The Undeniable Charm of the Australian Teen TV Drama, Dance Academy

Perhaps because I had recently watched Mao’s Last Dancer and Only When I Dance, and my 11-year-old daughter had recently watched the hit Australian teen series Ocean Girl, Netflix cunningly determined that I would like the hit Australian teen ballet series, Dance Academy. Because I was living on my own for two months and evenings were a bit dull, I succumbed to the suggestion, and before I knew what I was doing, I was deeply, irrevocably involved in the fictional lives of a bunch of teenaged Aussie ballet students at the “National School of Ballet” in Sydney (fact check: the real focus of Australian ballet education is Melbourne, home to both the Australian Ballet and its professional school and the National Theater Ballet School).

The series centers on a girl named Tara Webster who has grown up on a sheep farm somewhere in the verdant hinterlands; our first encounter with her is as she uses the fence of a sheep-pasture as a barre while she does some preparatory warm-ups, concluding with a mindbogglingly limber back-bending port-de-bras. She is apple cheeked and wide eyed, and a bit of a rube; Xenia Goodwin, who plays her, is well cast as this earnest, “I just want to fly” dreamer. After a near miss at the auditions, she is admitted somewhat provisionally to “the National” where she has to wear a fairly ugly purple leotard everyday and the ballet mistress routinely excoriates her and takes away her pointe shoes. At the top of her class is her sour-puss roommate Abigail, in whose mouth butter might well freeze, and somewhere in the middle is Kat, basically Tara’s only friend, whose mother is a famous ballerina , whose father is a choreographer, and whose 17-year-old brother is a dreamboat for whom poor, susceptible Tara falls with a very un-balletic thud. Sammy Lieberman, a nice, smart Jewish kid, is her fellow sufferer in the “worst in class” category (male), while the haughty Christian, another dreamboat, constantly torments her, calling her “training bra” for reasons that don’t bear going into here.

The first season involves all the usual goings-on of teen dramas: Tara’s one-way romance with Kat’s brother is exposed by the nasty bit of business that is Abigail, who has a terrible grasp of basic internet and e-mail ethics. Sammy inexplicably falls for Abigail, though in his falling for her, one comes to like her better, since he’s such a sweet and compelling character that if he likes her there must be something redeemable. Kat struggles with feelings of rejection and inferiority and rebellion and everything else. She is a truly awesome hip-hop dancer. Christian is brooding and troubled and sort of into Tara. Kat’s big brother Ethan finally notices Tara. Some kissing ensues. That kind of thing. The second season focuses on the build-up to a big international ballet competition, but it also involves, among other things, the arrival of a new girl who is a sociopathic manipulator, and all the joy she brings; a new boy who is a goof with a very somber past; new romantic entanglements for all the major characters; motorcycles, long-lost fathers, two funerals, a fringe musical, and an attempt at sexual blackmail. In other words, it gets soapier.

Unlike American teen shows which are literally unbearable, this show is quite engaging even for an adult. The kids are very real, down to such details as occasionally having a visible pimple (not a plot device pimple, a real pimple), and sometimes just acting confused and uncertain. Tara is not such a simpleton that she doesn’t bridle at the mean ballet mistress’ criticisms or even, sometimes, openly object to the treatment. The actress who plays her really nails the clueless, feckless teenager. Maybe she is one. The teacher isn’t such a bad, unfeeling, bitter witch that she doesn’t have an ulterior motive – she sees Tara’s natural ability and wants to push her past the limitations imposed by her second-rate training. Even Abigail, who would in a typical American show be an unredeemable Mean Girl turns out to be far more fragile and unpredictable than one might expect, haunted by both her ambition and her self-perception as not quite good enough and not very smart.

