ABOUT

Hi! I'm not sure how you stumbled upon this page, but if you did, you probably are at least somewhat curious what I'm doing writing about ballet.

I'm one of those odd adults who don't do one of the popularly accepted forms of adult physical activity, like running or swimming or rock-climbing or tennis or ultimate frisbee or yoga (okay, I do this, but only in service of dance). Instead, I ballet. Like many young girls, I danced casually when I was younger. I loved it, but I have like the antithesis of a dancer's body (short, stocky legs, feet with no arches when I was born), and so there always seemed to be a futility in training when I was young. In the first dance class of my first semester in college, I suffered a major injury, popping my knee cap out and tearing all the ligaments around my knee, so I quit dancing. I couldn't even watch ballets anymore. It was just too painful.

Fast forward about a decade and change, and I found myself in a restless, somewhat depressed state. Grad school had put me through an emotional (and physical) ringer, and a stressful (but awesome) new job in a backwater town that I hated just didn't help matters. I somehow remembered that there was this activity I loved doing when I was younger. Fortunately, the world had also changed in that decade, and adult ballet was now this thing you could do. People of all body types! all levels! all lives! in serious classes with serious teachers and training! dancing and improving and learning just for the sake of their love of dance.

Starting again, after so long without dancing, was basically like starting at square one. There were muscles that needed awakening after years, not to mention technique I just never learned when I was younger, back when only people who had serious dance prospects got serious training. And this hasn't been easy. It's been many injuries, learning lots about my body, shedding both mental and physical baggage from the past decade, driving two hours each direction in order to take classes.... But almost two years later, here I still am, getting to do this thing that I loved when I was younger and could never fully embrace then. And just as I've salvaged my love of dance, ballet has saved me, too. It's brought me back to physical shape, given me friends and new teachers, improved mental focus, provided an emotional outlet.

Most of my friends, however, still exist in the world outside ballet, so I can't really talk their ears off about dance. And increasingly, as I sort of stumble my way through this adult ballet world, I've been wanting to write down thoughts about improving, the challenges, the funny little quirks that fill this life. So here we are.

I'd love to hear from anyone out there who are also on this adventure! Please say hi.