Yoga and Ballet: parallel lives?

I was complaining that yoga just isn't ballet, and it's not, but I'm taking this yoga class from a professional dancer/choreographer and it is totally kicking my butt. It's fantastic to watch her move through the asanas, so fluid and so light. She practices a pure, classical Hatha form, which means lots of sequences (vinyasas) that really focus on alignment and core energy. I'm hoping that a couple weeks of this will get me to a place that will benefit my dancing when classes start up again in June.

The relationship between yoga and ballet, in their modern forms as we know them in the "West" might be closer than it seems at first glance. Mark Singleton's fascinating book Yoga Body: The Origins of Modern Posture Practice explores the "invention" of physical yoga through a confluence of Indian nationalism, western Orientalism, the physical culture movement, and other varieties of late nineteenth and early twentieth century body-based ideologies (e.g. eugenics, Muscular Christianity...). Likewise, Jennifer Homan's incredible Apollo's Angels reminds us that ballet as we know it is the strange marriage of French aristocratic court ritual, Italian folk theater, and Russian nationalism both Imperial and Soviet. Oh, and throw in some Scandinavian nationalism as well, which is also part of the whole yoga thing, according to Singleton. And then both really take off as commercial ventures in England and then, in the first blush of the modernist era, the United States, under the influence of "exotic" foreigners from the Orient (Russia, India...). Furthermore, the fundamentally Romantic core narratives of ballet seem to me linked to the romantic idea of yoga as a soul-purifying and elevating practice in which the improvement of the physical body is linked to the advancement of the spiritual self; Giselle? La Sylphide? And let's not even talk about La Bayadere (sorry for lack of accent -- not that advanced with this tool yet).

Now that it has occurred to me, I'm going to have to root around and find out if there has been any work done comparing the histories of the two disciplines and their recent histories... any comments?

I'm struggling with the long hiatus between the end of the spring semester and the summer session at my local ballet school. Six weeks is too long, but in my small town there are no other ballet schools, so I just have to suck it up and do barre at home as best I can, workout in the basement to my various ballet-exercise dvds (feeling like a doofus as I do), go to yoga (sigh -- I don't hate yoga, but it's just so... yoga).

I used to be absolutely addicted to yoga, actually. I went four or five times a week to a fancy-pants yoga studio, yog'd through my first pregnancy, could do things like elbow-supported headstands for indefinite periods of time, and read Yoga Journal. I don't know what happened to all that. I moved away from California and my favorite yoga teacher, maybe that was it. So sometimes I wonder if my current somewhat insane interest in ballet won't go the way of yoga, fading into a mild interest that results in attending the occasional class and doing some plies at home. Who knows? I guess it doesn't matter. I love it now.

So, tomorrow I'll go to yoga, but as I'm doing surianamaskara A, I'll be thinking brise vole. Yes I will.

One of the nice things about going back to ballet in my forties has been that I actually enjoy it in a way I wasn't able to as a competitive young dancer. I look at myself in the mirror and I think, "Wow, I can DO that," where I used to think, "I hate my knees!" or something along those lines.

Another nice thing is that leotards, tights, and dance shoes have all gotten so much more comfortable. No more scratchy nylon or glistening spandex! Split-sole technique shoes! And best of all, the new pointe shoes are just so much better than the old ones.

What? Forty-something bunhead on pointe? Sure. Why not? Okay, don't tell me why not. But let's just take a look. My last pair of pointe shoes from back in the day were Capezios, one of the first models they made in imitation of the Freeds that were actually de rigeur at my ballet school, but the ballet mistress had taken pity on me and allowed me to buy the Capezios when I started going through a pair of Freeds a week and my dad threw a fit. But for the added durability I paid an, ahem, stiff price. Those babies were hard as rocks. I still have them, complete with bloodstains and horrible black marks from beating them against the wall to try to soften them up. They're really, really ugly, not to mention I can still recall how much they hurt my poor young feet.

Now I'm on my second pair of Bloch (European Balance, size 5xx, for my "peasant" feet) pointe shoes; delovely! Of course, pointe is not for the faint of foot, but these are actually quite comfortable and I've only had one blister in all this time, that caused by my toe pad being a bit out of kilter. Oh, yeah, toe pads. Old style: bare feet, tape, sweat and blood. New style: lovely little padded toe sock, no blisters, no blood.

One of these days I'll post a compare and contrast photo of my pointe shoes old and new.

Okay, time to go do some plies.