What makes Dance Academy something of a sport among television dramas featuring dance (as if this were a significant category – I can only think of that tiresome ABC Family show, Bunheads, but maybe there are others, and certainly this could be said of films about ballet, too) is that you actually get to see a fair amount of real dancing by real dance students; Xenia Goodwin is a serious ballet student – by the end of the first season it seems entirely plausible that she has risen to the head of the class, partly as a result of hard work, partly because she just “has it” – that uber-flexible back, perfect feet, long legs, elegant neck, expressive torso… (the root of Abigail’s dislike turns out to be this unfair natural advantage). Dena Kaplan, the South African actress who plays Abigail, is probably the best dancer on the show, in real terms; she can act her role as a self-absorbed, insecure, controlling neurotic by executing a technically perfect but emotionally off-key “Aurora” variation, and she is also physically impressive – compact and explosive, but incredibly graceful and lyrical in turn. It turns out she is also a talented singer, and has been cast in Broadway musicals, a skill that is woven into the plot in season two, as she begins to question her singleminded dedication to ballet. Some of the others are quite impressive, too: among the men, the character Ben Tickle, who joins the class in season two, is particularly watchable, especially as a tap dancer. Christian, dreamboat #2, is an agile hip-hop dancer and well cast as the best male dancer in the class. He has elegant lines and a kind of beau-tenebre mien that is well suited to classical ballet.

However, my favorite scenes will always be Tara’s dream sequences in which she is dancing the final solo from The Red Shoes (in the world of Dance Academy this is an actual ballet, not a ballet-within-a-film, but it works well thematically with the plot). The choreography is a bit dull, but Goodwin very effectively interprets it as half-hopeless and half-joyful; when, in the second season, she actually performs the piece (after much resistance), it seems quite believable that she brings the audience to their feet – not only has the significance of this particular solo variation been built up over 52 episodes (they’re short), but given the concatenation of plotlines and the real grief that her character is experiencing, the way she throws herself into the music and the (somewhat lame) choreography is really very moving. I won’t deny it: I cried.

The most compelling character, however, is not one of the girls, but Sammy; played by Tom Green, who is more of an actor than a dancer (he’s great at hip-hop and contemporary, but the director has wisely chosen not to give him much ballet screen time) but who makes this guy just so soulful you want to adopt him and feed him and tell him he’s gonna be okay (he isn’t, actually, but I won’t say more – that would spoil things). Sammy’s relationship with his family – a high-achieving, religiously conservative father who doesn’t understand his eldest son’s desire to dance, a loving but reserved mother, and a younger brother as full of anger and aggression as Sammy is full of love and kindness – is very subtly portrayed. When Sammy’s grandfather dies, we get to see the full complexity of the parent-child tie as he comforts his father at once for the loss of his own father and for the loss of the son he imagined (a doctor, not a dancer). Sammy’s joy in dancing is palpable, and he manages to be a really sympathetic, often comic character without being that annoying stock figure from American teen drama, the best boy buddy, who comforts the female protagonists in their romantic crises while pining after them with nerdy, hopeless devotion. For one, Sammy’s sexuality is a little more complicated than that (in the second season he actually comes out to his friends and has a boyfriend, but at the same time you can see him wondering if this identity, too, is a bit constrictive); and also, while he is a “buddy” it’s more because he’s building around himself the protection of a new family, one that is more positive and more accepting than his real family. When he says to Christian, in season two, “These girls are my sisters,” it’s really not in the least corny; he means it and we believe it.

Things don’t always go well for Sammy; of all the characters he probably suffers the most angst, the most humiliation, and the most failure.  When triumph is in his grasp, it is yanked away, cruelly. But I suppose that’s actually a fairly accurate portrayal of the reality for kids at a professional ballet school. Actually, Tara is also the victim of almost constant and often quite harsh and public degradation, and like Sammy, she manages to bob to the surface again and again; both characters are attractive because they represent the essential goodness and steadiness that are needed to make a real professional artist – it’s such a common sense view and so contrary to the romantic notion that the best artists are the most tortured and self-absorbed. Indeed, one of the most poignant scenes comes in the final episode of season two; it’s a flashback, and Tara is sitting on the stairs outside the dormitory at night, looking pensive. Sammy comes and sits beside her, asking “What’s wrong? Did anything happen?” She smiles a little sadly, shrugs, and says, “Oh just the usual daily humiliations. I’ll be alright.” Then they just sit there companionably. The thing is that it’s not clear whether this took place early in their friendship or later, whether it relates to any specific episode that has been seen by the viewer, or whether it’s just a random night from their two years at the school; it’s emblematic of their relationship as a whole – they are kindred spirits, united by their outsider status, their love of their art, and their underlying strength of character. I did some weeping about that scene too.

