Inside Ballet Technique

It’s interesting how dance can consume a person.  I wrote a post about how some people just have a passion for dancing that cannot be ignored, and how this passion drives us to push ourselves through trial and error and pain and suffering (sometimes, from injuries).  But at some point, our bodies age and we have to move on…if we’re lucky enough to continue working in the field we love, we become teachers or choreographers.  However, for some of us, we move into a completely different arena.  We become mothers and fathers, we work jobs with regular people…that is, people who don’t have flashbacks of Nutcracker performances when they hear Tchaikovsky’s score on the radio or in the mall.  We find dance career alternatives.

When I first stopped dancing it was because of achilles tendinitis.  I also had a husband and a new baby that naturally changed my priorities in life.  We lived in Lexington, Kentucky where I had performed a little with the ballet company, so when we went to performances I was watching all my old dance friends on stage.  I cried every single time we sat in the audience to watch a performance.  Deep inside I was grieving the loss of dance in my life.  Sure, I was teaching.  We started a dancewear store so I was in contact with dancers all the time.  But I knew that I would never again put on my pointe shoes and dance on stage.  It was like a part of me—a huge part—had died and would never come back.

We moved from Kentucky to North Carolina where my in-laws lived, and I took a job at a bank.  I thought about teaching ballet in my new town, but I was working a full-time job for the first time in my life and was pretty exhausted at the end of each day.  By then we had two little girls and I wanted to spend time with them in the evenings.  Years went by and I really lost my identity as a dancer.  No one knew me as a dancer.  I was just another coworker, my girls’ mom, a wife.  I wonder how other people deal with such drastic life changes.  Maybe because we moved to a new town where no one knew us it was easier to simply make a new identity for ourselves.  We enrolled our girls in ballet and I sat in the lobby with the other moms during class, viewing dance from a totally new perspective.

Then comes Facebook.  I am friends with my old dancing buddies again!  I’m being tagged in pictures and uploaded a few videos from my dancing days.  Now my new friends and coworkers begin making the connection that I was a dancer in what feels like a past life.  Now they really know me.  Because even though I’m not dancing and I’m not teaching, I am a dancer.  It is what makes me who I am.  I still make up combinations that I can post on this blog!  I can feel the rhythm and the muscle action and musicality like it was only yesterday I stood at that barre myself.  I can feel the adrenaline when I think about how it was to stand in the wings with side lights burning on my back before stepping on stage.  I remember how satisfying it was to dance grand allegro at the end of a great ballet class…the little high I’d be floating on when we did reverence.

I taught at a ballet school a few years ago.  I had my own class of middle school kids once a week and I stepped in to substitute occasionally for other teachers.  My feet would cramp up when I demonstrated and it was so very exhausting.  I later learned that my pain and fatigue were caused from Fibromyalgia.  Maybe I’ll start a blog about that one day.  It’s a new identity for which I’m learning the ropes.  I’m hopeful that I can get it under control enough I’ll be able to teach ballet again at some point.  But until then, I have this blog.  I can still create combinations and build an online community of dance friends.  Because after all, I was a dancer, and I always will be.

We also have three kids now.  Thomas just turned five in November!

Is the stage floor too slippery for your pointe shoes?  Is the stage crew opposed to using rosin on the stage and you are without the benefit of marley?  There are ways to make your pointe shoes slip proof!  If you know you are going to be dancing on a stage that matches this description, take your pointe shoes to a local shoe repair ahead of time.  They usually need a few days to do this, so don’t wait until the last minute.  All you need to do is ask them to put rubber on the platform and sole of your shoes.  Be sure to specify tan, because they may use black if you don’t!

Tell them to extend the rubber to the place on the sole where your shank needs to bend, so it will cover the platform and about 2/3 or 3/4 of the sole.  They can use the leather sole on your shoes as a guide, and have them bevel the edges so you don’t notice where the rubber ends and your shoe begins along the sides.  Then, have them put about a circle of beveled rubber on the very end of the sole where your heel is.  I used to tell them to make it the size of a quarter.

This works wonders when you must dance on treacherous, slippery surfaces.  Back when I was dancing, the shoe repairman would charge about $10 for a pair of shoes.  I have no idea if such establishments are even easy to find nowadays, or what kind of fee they would charge.  But it’s definitely worth looking into.  You’d be surprised at how normal the shoes feel, even with the rubber on them.

