Back to Ballet

http://www.roh.org.uk/about/the-royal-ballet

After a two year hiatus in which the most dancing I did was in the morning to BBC Radio 1, or in the evening to a live band in London’s Soho, I have returned to ballet classes with my home dance school, Basingstoke Academy of Dancing.

Well first of all, I have to admit that two days since my first ballet classes, my muscles are still in pain.  While at University, I maintained an exercise regime with running, walking, yoga and swimming but, seemingly, ballet demands a whole other layer of insatiable strength and endurance.  In my first evening back, Sandra Doling, a visiting dance teacher from the Royal Academy of Dance, introduced us to the brand new Advanced 2 syllabus.  Let me tell you, it’s no easy feat.  It is lovely, it allows room to really dance and feels something like a révérence to the eleven grades (if you took the same route as me) previous to it.  But a pirouette with your leg straight out to the side that finishes, indeed, with that leg still perfectly poised, was not quite in the skill set that I had stumbled back to the floor with.

Beyond the laughable idea of mastering Advanced 2, and the fact I currently struggle to walk down stairs, to stand up, indeed, to move my legs at all, placing my hand back on the barré and my feet in fifth position held such familiarity that it felt like I hadn’t been away at all.  Muscle memory fascinates me in this respect.  All those hours in previous ballet classes frowning at my turnout, peeling my foot off the floor in order to dégagé evermore gracefully, lifting my body up even when it’s lowering down to plié.  All those frowns were entirely worth the time to allow me to come back and remember it all, even when my leg was screaming to find itself performing a ronde de jambe en l’air.  And yet I believe that with ballet, as a rule of thumb, if it hurts, it means you’re doing it right.

I think ballet means different things to different people.  Whereas for the lucky few it is a way of life, for others it is simply a fun way to exercise, and how much you love or hate it weighs in accordingly.  For me, it feels exactly the same as it did when I was four years old and performing the lost toy exercise in pre-primary.  It is in the moments between movement, the very notion of breathing while your arm breathes, of following your arm with your head, of finishing an exercise with your head poised toward the far corner: these are the moments when I remember how much I love it.  It is a friend just as much as a disciplinarian, an impossible prospect blended with attainable success.  It has been with me every day, physically, mentally, and in every twitch in my arms and legs when I watch other people dance.  I may have thought I left ballet, but really, it never left me.

http://www.roh.org.uk/about/the-royal-ballet

Interested in starting dancing?  Starting again?  Trying somewhere new?  Everything you need to know for Basingstoke Academy of Dancing can be found at: www.basingstokeacademy.co.uk

For London, I recommend:

The Place: http://www.theplace.org.uk/engage
Danceworks: http://www.danceworks.net/ 

Pineapple: http://www.pineapple.uk.com/