I usually go to ballet on Tuesdays, but, because I couldn't make Tuesday this week, I went on Thursday. The class is essentially the same, only the teacher is different. That, it turns out, is a big difference. A delightful big difference! Tuesday's teacher is extremely talented, and she holds back, moving a notch slower to make sure everyone in the room is as close to her movements as possible. Thursday's instructor, while also being extremely talented, moves slightly quicker, taking the temperature of the room often and generally concluding that she can throw more complex ballet at us. This scared me at first, but the way she made it safe to just have fun put me at ease. At one point, she told us that, today, she was doing motion capture for a video game character she's playing. Apparently, she's, like, a ninth-level boss in a forthcoming first-person adventure. Her character is a vampire ballerina. If I had known ballet had vampire ballerinas, I would have joined a long time ago. The rest of her story was relevant to a movement we were supposed to make with our hips, but I got lost thinking about whether a vampire ballerina really needs the other animal transformations your average Dracula gets, what with the ability to swiftly move as a humanoid and all.
But I snapped back into it, geekery be damned. In our next sequence (is that the right word? "Sequence"?), something new clicked. Before we start moving our bodies, our teacher always moves hers, mapping out the routine we're about to do for demonstrational purposes. I get confused here a lot. I can remember the first few steps of what she does, but the rest piles on so quickly I get overwhelmed. When we start dancing, I usually just pick someone who clearly owns their own tutu and just follow them. Today, though, was different. We have a live accompanist playing the piano (Thursday's has more an old-timey saloon feel, Tuesday's feels straight out of Amadeus). I had been largely ignoring the piano, following along with someone else as usual, until I just sort of...listened. Putting all my attention on the piano, I realized that the music the pianist was playing was designed to tell me the steps. If I just did what the music sounded like - drawing a semi-circle with my foot when the melody swooped, stabbing the ground with my toe when it emphasized a note - the dance would naturally align with what we were supposed to do. It is funny how often your environment is literally designed to guide you, all you have to do is pay attention to all its elements. Once I realized the piano wasn't just there because, hey, where else in New York City are you gonna put this thing?, I understood: you get more from letting go than you do from holding on, more from opening up than from closing off.
For the rest of class, I felt closer to that piano music than ever. That's not to say everything was automatically easy and natural - not even close - but at least my brain was trying to build a new music-body pathway. That only failed me when, for one particular routine, our teacher instructed the pianist to play what I assumed was a classical piece to go with our dance. As the notes were banged out, I couldn't help but think that what was being played was exactly the theme song to Jurassic Park. Nahnahnah-nah-NAH, nahnahnah-nah-NAH... At this point, I was already several dumb questions in, and stopping the action to ask whether this was the thing Sam Neill gazed at a Brontosaurus to felt like a violation of everything that space stood for. I had a little leeway: I told the teacher, and, in-turn, everyone, that this was only my third ballet lesson ever at the top of the class, but I figured any lenience I earned from that was spent on my Avengers: Infinity War sweatpants.
Which: about those Avengers: Infinity War sweatpants: yes, they are from Hot Topic (on clearance, purchased not because I loved Infinity War [I didn't], but because the other clearance sweats were from an anime I knew nothing about, and, well, I can only afford to be a complete idiot about one thing at a time, and ballet was filling that spot). Yes, I bought them because my only other acceptable pants had Millennium Falcons on them and I figured having a change would be good. Yes - this is pretty much in-line with how I dress for anything: learn what's expected and then figure out how I can make that relate to a comic book. But here's the deal: ballet clothing is endlessly cool to me. I love the fact that, regardless of gender, the same, functional, tight clothing pretty much goes for everyone (with the addition of a dance belt in cases where that might apply). That's kind of what I go for in my daily outfits. These sweatpants, for instance, were from Her Universe, a company that markets geeked-out clothing primarily to women. I like mixing clothing like that with my basic, mens-cut black T-shirt. Even if no one can tell I'm blending gendered clothing, I know I am, and that makes me feel really good.