If the stage crew isn’t opposed to using rosin, in addition to having a rosin box backstage for dancers to step into, you can take small chunks of rock rosin and spread them around the stage.  Have several dancers or stage crew members help you step on them and spread the rosin around the stage to get the best coverage possible.  Then, take a broom and sweep away the excess.  This works pretty well if you aren’t able to put the rubber on your pointe shoes.  Good luck!

I am amazed at how many hits my combinations have been getting lately on my web site.  For many reasons, I’m not able to teach ballet class anymore, but I have so many classes written down in notebooks that I’m happy to share with others.  It makes my heart feel good to know that when teachers consult my site and use my combinations, I’m still contributing in a small way to the education of dancers somewhere.  And I added the flags widget to my sidebar to see where people are coming from, and that amazes me as well!  So far people from sixteen countries have hit my web site.

If you are a teacher and you use my combinations, I’d love to hear from you!  Just leave a comment after the combination you use (or plan to use), and let me know where you teach class and how it worked out for you.  Even though I’m not able to physically be there, standing in front of a group of students, I’m really happy that those of you who are able to do this might be finding my combinations useful.  Let me know!

The best thing about dancing ballet is that you can always do things better.  Your technique, extensions, flexibility, strength, balance, and artistry can always be improved.  Daily ballet class is a wonderful place to work on stepping your skills up a notch or two.  It’s also nice to get inspiration from others in class who maybe already have triple pirouettes down pat, or can actually complete an entrechat six.  There are several things you can do to focus on bettering your own technique, one day and one combination at a time.

1. Set small goals. If you have a hard time keeping your insteps lifted, focus on just that for several classes.  It may mean lowering your leg a little in grand battement or rond de jambe en l’air, but it’s okay to sacrifice height for alignment and proper use of the feet.  If you aren’t using your feet properly, nothing else is going to get better either.

2. Listen to corrections that are given to anyone in class. Just because the teacher may not have singled you out doesn’t mean that what they’re telling someone else doesn’t apply to you as well.

3. Write down corrections after class in a notebook, and refer to them often. The more you are able to concentrate on applying corrections to your dancing the faster you will improve.

4. Mark. When the teacher is showing a combination for the first time, it helps you remember it better if you mark it with her.  The same holds true when you are in the center and watching another group perform.  Mark the steps in time with the music to cement the combination more clearly in your head.  Don’t, however, focus so much on this that you are unable to observe the other dancers.  Watching others is a great way to learn and improve.

5. Pay attention to detail. The most technically gifted dancers are the ones who pick up on everything.  There’s a lot to learn while a teacher is showing a combination.  You have to learn the counts, any special rhythms, what the feet are doing and where they close, and what the arms are doing, too!  Dancing is a lot of mental work.  It might help you to first watch a combination as it’s being shown to get an overall understanding of it, then focus on the pattern the feet are making and the counts, and finally focus on the port de bras of the arms.

6. Be efficient. Know when to use a lot of power and when to hold back and rest up a bit.  Not every movement needs the same kind of attack.  This will add nuance to your dancing as well as keep you in top shape.

7. Push yourself a little harder. As long as the teacher doesn’t specify that this should be a single pirouette and if others in the class are pulling out doubles successfully, go ahead and push yourself to do more than you think you’re able to do.  The worst that can happen is you fall on your face.  Big deal!  If you never try to push beyond your comfort zone, you’ll never move ahead.

It’s important to know that you aren’t competing with anyone but yourself in the effort to improve your own dancing.  So think of observing others as a way of inspiring yourself to do better rather than a way of feeling defeated because you aren’t there yet.  Small steps, day by day, class by class, combination by combination, will lead to better technique.

Dancers are always trying to extend the life of their pointe shoes.  It’s especially important for students who are buying their own shoes to get the most out of them, because we all know they aren’t cheap!  There are several things you can do to extend the life of your pointe shoes.  I would say the ideal way to go if you can afford it, would be to always have at least two pair on hand that you can switch between.  The longer your shoes can rest between wearings the better they are able to air out and harden back up.

Another important thing to do is to keep them in a net bag or something where air can get to the shoes, rather than dumping them into your dance bag with sweaty ballet slippers and leotards.  These bags are available at dancewear stores and online.  The Ballet Boutique sells them online here.  If you can wear tights I think that helps, too, although I remember liking to sometimes dance in my pointe shoes with bare feet—but if you’re trying to make them last longer that probably isn’t the smartest thing to do.