So, if you have approximately fifty hours to spare before Downton Abbey season 3 begins, and you’re a sucker for ballet-themed entertainment, I recommend this sweet, but sometimes tough, teen drama. It is equal parts silly, sober, and effervescent. There’s a lot of fun dance (not all or even most of it classical ballet), some very pithy moments that capture the competitive and rigorous nature of ballet training, and some quite good acting and dancing.

I know I’ll be eagerly awaiting the stateside release of Season 3, now in the making.

First position

I live in Utah, so many of my neighbors and some of my friends own and use guns; mostly, they hunt, though some are into shooting at targets, including stop signs and rusted out cars left in a gully up in the mountains. Having grown up in liberal old Seattle with pacifist parents (despite that my dad was an ex-Naval officer), this all seemed weird to me at first, and deeply, deeply wrong. But mostly, in the eight years I have lived here, I have managed not to let it intrude on my day-to-day life; in other words, I have been a quietist about guns.

After last week, of course, it is much harder.

What does this all have to do with ballet? Well. First, there is this post: http://thehealthydancer.blogspot.com/2012/12/using-dance-to-heal.html, by a ballet teacher who helped a school of elementary kids cope with the stress and grief of the massacre through dance. I thought of the adage I once heard, "It is impossible to be sad when you are dancing." At the time I first heard this, I wondered if this was really true: so much dance (especially ballet) is about really, really, intense sorrow -- Giselle, Swan Lake, Romeo and Juliet... but on the other hand, what is being danced and the emotional sensation of dancing can be quite far apart. I have heard other dancers describe an overwhelming sense of exhilaration when performing a grief-stricken scene (La Bayadere, Nikiya's dance with the flowers at the wedding), and certainly, even when the music is really schmalzy and the choreography super somber, I am less sad, than immersed in the physical experience of telling that sadness... and that experience itself is not sad, but intense and in a strange, somber way, joyous. In fact, the first time last week that I wasn't dwelling on last Friday's events was in ballet class on Tuesday night. Even at yoga on Saturday morning, I could not stop thinking about those children, their parents, and the horror of it all.

Also, dance has, as an art form, often been used to speak against violence; Kurt Jooss' The Green Table, for example, is an overtly anti-war ballet, and Anthony Tudor's heartbreaking Dark Elegies, set to Mahler's Kindertotenlieder,("Songs on the Death of Children") is even more to the point here. These lines, from Friedrich Ruckert's lyrics strike me as especially poignant, in light of the recent killings:
Oft denk’ich, sie sind nur ausgegangen!
Bald warden sie wieder nach Hause gelangen!
Der Tag ist schön! O sei nicht bang!
Sie machen nur einen weiten Gang. 
(I often think: they have just gone out!
Soon they will be coming home again!
It’s a lovely day! O don’t be afraid!
They are just taking a long walk.)

Dance, too, is a fundamentally nonviolent art form. Not to say it cannot portray violence; it is quite good at that. But because it is rooted in the human body, and the interaction of that body with space, time, and other human bodies, it constantly brings us back to and reminds us of our physical frailty, our earthbound existence, our interdependence. That a dancer's body can seem, for a moment, to defy gravity or the laws of anatomy is only a way of underlining the fragility of these vessels in which we live, their permeability, mutability, mortality. As such, dance is not an art form that can revel in the fragmentation of the body; even Jerome Robbin's The Cage is really mostly about the women's bodies, and not about the bodies of the men they are devouring. And the violence is implicit, not Hollywood gross-out spectacle. In fact, that makes it the more sinister, the more alarming; maybe too the contrast between those voracious female bodies and their quite evident human physicality. They are muscle and bone, and just a liable to dissolution as any other body.  Also, when it's well danced, the ballet is really a cautionary tale about human cruelty and necessity of compassion, not a horror movie about females who kill and eat their mates.

