Tiny Dancer

I was a ballerina. I danced for most of my childhood, and I loved it. I loved expressing myself through dance. Over time, the different moves and French names that went with those moves were so tightly engrained in my soul. I stood with my feet turned out. I sat with my feet turned out. I kept my diaphragm sucked in by habit. Instead of standing around and talking to my friends before school started, I talked with them while doing rond de jambes, tendus, and plies. I'm sure it bugged the heck out of them. It was so deeply a part of me.

As I got into junior high, my dance teacher started to pressure me quite a bit - she demanded that I take more classes, that I devote more nights a week to my craft. My parents gave in to my pleas, and I was happy and getting better and better. I was dancing in pointe shoes. I was doing pas de deux - dancing with a male partner, with lifts, dips, spins, the whole shebang.

When I entered high school, I got the lead in our annual recital. We did an additional recital with the symphony that year, as well. But I was starting to feel some different yearnings. I wanted to play high school softball. I wanted to get involved in student government. I wanted to give drama a try. My dance teacher found this unacceptable. I couldn't devote any time to any other pursuits. She was pressuring me to go to expensive dance camps all over the nation. She was charging exorbitant amounts for billions of costumes. When my mom asked her a question about one of my costumes, she unceremoniously kicked me out of her studio.

She went through a weird phase, I heard later. She kicked out her secretary. She kicked out my beloved Romanian technique teacher, Marius. She kicked out at least ten other girls. I hear wind of her still doing the same thing today. A gal who lives on my parents' street just got kicked out for some reason or another. That dance teacher of mine was a psycho. Is still a psycho.

I thought of joining a different studio across town, equally good, but I decided to take a hiatus and do some fun stuff. I don't regret it. I had so. much. fun. in high school. So much fun. I resumed ballet when I went to college. I didn't major in it - I decided I wanted to teach English (another decision I don't regret). But I made sure to take an advanced-level ballet class every semester. I was happy. I was finishing my fourth year of college and preparing to finish the following year (Yes, it took me five years to graduate. I was taking way too many "fun classes"), and the head of the ballet department pulled me aside after class. She told me she wanted me to try out for the BYU ballet team.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhh. My dream. I always talked about doing that when I was growing up. They travel all over the world, performing. It would be AMAZING. I decided to go for it, and I spent the summer of '99 dancing my guts out at the good studio across town. My feet were their strongest. I was in peak physical condition. I was ready to rock that try-out and be a star. I moved down to BYU for my final year and prepared to try out that first week.

And the Spirit gave me a big old NO. NO. No. You aren't supposed to do this. It isn't in your plan. I knew that five-hour-a-day practices would require me to postpone my graduation even further. There was no way I could do my credit hours, and then student teach, while dancing five hours a day. It broke my heart, but I listened, and I didn't try out. I took a kickboxing class that year, and started jogging a little bit. I missed dancing. But I had to graduate and move on with my life.

I graduated. I got a job. I met my husband. I got married. I was teaching and exhausted. I had no time or energy to dance. I had my first baby. I was a working mom. I quit my job, but then had more babies. I was pushing my husband through school. We didn't have money for me to take dance classes. People always ask me why I didn't just "practice in my house." Please. You need a big studio with proper flooring. You need a mirror. You need another person's opinions and input. It's like asking a bricklayer to lay bricks without his mortar.

It's been eleven years since I last set foot in a studio. When I point my feet, they cramp up. When I attempt an arabesque, I can't go very high, and my back muscles cramp up. Grand plies are darn near impossible for me. It makes me sad.

I knew that, eventually, the question of whether to put Sadie in dance would come up. Honestly, I really didn't want to. This is going to sound completely psycho, but here it is: I didn't want to watch her doing something I loved, and not be able to do it myself. Completely selfish and weird of me.

My cousin, Kort, moved here from California last fall, and she just started a dance studio in her home. She has always found a way to continue dancing, even in the middle of having four kids. She taught for fifteen years down there, and is starting up here now. She has taught all ages, but she really enjoys teaching dance to preschoolers. So that's her focus. My mom is making costumes for Kort, so Kort offered to have Sadie take lessons for free.

So, with a sigh, I signed her up.

And honestly, it has been so stinkin' fun. Sade and I went together to get tights, ballet slippers, and to pick out her leotard. It felt like home, tightening her laces, knotting them, trimming them, and then tucking them in properly, instead of leaving gay bows. She tried her stuff on, and I told her she couldn't wear underwear under her tights. No dancer in her right mind wears undies under her tights. Sadie danced around in her ballet clothes all day, saying, "I'm so booful!!"

On her first day of dance class, she saw my cousin's daughter, Morgan, and they both looked at each other and started squealing and jumping up and down. They were soooooo excited. It was so freakin' cute. I helped her get her shoes on and everything, and then she said, "You can go now, Mom." Uh, okay. So I visited my mom for the hour.

Kort not only teaches ballet, but she has them use creative movement. She uses those twirly ribbons that are on sticks. She has them play games to learn dance movements. She lets them do somersaults and cartwheels on a gym mat sometimes. She really keeps it moving, and the kids love it. She really has a way of working with little ones, and the girl has so much energy. I keep telling her that she needs to bottle it and give it to me. I would die and go to heaven to have that kind of energy.

I was determined to get some photos of Sadie's second dance class.

Here they were, making a flower that closes and opens when they point and flex their feet:

Doing the butterfly stretch - uncomfortable for a first-timer, I'm sure:

Standing in first position - equally uncomfortable:

Sadie's plies crack me up. I forget that the normal human body doesn't naturally do these things:

I took several more pictures of some of the activities they did, and then Sadie turned from Dr. Jekyl into Ms. Hyde. She stopped following instructions. She sat in the middle of the floor and put her little skirt over her head. She kept giving me withering glares. Then, in the middle of a tendu exercise, she yelled at me, "STOP LOOKING AT ME, MOM!!" and stuck her tongue out at me, in front of tons of watching mothers.

It was special.

Not wanting to make a scene, I took my exit. I ran a couple of errands, and when I came to pick her up, they were finishing up with a cute little jazz dance they're learning. Again with the withering glares and lack of cooperation.

When class was over, I had to take her into Kort's bathroom to change her into school clothes to go straight to school. I told her that, if she ever yelled at me or stuck her tongue out at me again in class, she couldn't go to ballet again. I told her that, if she didn't do what Kortney says, she can't take ballet anymore. And I told her that I'm allowed to watch her dance. I'm her mommy.

Last week, I didn't stay. I went home and showered. I'll just have to wait until her recital to watch her, I guess, which is fine. Kort says this happens all the time, that lots of kids get really embarrassed to dance in front of their parents. Weird. I never felt that way. But everyone is different.

Sades really seems to be enjoying her new dance class (when I'm not there). And it wasn't as heartbreaking as I thought it would be to hear those familiar words again, and to see those familiar moves again, and not be able to get out there and do them.

Ben and I have been talking a lot about it, and we've decided that I'm going to start taking an adult ballet class after I have this little munchkin. I am SO EXCITED. I'm going to look like a piece of crap for a really long time, but I cannot wait. I have missed it so much, and I'm ready for it to be a part of my life again.

Slides of Sades before she flipped out at me: