We are five years old when we begin to learn the ritual of ballet. At first, clinging to the barre, we feel scared of our bodies, which seem to be unpredictable and hard to control. Everything feels jerky and unnatural, and even in our tiny - practically toddler aged minds - we wonder if this is something we’re really interested in at all. It seems much easier to play soccer or learn to sing. And yet, the allure of ballet is hard to resist. Not many mothers can ignore the image of their daughter clad in a tutu, so it is almost a rite of passage to walk your daughter through those double glass doors and into this new world wrapped in satin, sweat, and fairytales. By the time the mothers realize that ballet might not be all its cracked up to be - we are hooked. We no longer rush home after class but linger to watch the older girls, wishing for the day we can master our bodies into something beautiful. We dream with our toes pointed, we live our lives trying to float through the world with the lightest of touches. Our iron-grip on the barre softens until we no longer need it. Evolution happens, even in a ballet studio.
Our mothers no longer carefully observe from the doorway. As we have been accepted into this world, they have also been cast out. They sew their love into our pointe shoe ribbons and drop us off in the parking lot, and each time we step across the threshold we become less of a daugher and more of a creature bent into shape by stories of the ballerinas that came before. This is your legacy, they tell us, gesturing up at the black and white framed photographs on the wall. This is what you’re striving for. They never elaborate on what “this” is. They don’t have to. It is no longer ellusive to those of us who know. It is unnameable, unmanageable, unimaginable - this inheritence of it all, but we know. It is both impossible to reach and impossible to avoid. It’s not just pointed feet and straight legs - it is the essence of dance that we are striving for, to tell our story and have it be understood without saying a word.
By the time we realize how much we need our mothers, they have faded from the wings, to the dressing room, to the audience. Ballet has become more of a mother than even the most attentive matriarch, as if even the most sacred bonds can be eclipsed by movement set to music. Our enmeshed, closeted community takes over every facet of your life before you even think to build an identity for yourself outside of your interests. Interests turn into passions turn into obsessions. It is almost impossible to extricate oneself from the feeling of being a ballerina, even when you’re walking down the street in jeans and sneakers. Dancers are hungry, glutonous creatures with a thirst running so deep for more, more, more that it is almost impossible to quench. We build ourselves with blocks of technique, grace, spontentity, intetionality. Train ourselves to ignore bodily impulses until we can defy gravity and physics and the limits of mortal men. Train ourselves to let go of anything that can’t fit inside a ballet studio’s four walls. Friends, relationships, hobbies don’t exist for us. It is only a barre, floor to ceiling mirrors, and the legacy we can never live up to but feel content to die trying.
The first time I hear my heart break I can feel it in my fingertips. It spreads from deep in my stomach to across my ribcage, flaming across my collarbone and rising into my face. It tingles down my nerves all the way down to my feet, eeking out into the floor and growing roots. It feels visceral, it feels extreme, it feels like it hurts so much more than it was supposed to. I expect to feel empty but instead I feel too full - like something inside of me is swelling into my throat and threatening to burst out. I’m honestly, in the moment, not sure if it will be vomit or flames.
The first time I hear my heart break I can feel it in my fingertips. It spreads from deep in my stomach to across my ribcage, flaming across my collarbone and rising into my face. It tingles down my nerves all the way down to my feet, eeking out into the floor and growing roots. It feels visceral, it feels extreme, it feels like it hurts so much more than it was supposed to. I expect to feel empty but instead I feel too full - like something inside of me is swelling into my throat and threatening to burst out. I’m honestly, in the moment, not sure if it will be vomit or flames. I feel my body continue to breathe, continue to exist in time and space, to feel the people around me move and bend as they process whatever was inside their envelopes. My envelope, which only heartbeats ago was holding inside it the most hated and cruel piece of paper of my life, slices into the side of my finger as I stuff the decision letter back into its folds. Slowly, the room around me comes back into focus as I furtively look around. Is my distress radiating off of me in waves or am I holding it in? Is anyone else feeling the way I feel?
What has felt like hours was only seconds, because some girls are still opening their envelopes to remove their letters. I watch the expressions on their faces change from neutrality to excitement or from a nervous bit lip to an undeniable smile. I know, before anyone says anything, that I am the only one who is unhappy with her results. Joan is watching, as always, from across the room. She is stationed at the upright piano she uses as a desk, hands on hips. We know she wouldn’t approve of emotional outbursts - happy or unhappy ones. We know she gave us our letters, all together, before a long rehearsal for a reason. It was a test.
I also know being the only one to not get into company this year was also a test.
I refuse to let the tears and fury escape me as I follow the crowd towards the dressing room. We have ten minutes between class and rehearsal and I can feel the anticipation of everyone around me to escape to somewhere they can let their ecastatic reactions loose. What do I do?