What about war dances, then? Since antiquity, and across cultures, people have used dance as a ritualized expression of aggression -- in Utah last year some police officers of small cultural literacy actually arrested some teenaged football players for performing a Haka dance before a match, thinking the kids were actually physically threatening one another (having seen a Haka dance, I can sort of understand their perception). However, I think exactly the point of hyper-aggressive dance displays is that they contain and structure the violence, the rage, and the hatred that they express; a "dance war" or a "battle of the dance teams" may involve a huge amount of adrenaline, very real and very passionate feelings of enmity, and many other elements analogous to those of war or violent brawling, but where actual war leads to death, dismemberment, and destruction, a dance war is creative, often resolving or at least alleviating the tensions and conflicts that fed it in the first place. Of course, it doesn't always work... sometimes the dance war devolves into real conflict, but I think that's probably the exception.

I am not so naive as to think that somehow just by dancing we can change the world and make it a less violent place; that a plie can be translated into sane gun-control policies that would let my friends and neighbors who use their firearms responsibly retain them for the purpose of hunting or target shooting or even, yes, self-defense (though I think that I've heard statistically one is more likely to be hurt or killed by one's own handgun than to defend oneself successfully with it against a genuine attacker); that a grand-battement could kick policy makers in the ass and get some decent mental-health care options going in this country; that a tour-jete could make the violent and the homicidal lay down their guns and spare the lives of innocent children (the majority of children who die of gun-related injuries, by the way, are not suburban schoolkids, but black children in our inner cities -- the outrage just isn't there for them, because they tend to be killed one by one, not twenty at a go... and that's a generous view of why nobody's screaming mad about it).

Yet I hope that by teaching, learning, and sharing all the participatory arts: dance, music-making, mural-painting, and so forth, we can slowly, slowly turn the face of culture in which we live from the blank stare of the film-goer or video-game-player mesmerized by fantasy mass-murder and destruction, toward a more thoughtful, reflective, engaged, and life-celebrating view. Who knows, if Adam Lanza had been enrolled in a dance program, maybe this would have prevented the tragedy. But that would presuppose a system in which we care for the fragile and the wounded and the broken among us as diligently as we care for our own immediate interests.

In conclusion: though I may still be reticent to express the full strength of my antipathy towards gun culture, I have been forcing myself to be clear, when I talk with my friends and neighbors here, that I feel unequivocally that it is time for more stringent gun-control measures. I have also been taking some notes on an idea I have for working with a colleague who is a dance and movement professor, and collaborating with our local ArtsBridge program, to start a dance-in-the-schools initiative with a focus on non-violent conflict resolution.

Dancing with my Daughter

Tonight I took my daughter to ballet. She has been taking lessons for about two and a half years at our local civic ballet. Before that, she did gymnastics and "baby ballet." She is eleven, about the age I was when I really caught the bug after six years of ballet, and started actually wanting to be good. Something is going on with her (other than the first onslaught of puberty); she is a tense kid, not particularly flexible, very little musical sense, but suddenly she is on fire to go on pointe. I explained to her that just because she's eleven doesn't mean she is ready. However, I also said I would work with her, as best I can, to get her ready. Thus, ballet with the grownups tonight (with the teacher's permission of course).

She stood behind me at barre, so I couldn't see what she was doing, which is probably good. I always go through a period of adjustment at the beginning of class, as if my mind needs to warm up as well as my body. I have to actually think all the the things that after fifteen minutes or so become reflexes again; core held, chin level, shoulders back and down, neck long, arms floating, feet... you get the idea. K, the teacher gave her some good corrections, I thought. She knows AW (daughter) from last year, when she had her in class, so fortunately neither felt shy of the other.

She is a gawky child, all long, long, limbs and this tiny little body, like a pretty little spider. I think there may be some grace in there -- at her end of term recital I saw it in her port-de-bras, a kind of sustain that wasn't there before. But it takes so much work to make a dancer, and the discipline and rigor of our little school is simply not that intense, so for someone who isn't a "natural" it is probably a lot harder to get there. I hope I can help her get to her goal of going on pointe, but more, I hope I can show her that it doesn't matter that much, in the end, so long as one enjoys dancing and finds some bliss in it.