We always cut the satin off the tips of our shoes before wearing them as well.  The satin tends to rip up anyway.  I’m not sure it’s a good practice, but we also used shellac or floor cleaner like Mop & Glo floor cleaner and put a capful into the box of the shoe.  Set them up on the toes to dry overnight, first getting any excess out of the tip of the shoe with a paper towel.

Some of my friends used to put their shoes in the oven, but I never did this and am not sure how it made them last any longer.  Any other dancers have tips on extending the life of pointe shoes to share?  Please leave a comment!

I’ve often wondered how common it is for a dancer to suffer from chronic back pain during and after their dancing career. I personally had a lot of issues with low back pain while I was dancing, and I attributed much of it to the repetition of particular moves in choreography and to the fact that I have a long torso (which in my mind was not conducive to dancing ballet). Now that I’m suffering the long term effects of chronic back pain and getting older, I’m realizing that there were things I should have been doing to supplement my core strength in order to counterbalance the excessive flexion that dancing demands. It never occurred to me that dancing ballet six or more hours a day was not enough.

I knew that if I did crunches and stretched out before class that I would perform extensions and hold balances better, but I didn’t focus enough on really strengthening my abdominals, my back, and stretching out my hamstrings the way I should have. Not only that, I have since learned that aerobic or cardio training could have helped my dancing as well. An article from the Harkness Center for Dance Injuries web site states, “Aerobic fitness can increase blood flow and oxygenation to all tissues, including the muscles, bones, and ligaments of the spine. Dancers should be encouraged to cross-train year round to maintain aerobic fitness.”

Sean Fyfe is a physiotherapist working with Metis Physio Centres in London, a multi-disciplinary clinic and he works with elite dancers and theatre performers. From an article at sportsinjurybulletin.com, he says, “Dancing alone doesn’t ensure abdominal strength, good activation through glut max or activation of segmental stabilisers. In that respect, dance is no different from any other sport: its performers have to put aside the time to do specific body maintenance, in conjunction with regular screening, to give themselves the best chance of remaining injury free.”

I have begun taking yoga classes and wish I’d known the value of yoga and Pilates back when I was dancing. The mindfulness (or meditation) that comes out of practicing yoga is giving me tools that allow me to be a calmer, happier person—more capable of administering to the needs of my my family or coworkers and simply being able to breathe and be in the moment. At yogamindfulness.com, they explain that meditation doesn’t have to be something you hole up alone in a quiet room to do; it can be done just by being mindful and living in the present. Visualizing breath as it enters and leaves the body, noticing the state of your body at any moment in time, using your senses fully to take in the world around you—any of these can be a form of meditation.

Dancers are focused so much on their bodies, and I personally think it would do a world of good for them to also nurture their minds and spirits in a holistic way. We used to make fun of the modern dancers and called them “granola” people for the way they utilized breath and didn’t attempt to hide the effort in their movements. Now I see that they were really onto something that ballet dancers would do well to heed, too. Not that ballet dancers will ever want to enunciate their breathing on stage, but I think it would be great if teachers taught their students to breathe in and out with the counts during class, much like they do in yoga. With age cometh wisdom, and hindsight is always 20/20, right?

Here is a great book for dancers about anatomy and kinesiology.

I remember well the dreaded parent observation week at the studios where I used to teach.  Depending on the age of the students, having parents observing class could either be a help or a hindrance.  Usually the youngest children find it a distraction and the oldest ones tend to pull their acts together.  I never changed my method of teaching for the sake of the parents who were sitting along the sidelines, but it’s interesting to note the various types of parents with kids who dance.

The best parents are those that have done their homework prior to enrolling their children: they know the teachers are qualified and believe their manner of teaching is credible.  They don’t question the rules, the dress code, or the reason their child mostly stands in the back line during the performance at the end of the year.  They are concerned with progress and do their utmost to ensure their child comes to class prepared to work hard and focus on improving.  These are the best parents.

