Back to the (Advanced) Beginning

Washington, DC, today

I started writing this blog back in the fall of 2011. I was on sabbatical, and I had a fellowship at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. I left my darling children and my dear husband, and lived rather monastically for two months in an apartment with a depressing, dingy kitchen located near the splendid downtown of Pasadena. The weather that fall remained warm well into October, and Pasadena and San Marino charmed the heck out of me. 

I had a bicycle, a lovely, elderly Schwinn for which I had paid far too much, and this I rode about, discovering the town and checking out the many different dance and yoga studios. I started blogging because I wanted to share with my ballet friends back in Utah (and elsewhere) a little insight on the options, from the butt-busting “barrefly” workout to Patricia Godfrey’s and Francisco Martinez’s excellent adult classes at Pasadena Conservatory of Dance. I even went to “Day of the Dead” yoga, which was… interesting.

Now, once again, I am far from home, spending three months on the East Coast as a fellow at various art-historical institutions while I (try at least to) finish a book manuscript. I arrived in Washington, D.C. yesterday afternoon, and moved into my far-from dingy apartment with its sparkling kitchen stocked with Eva Zeisel ceramics. 

This morning, despite an urge to sleep in after a rough first night (city noises, too much light in the apartment, who knows what anxiety attacks), I made myself get up and get dressed and get on the Metro to Townley Center, and then to walk to the Washington Ballet studios for an Advanced Beginner class.

You see, dear reader, I have learned; when first I started going to adult open classes in new venues, I would inevitably show up for the intermediate class, and then I would proceed to feel (in this order); overwhelmed, klutzy, stupid, and ashamed. There is no reason to feel this way, when one is taking adult ballet, so eventually I figured out, start at the advanced beginner level, and see what happens.

What happened today was that the instructor, a very lovely (and by this I mean both aesthetically lovely and personally lovely) young man named Aaron (what a great name, two A’s to begin with… have I ever mentioned that my nuclear family all have names that begin with A? They call us A⁴, sometimes), anyway Aaron, greeted me very personably and warmly. And then proceeded to kick my butt, in the nicest possible way.

Partly, I am just a little out of shape; with my chronic hip problems, I’ve probably been slacking a bit lately. And while I am not complaining, because heaven knows I’m lucky to have the opportunity to dance ballet at all in a town as small and as remote as mine, I do sometimes find that the adult intermediate-advanced level class could be just a wee bit more challenging, and I could certainly use a lot more correction. Bad habits have a way of creeping in, and once in, they’re mighty stubborn.

Just can't not.

Partly, every time I take a class from a new instructor, the initial learning curve feels steep. They have their individual things; in Aaron’s case, he wants you to begin the combination with your supporting-side arm on the barre already (as opposed to the usual prep), and while working at barre he wants you to look straight ahead, until at least rondes-de-jambes. He explained why he does both of these things, and his explanations made sense to me (arm: ensures that you start out the right distance from barre and that you are aligned before you begin, head: allows you to focus on your form and watch yourself in the mirror, though in my case, standing behind a Very Tall Lady, not so much). But they were HARD for me. That lizard-brain part of me that got beaten into a particular shape by RAD all those years ago almost cannot not do the head positions. 

In a deeper way, each new place I dance teaches me something different about the way the body moves in space. Aaron has very elegant port-de-bras – as I said, he is lovely – but as he explained what he was doing with it, it suddenly dawned on me that this is the most natural thing in the world (of course it’s not, but it seemed that way); the arms, he said, are the mysterious part of the choreography. They lag just infinitesimally behind the precise, on-beat movements of the feet and legs. 

The mystery of the port-de-bras

Choreographically, the class suited my energy level and skill just fine; no new steps, certainly, but lots of unusual (to me) combinations of well-worn favorites. I loved the pacing of the class as well; he does not waste time on overly wordy explanation. Mostly, it’s a quick setting of the work, then bang, execution, no marking, no repetition. This keeps one focused and sharp, and is also, I suppose, why this is and “advanced” beginner, and not a beginner-beginner class. Having a live accompanist, of course, makes all the difference in the world, since the music is always perfectly suited to the movement and there is no fiddling around with a CD or MP3 player. The pianist today was very good, I should mention.

The class was large, but I definitely noticed that Aaron made an effort to speak to each dancer individually at some point, and he knew most of the students by name. It’s a very diverse group, ranging from an absolutely glittery, technically gifted young woman whose birthday it was to the usual crowd of forty- and fifty- and even sixty-something amateurs with all levels of skill and experience. People were friendly, as well, which is not what outsiders expect of ballet people, but what I have learned is the norm amongst adult ballet students and professional dancers, at least, even if it wasn’t back in my student days. Maybe it is the shared sense of ineptitude that builds our kindness to one another. Maybe it's just the communal act of sweating.

Sure I do!

So begins my new adventure in ballet-tourism. I am thinking I will definitely go to Aaron’s classes when I can (the studio is not at all convenient to get to, sadly), and I am toying with the notion of taking a flamenco class at a more accessible studio as well. I will blog about all this periodically, when I can, but since I will be spending my weekdays doing my “real” writing, I may just want to dance, dance, dance the weekends away!