Toward the end of class, K set a very simple combination, a saute arabesque/chassee on alternate sides -- pure, skipping fun. All of us were smiling as we did it, and AW got a big grin on her little face and said, "Wow, that was awesome!"

So, maybe she doesn't need me to show her anything. She already knows.

Two months before the mast

My two months in Pasadena are over, and I have been far too busy dancing (and oh, incidentally, working) to keep up here. This period of being on vacation from real life has allowed me to take class almost every day with a variety of teachers, to get to know some other adult ballet students like myself, and to explore the dimensions of my obsession.

As discussed earlier, I was mostly taking classes at two studios which I characterized as on the one hand more technically-oriented and on the other more "noodle" -- that is to say expressive, free form, dance-y. But that is really a false dichotomy. The "noodle" studio did have a more choreographic focus, and I sometimes found that my level was not quite up to the choreography -- I just couldn't do THOSE steps THAT fast. Occasionally the instructor would demonstrate this beautiful, breathless petit allegro and I'd think "Yeah, I'm going to hit that!" only to find that I simply couldn't keep all the steps in my head and convey them to my body. This has always been a challenge for me -- some people just learn the combination the first time through but I am somehow dyslexic this way... I transpose things, get the wrong port-de-bras with the right step or vice versa. Partly it is a matter of practice and the degree to which the movements are embedded in body-brain network; professional dancers and serious dance students have millions of repetitions of the movements to call upon. But partly, it's just that I am a bit too much in my head. Probably that is why this late rediscovery of ballet has been so good for me, psychologically. It forces me to be in the moment, in my body, in the music, and NOT in that cluttered country of my thoughts.

As for the more "technical" studio, which I ended up liking better, partly because it was easier to get to and partly because I felt a little more at ease there, there was plenty of real dancing there too. One of the teachers is a choreographer whose work is very classical, or maybe neo-classical is a better word, since from what I've seen of his work on videos, he incorporates some of what I would call "classical modern" and "classical jazz" movement into his classical ballet. But still, pointe shoes, male/female partnering... the basics. His combinations were often just as complex as those in the noodle studio, but somehow I was able to get them a little better. Maybe he taught them more gradually? Anyway, they were very dance-able and sometimes I'd catch myself in the mirror grinning like a big, happy, idiot.

I did take one Vaganova class too at another studio. It was a pretty basic level, but it still utterly killed me; I think in fact that I injured myself there, even though in fact the instructor was working with me on form. I have a weak left hamstring, and sometimes I just push it too hard, especially if I'm really working on turnout from the hip (and it was a Vaganova class, so...). So, Aleve and Arnica and some rest are in order.

For me the best part of this whole experience has been the chance to go every day and therefore to build on my learning in a more continuous and cumulative way. Yesterday's corrections are easier to remember than last week's, and the things that you bring from day to day get etched into your body so that they don't have to be consciously remembered any longer. Flexibility benefits from the daily iteration of all of the active stretches that are just part of the barre work -- I see a big difference in my turnout and my feet, in particular. And while I do not particularly invest a great deal in the elevation of my extensions (I am, after all, forty-three), I see those coming along as well, though I'd still really like to improve my back flexibility so that my arabesques don't look so blocky and stiff.

I will not be able to take so many classes back home, but I have decided that I am going to supplement my dancing with some gym training to work on core strength, my hamstrings, my weak right foot/ankle, and back strength and flexibility, and I'll be back to yoga classes. Next term I might also take a modern class from one of my colleagues in the Theater department. I could stand to work on the kind of centered, contract/expand movement that invovles.

Animated pieces of rubber surgical tubing

I went back to the Wednesday studio tonight -- wow, it was packed. Miss Noodle was absent, but there were several more pasta-girls to take her place, and as I was watching combinations and waiting for my turn I noticed that the noodle thing is kind endemic to the studio. So I started taking closer note of the teacher. She's a noodle type too; better technique of course, but there's this squirmy, wiggly thing going on there.