Then there are the “stage” parents.  These parents wonder aloud why their child is not yet dancing en pointe, why he or she doesn’t have a solo, and why his or her class is not working on more complicated steps yet.  Somehow these parents are more visible, and definitely more annoying, to the teacher of dance.  My advice if you have a child who is taking ballet is to make sure the teachers have some kind of background in dance.  You’d be surprised—just about anyone can open a dance studio.  Many people have a degree in dance from a university, and many have professional credits to their name which is just as important.  A dance school brochure should really be up front about their teachers’ credentials (unless they don’t have any worth mentioning, and then beware!).

When a cast list goes up and your child didn’t get the lead, don’t assume that means he or she doesn’t have talent.  And if you’re a dancer, understand that being cast in a corps de ballet or solo role can be just as wonderful a learning experience as being cast as the principal dancer.  One of my favorite roles to ever dance was the White Cat in Sleeping Beauty.  I loved that role and got to dance it while I was a student at Indiana University.  The steps were not so difficult, but it gave me a chance to work on characterization and not being me on stage.  It really was a liberating experience.  Learning to leave yourself behind and become your character can take a lot of stress out of dancing.

Sometimes the “lead” role is not even the leading role, so don’t be misled!  In an art form like dance where there is such a hierarchy going on (corps de ballet, soloists, principal dancers), it’s easy to forget that there are no small parts, only small actors (not sure where that quote originates, but I tend to agree with it).  And sometimes just because a role isn’t the “lead” doesn’t mean it isn’t the hardest role to dance.

Ballet class with children ages 3-5 is often called “creative movement” rather than ballet class. Then at age 6 it is sometimes referred to as “pre-ballet”, which is when they are usually ready to stand at the barre and learn the mechanics of alignment and ballet positions. Creative movement can be taught many different ways—none better or more effective than another—so I will just share some of the things I did with this age group (and felt were effective) when I was teaching them dance.

First of all, kids this age don’t have a very long attention span! Two minutes is about as long as you can stretch one activity before moving on to something else. I always felt that a 45 minute class was the absolute longest these kids could handle, unless you are combining it with some tap, too. I’d also say that if you have more than eight children in the class then you should probably have an assistant there to help you out.

I structured my creative movement classes more or less the same way each week. Kids do like repetition and it helps them feel more comfortable if they have a good idea what to expect. We would begin sitting on the floor in a circle, wide enough that when they put their arms out to the sides they wouldn’t touch their neighbor. At the beginning you can have them sit cross legged or with the soles of their feet together or their legs stretched out straight in front of them. Sitting cross legged is easiest for them, and when you want them to focus attention on sitting up straight and using good posture through their backs, necks long, and shoulders down, this is helpful.

Still in the circle we would also sing a lot. There are several songs that some children may already know or can pick up quickly that you can easily add movements to. I liked “Open, Shut Them”. You sing Open, Shut Them, Open, Shut Them, Give a little clap clap clap, Open, Shut Them, Open Shut Them, Put them in your lap lap lap. You can do variations on this using your hands like in prayer position or using your legs to open to a straddle and close legs together straight in front of you. Then you can sing Creep Them, Creep Them, Creep Them, Creep Them Right down to your toes (crawling with fingers down outstretched legs in front and toward their toes) and repeat Creep Them, Creep Them, Creep Them, Creep Them, Right back to your nose.

In the circle you can also work on flexing and pointing the toes and flying like a butterfly using pretty arms with the soles of the feet together. They also enjoyed lying on their bellies with their heads towards the center of the circle, practicing pushing up onto their hands and keeping their necks long (like a cobra in yoga), and lifting their heads and their feet off the ground and flying like Superman.

Practicing little rhythmic patterns is a fun thing to do in the circle as well. You can have them help you make up four count or eight count phrases such as clap hands 2X, clap hands to knees 2X, clap hands to shoulders 2X, and put both hands on your head, hold count 8. You can repeat with only one clap in each position, etc. Adding head movements and even facial expressions is a great way to interact with them and get them working on putting together patterns.

In the center there are many activities you can do with this age group. Props are fun, too, especially if you have colorful scarves they can improvise with at the end of class. I tried to incorporate learning how to hop on one foot, gallop, skip, walk toe to heel across the floor like on a tightrope, and eventually even learning a small polka step on demi pointe and plié (step R, L on demi pointe, step R in plié, repeat LRL across the floor). You can reverse that polka, too, and do down, up, up…down, up, up. It’s amazing what children this age can pick up. When you feel like you’re losing them, go back to imitating an animal to get their attention again. Take light springy steps like a cat, heavy steps like a gorilla, etc.