And ballet only scratches this itch even further. For example, there was one dance we did during today's class where our teacher talked to us a little about the history of the routine. She said that it was not a peasant dance, like some of the others we learned. This was a Court dance. It was a dance one might perform while twirling around a royal Court, glass of wine in hand, smiling at suitors, gracefully demonstrating what a well-put-together (most likely) woman they were. I really liked knowing that (despite its problematic historical implications). Don't get me wrong, I still performed this Court dance with the physical fluidity of Gort from The Day The Earth Stood Still, but the gender fluidity of performing a dance created to actualize a specific time period's definition of "femme"! That was great. Sure, any actual King or Queen would've had me beheaded, but if Devo were holding Court, I think I could've been the belle of the ball.
The rest of class flew by. At the end, I talked to my teacher about how to "count" music in order to keep my steps in-line with it better. This feels like a really basic skill, but it is one I do not even remotely have. I'm not musical. I can't remember lyrics or tunes. I'd choose a root canal over karaoke most of the time. But my teacher and the pianist gave me some helpful tips which basically amounted to: listen to ballet-specific music and start counting when you hear the first emphasized note, which may not necessarily come at the very beginning of the song. This made a ton of sense to me. My students are always asking me how to find the main idea of a passage. I try to teach them that a main idea can really be found anywhere, even though it has a handful of places it is often stated. You just have to look for the biggest, most important point of the reading, and then follow that through the rest of the text. That feels a lot like the idea of looking for the first appearance of an arrangement's most audible note, its "main idea" note, and then following the rest of the piece on that note's terms. It'll take practice, but I think I can get there.
I've only been on this journey for three weeks, but one of the things that has made me fall in love most severely has been the warmth of others. As stated above, my teacher and the pianist stayed after class to help me with this concept. While having lunch with another friend earlier today, I learned that both she and I were in the beginning stages of our ballet classes, and comparing fumbles, I think, felt like a great relief for us both. Two weeks ago, another friend sewed my ballet flats while we listened to Swan Lake. (And I paid her, because now, more than ever, we need to pay folx for their labor, friend or not. I'm serious about this.) And even more people (you included!) have listened to me blab in one way or another about all the stuff I've fallen over doing each week. That means more to me than anything. The community makes it all possible, and I'm grateful to everyone who helps me.
After all, Barbie has this, too. She's got Midge and Skipper and Chelsea and of course the ever-present Ken. My teacher, today, mentioned something about her hips, how they open one way and not another. I have no idea what my actual hips look like. The bones. No clue. And there she was, knowing the physicality of her body in such an exact way. I imagine this is even easier for Barbie. Plastic is very well understood and, under the plastic is, well, nothing, so that's helpful. Each joint is pretty well pronounced on the doll, so that takes the guesswork out of a lot of movement. All that's left, for Barbie and for my teacher, is the invisible force that drives their mech suits of flesh and muscle and fat and bone (what? Barbie doesn't have her own, independent thoughts? Clearly you've never stepped on one in the middle of the night). The thoughts and feelings give our physiques meaning and motion and emotion. In this way, it doesn't matter what armor surrounds the ether of being; it doesn't matter what shape that suit takes. What matters is that we each learn the ships we fly, down to the hip bones, so that when we issue it commands from our ever-evolving minds, they can best serve our selves. Some, like Barbie, might have that easier than others, but, for everyone, it might be possible so it must be possible. Myself included.
If you follow Barbie's latest developments, you know she, right now, in 2019, is yet again a ballet doll. It's "Ballet Instructor Barbie." It took her 20 years, but she eventually became an instructor! That time table is impressive, considering, in that period, she's also been a doctor, a vet, a presidential candidate, a robotics engineer, a firefighter, and a pilot. I think I need to retract what I said before: given her community and her unwavering work ethic, I think Barbie is in fact an amazing ballet dancer. And actually, the more I think about that, the more personally appropriate I hope this purchase becomes.
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