When I was a teenager, our local free weekly paper had a review of Flashdance (remember, I'm over forty) that ran as long as the movie was playing in town, and since I grew up in Seattle, and it rains all the time, people watch a lot of movies and popular movies could play for six, seven months. So I remember this review very clearly, because I read it every week as I was being a little bun-headed poser in a coffee shop near Cornish (my ballet school). It went something like this:

An animated piece of rubber surgical tubing works in a factory, but only wants to dance, dance, dance, which for no discernible reason, she is permitted to do.

That "animated piece of rubber surgical tubing" bit cracked me up, weekly, at the time, and it floated to the surface of my memory as I was watching one particularly limber lass busta move tonight. It's a funny style, so unlike the strait-laced thing I grew up with and also that I still think of as being "good" ballet. But it has its attraction.

 I have a theory about it, too: a lot of these gals are "contemporary" or "lyrical" dancers and a lot of them have also done a ton of hip-hop, etc., and those particular genres of dance, with their competitions and their dance squads and so forth, really emphasize insane flexibility and a kind of acrobatic virtuosity. Then, if you watch a more "modern" classical ballet company, like NYCB, you notice that their dancers also have these super-dramatic gestures that exaggerate classical forms. Thus, allonge is super extended, hips and shoulders out of square, and my favorite is the move that looks sort of like you're ripping off your shirt as you carry your arms from first to en haut. Of course, when Wendy Wheelan or Sara Mearns does it, it's elegant, restrained, just a hint of the mannerism that gives flavor and style, but when most of us amateurs try it on, it goes all crazy for us.

I think it's pretty obvious I'm a bit of a ballet snob. Not that I think I'm all that as a dancer (look, I'm just doing this for fun at this point, girls), but rather I've watched a lot of ballet and I've formed my taste over many years and many performances by many dancers, and what I've come to think is that the technique is what keeps ballet from descending into utter silliness. When I'm in class, I'm thinking about form all the time, not in the mean way I used to when I was a kid, but in a kind of analytical, exploratory way -- I think I learned that approach from all those years of yoga, which taught me to listen to my body rather than to try to just boss it around. That's what keeps it from getting boring and/or frustrating, I think. And when I pay to see ballet, I want to see dancers who are just there, completely channeling the classical form, even if they're asking their bodies to do things that aren't standard steps or gestures. And a lot of this lyrical/contemporary stuff lacks that core. Not all of it, by any means. Just a lot.

So what fascinates/concerns me about Noodle Studio is how mannerism (in the art historical sense -- not only am I over forty, but I am an art history professor, so you'll have to deal with my jargon, I guess) seems to be the style, rather than an element of style added to the mix.

I must say, it's really fun. And while I am regrettably dissimilar to rubber surgical tubing, I like when for no discernible reason I get to just dance dance dance!

Ballet Blind Dates Episode 2: The noodle

I feel like I'm dating or something... Monday's date was really nice, but she wasn't my type, exactly. So, six blocks away, another studio, another teacher.

It wasn't promising, at first sight: basically, imagine what happens when you set up your dance studio in a converted self-storage garage type space. Yup.

No dressing room -- the other place was looking better and better -- it had the nicest dressing room I've ever seen at a ballet studio, to be honest. Date #2, not so much. I changed in the bathroom.

So, I'm waiting for class to start and the other students are starting to congregate. This very tall, skinny noodle, about 30, maybe, comes in. She's the kind of indie-chick I think I really wished I was, at that age, but I wasn't. A little dorky, a little cool. She starts stretching out and my god, the child has not a tendon in her body, evidently. I have never seen a white girl who was not Russian bend the way this youngster was bending. The other women, and the one guy, looked like Regular People, ranging in age, body type, and outfit from "Hello, I'm new at this," to "I bought this leotard in 1985 and I don't give a crap what you think." There were about eight of us all told. As we're finding our places at barre, and after I've introduced myself to the teacher, another tall skinny type, looking a bit like a yoga instructor with ballerina feet, Noodle Chick is stretching (again!) and one of the other students, who turned out to be a relative newbie, asks her "Are you a professional dancer?" Noodle Chick is embarrassed and flattered, and makes appropriate noises. The other girl says, "Because you;re so good." Noodle demurs -- no, she's not a professional, but she has been doing this for a while, off and on for years.