At the end of class we’d always put a scarf or something down in the center that they could run and jump over one at a time. The idea would be to leap leading with their right leg the first time, and then starting at the other upstage diagonal leap leading with their left leg, but usually you are lucky if they manage to just leap and land on one leg instead of two. It’s a really fun age to teach. I think when I was teaching this level I was too worried about getting enough “technique” into each class. But really, having them move to music and count out rhythms and learn patterns is truly enough. At this stage it’s most important that they enjoy what they are doing.

Maybe other teachers of creative movement have more to add. And I think that never having danced at this age myself, it’s harder for me to say exactly what’s so important about it and what’s not. I don’t think it can make or break a dancer, unless you become too exacting and they tire of it before it’s really time to begin working on technique. Please share your thoughts!

We entered the hall with solemn steps and took our seats. The group mostly comprised the beloved late ballet teacher’s university students. At the front of the room was a table with a photograph of a beautiful young woman. Of course she’d been young once, but it was odd to see a photo of Mrs. Dorsey from her youth. She’d been a dazzling star at the age of fourteen with the Royal Ballet, and through the eulogy we learned she’d managed to pack her whole life into a mere sixty years. This, too, came as a shock.

She walked with a cane which she’d given the name Betsy. Her hair was quite grey and worn pulled back at the nape of her neck. She wore horn-rimmed glasses and unflattering dresses with knee high hose, and taught every class in a pair of terribly old-fashioned lady’s shoes. If it weren’t for her clever combinations of steps we never would have guessed she’d ever been a ballerina. Most of the time she sat in a red leather chair and gave vocal instructions, tapping out the tempo with Betsy and sipping from a cup of hot tea. It was a challenge for me, as I’d never had a teacher who didn’t stand at the barre and demonstrate the exercises with grace and firmly accentuated calf muscles. Having to learn to translate the names of steps and positions of the arms into movement was, I realized later, a great opportunity for me. I began religiously writing down class combinations in dance journals, which I later used when I became a teacher myself. My desperate attempt to grasp the vocabulary in Mrs. Dorsey’s class was a great aid.

I was shy, uncertain about myself and not at all convinced I had what it took to be a ballerina. All I knew was that I loved to dance, and I wanted to do nothing else with such a passion. My father’s dream of going to London to study theater had been dashed by his parents when he was the age I’d been then, and I think he went out of his way to find opportunities for me. Mrs. Dorsey had been the one to write a letter of recommendation for me to attend Butler University as a high school student. I later saw her recommendation and was astonished it had been accepted (the student has ‘adequate’ ability), but I did have to endure an audition and I worked very hard and never gave up, even when I encountered a step I’d never seen before. Perhaps they saw potential, for I was enrolled in the program.

I worked with Mrs. Dorsey for a year and one summer. She’d told my father that the girls’ dressing room could be brutal and she was worried about how I’d stand up to the pressure. No one was cruel to me, ever. I was quiet, arriving for the 2:00 ballet class after having spent the morning at high school, then thirty minutes driving on the interstate to Indianapolis. Many days I also stayed for pointe class, and I was cast in The Nutcracker so had to stay for rehearsals as well.

One day, late in the year, we were doing attitude devant en tournant. It was rare that Mrs. Dorsey taught pointe class, and I think she was surprised by my rapid improvement. I somehow had developed strength and confidence enough to do this particular turning step well. She stopped everyone, got up from her chair, walked over to me and kissed the top of my head. Then, she turned to the rest of the class and said over the top of her glasses in her English accent, “She’s young…you don’t get kisses.”

I will never forget that day. Never before or again did a teacher ever compliment me with a kiss. After having taught ballet for many years myself, it never occurred to me to do the same for any of my students either, so I consider myself quite fortunate to have been given such a gift. This gift was all the self-assurance I needed to get me through the next ten years of my dancing career.

There were several teachers who said I wasn’t built right for ballet; my torso was too long and legs not long enough, or I just didn’t have what it took emotionally to withstand the pressures of a professional life in the field. But never did their words affect me. I had Mrs. Dorsey most days the following summer for a two hour ballet class and an hour of pointe. When we did well, she praised us. When we did not do well, she would only look at us over the top of her glasses and raise her eyebrows. She had lost a tooth that summer and tried very hard not to smile too hugely, but a few times she would lose herself in a happy moment and we’d see the gaping hole at the side of her top gums. It was endearing. I loved her so.

