Movement of the soul

I was a ballet dancer for about ten years, from age 5 to 15, when my feet rebelled against the strictures of pointe shoes and I had to give it up. I wasn’t ever particularly serious about it—I didn’t want to take more than two classes a week; no ballet teacher ever said I had it, whatever indefinable thing makes a ballerina a ballerina; and I certainly am not genetically predisposed toward the tall, willowy slimness of a Balanchine girl. This isn’t one of the great losses or regrets of my life; I don’t think that I was ever well suited for the life of discipline that ballet demands. But there are ways that I still carry it with me in my body.

It’s been more than 15 years since my last ballet class, but I still have in my muscles the knowledge of what it means to hit first position at the barre: crown of my head reaching toward the ceiling, shoulders down and back, abdominal muscles tight, tailbone tucked under to lengthen the spine, not just feet but knees and thighs and hips all engaged in maintaining my toes pointed to the corners of the room, hand gently curving to rest on the barre, elbow at a just-so angle. I remember the rigor of it, the strength and lightness all at once.

My mom would take us to ballets—usually the grand romantic storytelling classics. Giselle, dancing to her death with her long hair falling around her. Odette, the princess cursed to become a snow-white swan, dancing her death after being betrayed. Sleeping Beauty, awakening to true love’s kiss and a precise, gorgeous pas de deux with her prince. I watched the same motions and shapes I practiced in front of the mirrors turn into something full of meaning and story. Ballet was all that was romance and tragedy and loss, the stylized beats of a fairy tale turned into stylized movements on a stage.