, I knew that, of course. I’ve always loved ballet. But when I put it on the list, I was thinking more of going to the Lyric Theatre to see ballet productions. And I had been following Ray Bradbury’s advice and doing just that, religiously. Until today, it had never occurred to me that seeing and doing are not the same thing. Maybe I’d got it all wrong?! Maybe I wasn’t supposed to watch movies and listen to music, but to actually do them — to make movies and play music. Not just read books, but write them. Not just watch ballet, but dance it.
My head started spinning and my knees gave way. I had to sit down and think. Hard. This was life-changing. A revelation. An epiphany. I thought about it for days and eventually made one of the bravest decisions of my life.
So, here I am, whirling and jumping, feeling weightless and ageless. Having a love affair with ballet. And with life. I catch my colleague’s eye in the mirror and we both giggle helplessly as we happily skip the length of the room in a funny-looking, stumbling bunch of similarly exhilarated, smiling five-year-olds of all ages and shapes.
Yes, I now know that Ray Bradbury was right — the secret of life is love. To dare to love.
Originally published at http://nonlinearnotes4.wordpress.com on June 4, 2026.