She lived close to campus and on a couple of occasions she asked me to give her a ride home. It was a bit embarrassing for me because I was driving a big, baby blue Ford pickup truck. She had an awful time getting in and out, and I was not well-mannered enough to know to give her a hand. She would smile at me with great affection, regardless, and waved as I drove off. She had told us once that she didn’t have much to do at her home. She would just look at the blank walls and choreograph combinations for our classes in her head.

After a break of a few weeks that summer, we returned to classes in the fall to find Mrs. Dorsey absent. We learned that she was in the hospital and she had cancer. News was that she cheered up all the nurses with her English humor, rather than being the one who was cheered. Only a few weeks later, she passed away.

And here we were, at a memorial service for our dear, sweet, Mrs. Dorsey. Probably an actual funeral had taken place already, or perhaps she was cremated. There was no casket, no trip to a cemetery for us that day. Her son was there and someone who offered words that didn’t come near to catching her essence. We looked upon the framed photograph of a lovely young woman and we each remembered how she’d touched our individual lives. I don’t believe there was a dry eye in the hall. I, for one, didn’t have enough tissues on hand.

For many years after, I would call upon Mrs. Dorsey from the great beyond, asking for her assistance with this audition or that piece of choreography. She never failed me, and I truly do believe that her spirit lives on and she is at my side whenever summoned. Sometimes I wonder how she managed to continue carrying on the tradition of teaching ballet for so many years. I found an article online that said she’d choreographed a Dickens ballet at Butler in 1959. That was 25 years before I arrived there. How many lives she touched can only be imagined. I just know that she had a magical effect on mine.

Somehow my father managed to learn of an estate sale at Mrs. Dorsey’s home near the university. He accompanied me there one day after class. We entered the small, brick home where she’d visualized ballet combinations while staring at her walls, and we walked among her things. It was strange to enter her personal world. Stranger still to find things of little value up for sale. We may not have been the only ones who went there for a sentimental trinket or two. I took home a pair of horn-rimmed glasses, a cane, and a plaque with a gold rose attached that reads:

All hearts grow warmer

in the presence of one who

gave freely for the love of giving

a giving that deepens and grows

ever unfolding new sweetness

as the blossoming of a rose.

I still have the plaque on my dresser, though I’ve since lost the glasses and the cane. No doubt it was given to her from one of her many adoring students.

One time I remember being in her class when no accompanist was there to play the piano. There was a record player available and some well-worn records, but she quickly gave up trying to make that work and employed her cane, Betsy, to pound out the rhythm on the floor. I’m sure she was exhausted by the end of an hour and a half of doing that, but she never let on that she was tired and she always had a lovely, peaceful face.

Now that I’m older, with three children of my own, working in the completely unrelated field of computer technology, I look back at Mrs. Dorsey and think about what she had said about the dance world being a cruel place. I did manage to get my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in dance and I did dance professionally for a short period of time. Many years I taught ballet to young people and enjoyed it tremendously. When my back started giving me problems I was unable to teach the way I’d always taught: standing at the barre in my leotard and tights with a long, black skirt and pale pink teaching shoes, demonstrating the steps with the best technical ability I had left. I suppose I could have asked for a demonstrator, someone who would stand in front of the class and show the steps as I wanted them executed, following my verbal lead. But it was too hard for me. Once I could no longer show the steps, I felt my teaching began to suffer. Maybe I should have called on Mrs. Dorsey for assistance then, before it was too late. We moved to a new state where no one knew me as a dancer or a teacher, and my talent seemed to diminish into nothingness. I have my children who give me great happiness, and I’ve worked at the bank now for nine years.

I did try teaching again, about a year ago. My back and my foot both gave me a lot of pain. It’s hard for me to do anything physical now, and I wonder if I’d been born in Russia if they would have filtered me out of the dance system before I’d ever started because my torso was too long, my legs too short. Still, I can’t wish for anything different than the experiences I’ve had and the teachers I’ve studied with or the students I’ve had the opportunity of teaching.