So, of course, out of the corner of my eye, I watch her. It helps that this is one of those weird studios with mirrors on three walls (WTF?) so you are constantly assaulted by your own, and everyone elses' reflections. Right off, like, during plies, I start to notice something incredibly disturbing about Miss Noodle. That hypermobility seems to have given her this bizarre disjointed, wiggly way of moving, so for example, when she does a grand port-de-bras, her whole middle comes unhinged. And her long, long, boneless arms are just flying everywhere, as if gravity itself is a bit cowed by their rubbery defiance.

Come grands battements, things get serious. I start to worry that Miss Noodle is going to do a damage to herself. Her back looks as if it's taking a huge amount of strain because the corollary to fantastic flexibility is, as we all know so well, poor tone. This woman has the moves, for sure, but it's strange to see a dancer who basically has no core, no center.

Meanwhile, the teacher isn't giving much correction, and certainly isn't messing with Noodle's contortions. Her combinations are challenging, from a mental standpoint, and she likes to set them to presto tempos. Good for the brain, good for training the feet and legs for petit allegro. Good for sweating buckets in the steamy southern California evening.

Center, and I get to watch Noodle in action -- beautiful extensions, of course, though no surprise she can not sustain them -- I think she simply doesn't have the strength. The more I watch her the more I worry about her -- there's something disjointed, literally, about the way she moves. She mentioned to the girl who thought she was a professional that she keeps getting injured. No doubt! It sort of distresses me that the teacher doesn't work with her on this issue a little more actively.

In fact, in retrospect, I don't think the teacher did a ton of teaching. She seemed like a great choreographer and her combinations were fun, dancy, way more enjoyable than Date #1. On the other hand, Monday's teacher really emphasized technique and was not shy to pinpoint my weaknesses and tell me what I was doing wrong right off the bat. Her combinations were not as much fun, but it's true that after class she said I should take her colleague's Saturday morning class too, "He teaches like a choreographer and I choreograph like a teacher," she explained. Well, Date #2 was all choreographer, I guess.

Conclusion: I think I'll go back to both studios for balance. I need Monday Night's discipline but I don't think I can resist going back to Wednesday, if only to gape at Miss Noodle and enjoy the live accompanist on Saturdays. Or, should I try a third blind date. I bought a bike so I can get around town (no car while I'm here) so I could possibly make my way out to what I'm calling the Important Local Ballet Company School this weekend. Hmm.

Way out West

Monday night I ventured forth from my temporary SoCal residence to take a class at a local studio. After my experience in New York in July, I was nervous. Not that it is bad to be challenged, but oy vey!

This being let's say the greater LA area, there was, as expected at least one actor (of the female variety) in the class. The other students were a twelve year old girl, an absolutely fantastic Asian woman in her thirties, clearly a professional of some sort, a gray-haired woman in her late fifties or early sixties, skinny as a rail, and me. The older woman (by which I mean, older than I am), had her pointes on. Wow. I thought I was radical, pushing my mid-forties and doing that. I was filled with admiration. And I couldn't help noticing that while no expert, she was pretty darn solid.

The teacher, a woman who by the looks of her has never missed a day at the barre, though she made it clear she's about the same age as the pointe-shoe lady, was like a ballet teacher in a t.v. show about adult ballet; I am imagining this t.v. show, but given the state of reality television and the current vogue for dance-related shows, it won't be long...

I was so stiff and self-conscious at first: what gets into me? The combinations weren't so much difficult as different to what I'm used to getting at home, so I struggled a bit. I looked at the ground, I wobbled: she noticed. I'll say this -- that teacher in New York did not even see me, but this gal was super-attentive. By then end of class I got the sense she had a very clear picture of what all of my failings as a dancer are. But she was generally quite jolly about it.

What was not jolly at all was her final combination: changements, quattres, and royales, as she put it "forever" -- or at least for 64 counts. I really, literally thought I would die. Fortunately, even miss former-professional ballerina struggled with it and the grey-hair and pointe shoes lady ran for her inhaler.

Best combination: a complicated thing with piques that defies description but that really kept the little grey cells going despite its fundamental dancey-ness.

Next up: to try the "Ballet-Booty" fitness class at the nearby yoga outfit.