I collect insecurities like river stones. They weigh down my pockets and when I’m in a leotard and tights, they sit at the bottom of my belly. I also collect dreams. The cognitive dissonance a ballerina is constantly stuck in is this - both dreaming of perfection and being utterly convinced you are anything but. How do you untangle those threads? Some insecurties become invisible when I leave the closeted world of dance and live as a normal human. Later, in the years after I retire, those are the ones that haunt me the most. I am once again sure of myself - this time that I have a keener eye than anyone in the room, a clearer head than the most judgemental shrew could be. No matter what a normal person thinks of a person, a person who is a dancer knows without a shadow of a doubt where their bad bits are and how to point them out. We’ve spent our whole lives with the proverbial reb marker clutched in our fingertips, circling the parts of ourselves that could use improvement, need more shine. More flexibility here, a slimmer line here, a slight adjustment there. It is easy to obsess about a body that is right there and always failing you in ways only you and your mirror can see.
**
In my last year as a ballerina, I went to trusted dance instructors, who I had known for much of my dance career. At this point, I was approaching dance like a scientist, disecting it to try and sus out exactly why I continued dancing in the first place. I hoped that by intentionally taking someone’s critques and committing them to memory, I might find a way to escape the forest of doubt I was walking in. I was desperate for a path forward. The response to my investigation stopped me in my tracks, with both teachers pointing to the plumpness of my cheeks, still holding onto the youthful roundness that made people mistake me for someone much younger, as an area of improvement that I need to spend some time and attention on. Even after nineteen years of walking this earth and ten years of wanting to be a ballerina, I was taken aback by the masked cruelty under their sage advice. They urged me to consider ways I could slim down my face to look more mature and said that was a huge piece of what held me back from leveling up in my dancing.
I can’t begin to tell you how violating it feels for someone to point out something that you cannot, genetically, change about yourself as an inherent flaw and barrier to your success. The literal shape of my face was reason enough for these respected professionals to point to as a reason that I might not make it in the industry. What was I supposed to do with that? How did that solve any of my problems, or help me find a way out of the darkness?
Chat - it didn’t. It just made things worse. I added my dimples to the worry stones weighing me down, something I had always actually liked about myself. It was clear then, and it feels even clearer now, that no part of my personhood was safe. This world that had created me was also built to take me apart and rebuild me over and over into something new. The next choreographer’s dream petite allegro fiend was the following’s adagio nightmare. I was too classical to be modern, and lacked the willowly ideal.
The first time I hear my heart break I can feel it in my fingertips. It spreads from deep in my stomach to across my ribcage, flaming across my collarbone and rising into my face. It tingles down my nerves all the way down to my feet, eeking out into the floor and growing roots. It feels visceral, it feels extreme, it feels like it hurts so much more than it was supposed to. I expect to feel empty but instead I feel too full - like something inside of me is swelling into my throat and threatening to burst out. I’m honestly, in the moment, not sure if it will be vomit or flames. I feel my body continue to breathe, continue to exist in time and space, to feel the people around me move and bend as they process whatever was inside their envelopes. My envelope, which only heartbeats ago was holding inside it the most hated and cruel piece of paper of my life, slices into the side of my finger as I stuff the decision letter back into its folds. Slowly, the room around me comes back into focus as I furtively look around. Is my distress radiating off of me in waves or am I holding it in? Is anyone else feeling the way I feel?
What has felt like hours was only seconds, because some girls are still opening their envelopes to remove their letters. I watch the expressions on their faces change from neutrality to excitement or from a nervous bit lip to an undeniable smile. I know, before anyone says anything, that I am the only one who is unhappy with her results. Joan is watching, as always, from across the room. She is stationed at the upright piano she uses as a desk, hands on hips. We know she wouldn’t approve of emotional outbursts - happy or unhappy ones. We know she gave us our letters, all together, before a long rehearsal for a reason. It was a test.
I also know being the only one to not get into company this year was also a test.
I refuse to let the tears and fury escape me as I follow the crowd towards the dressing room. We have ten minutes between class and rehearsal and I can feel the anticipation of everyone around me to escape to somewhere they can let their ecastatic reactions loose. What do I do? They will find out soon, but I don’t want them to know I’m not joining them for the next step to becoming an immortal being instead of a girl. Will they immediately ostracize me? Already I can feel them pulling away, entering a world that I will have to sit on the outside of. Will the differences between us and our schedules begin to pile up until we can’t see each other over the top? I am scared and alone.
I glance at Joan again. She is watching me, and her face that is normal impassive is drawn tight. Maybe she regrets her decision. Maybe I can prove to her that I am good enough and she will change her mind. Already, my brain is scrambling for ways I can change this. It is the first time in my life I am faced with a problem I cannot solve and I feel so blindsided by that fact I am frozen in place. The girls start to move towards the door, already savoring the seconds of freedom they have to celebrate together. I stay where I am, trickle off with the last of them. The paper in my hand feels like a death sentence.
For the first time in a long time, I think is this worth it? Is this really what I want? Should this hurt this bad? It will be years before I realize that heartbreak will always hurt that bad. The jagged edges of my heart can’t help itself, it gets caught on the corners of my hopes and dreams and builds them into something else, something beyond me. I cannot control the beast that rises up in me, always wanting more. That will be another long time coming reckoning, when I finally realize that my desperate need to be full is standing in the way of me moving on from the disapointing (traumatic) things that happen to me. I have to let go of the hurt to move on, but at least if there’s hurt inside - I’m not empty.
