What it’s like to take up ballet when you are old

I’m not going to build up any suspense here. It’s terribly frustrating and it hurts. And I’m not talking 60 years, bad knees and a dislocated hip old. I’m talking in your 20s old.

Your body has pretty much reached the peak of its form in your 20s, which means if you have one leg longer or one foot bigger than the other, there’s basically nothing you can do about it. Similarly, if you are not particularly flexible, you might not be very successful in doing perfect splits – or maybe you manage, after a long, tiresome and painful period of your life that is probably only worth it if you like ballet as much as I do. And to think that your perfect splits will probably not even get you in a lousy show with (and for) late bloomer-ballerinas! However, unlike little five-year olds that start ballet and can build their body according to the moves they make, our ballet movements have to find a way around the imperfections of our body, an old, lazy piece of crap that would not even move a finger to allow us to look more gracious when we do something as sublime as this classical dance.

The sad(der) news is, ballet is the worst type of dance to have an imperfect body for. Yes, it’s beautiful and gracious like delicate white doves flying against a background of coconut flakes; but at the same time it’s the most unnatural dance ever. It requires your body to do things which are absolutely out of its normal range of movement; you would probably never ever find yourself doing something remotely looking like ballet in your every day life, unless you would be trying to sneak through those security laser beam networks that we’ve seen in Ocean’s 11, and even then I am not sure your body would be twisted to such an extent. If your body is not perfect, or formed perfectly as a consequence of a lifetime of daily ballet practice, I don’t see how you would be able to correctly do all that ballet requires of you. That a dance you do with your body and nothing else – hence, a free, natural dance – should be so unnatural, yet perceived as magnificently beautiful by us, laymen, is fascinating. Anyway, here is an example of something ballet-y you can not do with an imperfect body:

This is called the “fifth position” in ballet and it requires you to stand holding your feet against each other, facing opposite directions (both to the outside). Ouch. If you are, like me, in the unfortunate position of having a leg longer than the other (and I only found this out because of taking up ballet), you’re screwed. There is absolutely no way you will get the right balance, or not look like a forgotten lopsided statue in the main square of a mountain village, that has been rained, snowed and sat on for drinking on Saturday nights.

Despite all this, I took ballet classes at the sports university of Vienna – and not just once, but three times; three multiplied by one semester = three semesters. In the first semester my teacher was heavily pregnant, constantly grumpy and seemed to not care about having actual students in her class. It was a “Pilates+Ballet” class; she did her pilates part well, but her ballet instructions were terrible. None of us understood what we were supposed to do, since from the very first class she said: “Ok, now we will do the following sequence: starting in the first position, demi-plié, three times, with port de bras, then tendu three times, en croix, and at the end relevé, soutenu, and the same on the other side”. That’s not exactly what she said, as I suspect that is not a legitimate ballet exercise, but if you have no notion of ballet and you’ve just read this, you got a glimpse of how I felt then; also, it was expected from me to actually do what she said. So everybody was doing something, moving their legs somehow, it was total anarchy and an awkward mixture of crooked legs and arms.

My second ballet semester made me love ballet despite complaining about it all the time. The teacher was not a ballet teacher per se (which was an advantage!), but she was a dancer and actress with more than sufficient knowledge to train a class of beginners. She was tiny, energetic and very dear, and repeated everything so many times that I can still remember some of her common instructions and gestures. To give you a picture of how complex the whole ballet thing is: for a group of never-ever-to-be-professional beginners, she still spent 15-20 minutes in the first classes, later 10-15 minutes only to explain and correct our posture (long neck, eyes looking straight ahead, straight back, shoulders down, belly muscles flexed, butt down, feet anchored in the floor…insert unnatural posture element here). From her I also learnt that the extent to which we can open our legs (from the hip) for splits, like so:

is anatomically conditioned (aka you might not practice it and still be able to do it to a large extent; if you can’t naturally do it, practicing might help you to get better but it’s not really entirely up to you, but up to your old body).

Finally, the last ballet course I took was a nightmare, and it made me complain about ballet all the time despite loving it so much. It was a course for beginners and intermediates. My guess was that the guy had dreamt to train a group of professional ballerinas but somehow ended up teaching at the sports university instead. I am sad for him. But that is absolutely no reason to train a group of students of anything else but sports as if you were training the ballerinas of Bolshoi theater. Sometimes I had the feeling someone had to remind him that he is still teaching some grown up girls who do ballet in their free time, mostly because they, themselves, have unfulfilled childhood dreams. He would come next to you to observe your moves, and, if you made a mistake, he would puff grumpily; he would tell you that you can bend your knees more than that and would insist that you do it in front of him; and, most terribly, he had a favorite student that he would give as an example all the time and call in front of the class to show the rest of us how it’s done. Unfortunately, this method does not have even a remotely motivating effect on me, probably ever since the second grade of school.

Not to mention that the girls in this “beginner and intermediate” class were not just the average girls you meet in a sports class or at the gym. Ohhhh no. Most of them had extremely much knowledge, they were very good and the pretty tutus, dramatic look on their face when they bent backwards and gazed to the side (cambré) and the perfect balance when standing on their toes gave them away. The explanation? It’s a vicious circle; most girls do not dare to go to the next level class, because the instructors are so strict and difficult to satisfy, that they make them think they are unable to do anything properly (alternatively: they are actually not able to do things properly because…ballet). Therefore, they repeat the beginner’s class. Over and over again. The real beginners in the class are doubly discouraged: by the strict teachers and by their colleagues who seem to learn much faster and be much more talented than them (when, in fact, they are just third or fourth round beginners). Therefore, they take the beginner’s class over and over again, discourage the real beginners, and so on. I would assume it’s simply a miniature of what the world of professional ballet actually is like, but what do I know.

Next week I am starting my fourth ballet class. Beginners. After Mr. Bolshoi Theater showed me that I am not able to do a deep enough plié, although my knees are definitely more flexible than I think and know (yep, some people just know more about your body’s capabilities than you do!), I realized I am a lousy ballerina and not at the intermediate level. So back to beginners I go. As many times around as I need to feel confident with my moves – and, if I don’t manage, hey, at least I am doing fabulous workout for my thighs, abs and butt.