I’ve outgrown my shyness. I asked my father at one point if he would mind too terribly if I quit dancing. I think he was surprised at such a question. He says I made it farther in my career dancing than he ever made it in theater, but I don’t believe he’s right. He made a career of teaching, even if he wasn’t given the opportunities to perform himself at a professional level, and he has touched thousands of lives. I’m sure he would have been a fabulous actor, had he been given the right teachers and experience. Not all wonderful actors or dancers make wonderful teachers, either. I think Mrs. Dorsey’s dancing career was short-lived, although I don’t know this for certain. But I know she had a passion for teaching, as did my father. He never appeared to be disappointed in me, and I hope that she’s not disappointed in me either, for not learning to find passion in teaching from a red leather chair.

Why do dancers dance? Ballet class is rigorous, not to mention expensive, yet thousands of people send their children to ballet. As a dancer, I know that what keeps bringing us back to the barre, day in and day out, is passion. And I know as a parent (whose children lacked such passion) that it was easier to save my money and pull them out of ballet than to hear them whining and complaining that “ballet is boring”.

When I was ten years old, the girl next door showed me her tap and ballet shoes and introduced me to a few steps. For me, that was it. I practiced those steps everyday on my front porch and pretended my black patent leather shoes had taps on them. For reasons I couldn’t understand, I had to wait until school was starting the following year to begin lessons at the local studio with Debbie Wilkerson. It felt like an eternity! My mom said that she knew from my fervent activity in the womb that I was destined to either be a dancer or a football player. When my lessons finally started, I was hooked and couldn’t get enough.

The studio was three short blocks from my house, so I was allowed to walk there by myself. It was downtown in the upstairs of an old building. There was one huge studio and one smaller one, plus an office, waiting area, and a long room full of costumes that you had to walk through to get to the restroom. My teacher, Debbie, had lovely leotards and wore her long hair in beautiful braided buns. There was a raised area in the corner of the large studio where she had her record player, and I always dreamed of one day being the teacher so I could stand there, too. My dad helped me put up a barre and some mirrors in our attic and I had my own little studio up there, where I spent hours upon hours dancing and making up my own choreography.

If most dancers are like me, then they dance because they must. They can’t stand the thought of life without dance. Sure, they take the occasional break and vacation, but dance is always there on the horizon waiting for them to pick up again. Debbie was a special teacher, because she recognized my passion for ballet and encouraged my parents to send me to the Jordan Academy of Dance in Indianapolis where I could get more intensive training than she offered at her studio. I went there on Saturdays and dreaded it every single week. Looking back, I’m grateful for my parents’ diligence in making me go, because from my contacts there I was able to apply to Butler University’s early enrollment program as a high school student.

At Jordan Academy all the girls knew each other and took class several times a week together. I came in only on Saturdays and was too shy to make friends with anyone. They did a lot of steps that I’d never seen before, too, so I was confused a lot. And I simply hated grand allegro, when we had to dance across the floor two at a time and I almost always had no idea what to do. Still, I loved dancing at Debbie’s studio, and when I was accepted as a student at Butler my sophomore year in high school, I loved that as well. My teacher at Jordan Academy, Peggy Dorsey, warned my father that it could be tough at the university (where she also taught) and that there was a lot of competition among the girls. However, since I went there everyday I was able to make friends with many of the girls in my classes, and my dancing improved by leaps and bounds (pardon the pun!).

When I became the mother of two young girls, they enrolled in dance at the studio where I taught in Paris, Kentucky. They had a cute class for two year olds called Jack Be Nimble, and my girls both loved that. Then we moved to North Carolina and I stopped teaching so I could work at a job that would give our family benefits and enough pay to live on until my husband found work. We enrolled them in creative movement and they enjoyed it, for the most part, but to be honest they would rather be at home playing in mud or riding their bikes. They took a break from dance, since they were still rather young, I thought, to be expected to have a spark of passion for it yet. When they came back to it a few years later it was drudgery getting them to class. I could see that they were the ones who were left out of the cliques made up of girls who were there several days a week, and they just didn’t love it as I’d hoped they would.

I didn’t have dreams of them becoming professional dancers. I just wanted them to have something they could love doing, as I had when I was their age. But it wasn’t meant to be. And I realize that the kids who show up and are eager to learn new steps and tricky combinations are the ones who are passionate about dancing. They are the ones who can’t imagine life without dance. As a side note, my girls are now teenagers who play soccer, piano, guitar, and violin. They are also whizzes on the computer. I’m not sure either of them has found their passion in life, but I still hold out hope that they will. There’s nothing quite like it, is there?