Ballet Lessons
This isn't really an eye-emotion-catching topic, I know that. But, maybe we all had some kind of habit or craft we cultivated growing up. Soccer, softball, gymnastics, playing the flute, martial arts, swimming, whatever......ballet. Maybe we don't use it directly anymore these days, but it's in there!
(How many times have people complimented me on my posture?! And I usually feel like I need to improve it!!)
I think of ballet nearly every day. Mostly because I have a beautiful photo of my ballet class from high school hanging in my bedroom. I hadn't hung that up for most of my adult life, until I moved into this apartment on my own with the kids. I remember pretty clearly the day the guy came and took the photo, and the other photos with it. He was a friend of one of the dancers, in a photography class or something, getting practice and doing us all a favour! (Or, maybe he was just creepy and I didn't realize it?!) We weren't a fancy school. Modest, low key, low budget, low flash. It was a super hot day when he came to do the photos, I remember that too.
It got hot up there in that old house where the lessons were, especially in the summer. The sweat would bead down our faces and our backs and we couldn't get enough water, or enough cool air from outside! And in the winter!---FREEZING! We'd all wear legwarmers and shirts for the first part of the lesson, until Brigitte's eyes told us to toughen up and take those silly things OFF! No silly ballet skirts either.
She could communicate all that with just her eyes quite well.
Brigitte De Calle.
What a beautiful name.
From Bogota, Colombia. Prima Ballerina there, and in Stuttgart, Germany as well.
I'm sure there were other accolades and notches to that name. But, impressive either way.
And romantic.
Her husband, we'd been told, had been a Colombian pilot who'd died in a plane crash and left her to raise their two daughters on her own. She never re-married.
I'm sure she had her offers. I mean, she was a beautiful Colombian ballerina! Head strong and smart too. Running a ballet studio and a little shop down the street, actually called The Fancy Shoppe (ohhhhh how I wish I had bought things from that place! how I wish I had cared more about it!).
Maybe it was the smoking. Maybe that's why she never re-married...ha!
No...I like to think more that it was because she had loved her husband so very much that she never got over him and never cared to even try. His memory in her heart and in her children's faces was enough. I always got that aura from her.
Or...maybe that's just me and my own dramatic storytelling.
Who knows!
But...the smoking!
Four nights during the week, and sometimes on Saturday afternoons too, I'd go to lessons. From age 11 to 18, and then back during college summers. I'd been dancing since I was four, but the original studio I'd went to closer to Seattle was a little more flashy. Tap, jazz, tumbling, BIG recitals with expensive sequined costumes. That kind of thing. Performances in places like The Seattle Center, or University of Washington's Meany Theatre. Lots of make up and fake smiling for those. Hey I even remember my mom doing some kind of tap dance to "Bust a Move" in a one piece sequined pants suit!
Brigitte would've been disgusted! Smoking her long, skinny cigarette in disdain. Using the cigarette holder to avoid staining and smelling her hands up.
Or, for added glamour.
Yes, 4 nights a week, sometimes Saturdays too, that's where I'd go. To The Olympia School of Ballet. NOT to be confused with The Ballet School of Olympia (or? which was it? ha! my dad asked every.single.time. that he wrote the check---oh the money---, and now I cannot even remember!). All those lessons I went for, and Brigitte would be waiting on the bench in between the dressing rooms and the dance space, smoking her cigarettes before the start.
Until at some point she had to smoke those cigarettes in some kind of outside space upstairs. And we'd know she was coming back--from stretch breaks during class--when we heard the door slam back shut, felt the outside air rush in, and smelled the smoke. (Time to straighten up! Look busy!)
Until at some point she only did that smoking outside DOWNstairs on the front porch of the building.
See, the studio was in a beautiful turn-of-the-20th-century house. Painted blue, with a grand white porch out front. In the old part of town, near the state capitol. We never really used the downstairs of the building--it served as The Women's Club (whatever that was!). But every one of those nights I'd walk up that porch, open up that big beautiful old door, and creek up those old wooden stairs that shot straight up to the rickety second floor with more wood floors and huge old windows, a couple of bedrooms converted to dressing rooms with toilets and then a big mirrored space full of windows, for dancing in. I never got used to she smell. It was lovely. Old, musty, sweaty, cigarette-ey.
Going there was like therapy every time. Only, at those ages I had really no idea. I just went. It was my routine, and I liked it well enough. It was good exercise. I don't think I entertained the idea of not doing it much at all! I'd been dancing since I was four! No matter what was going on in my world--with friends, family, boyfriends, school stress--I would carry it in with me, warm it up and thaw it out and then gradually throw it away as class wore on.
Liberating.
All the endorphins from the jumps at the end of the nearly two hours would get the very last bits out and I'd leave that session emptied and cleansed and energized.
Rarely did I miss a class. Only if I was very sick. Never just because.
I'd eat dinner, and then my dad would take me.
And then my dad would pick me up. And have to wait in the car for indefinite amounts of time as my South American teacher with her loose sense of time wrapped up class when she very well felt like it. Time? What's that?
(Oh my poor dad...all that soft rock in the car!)
I thought of her tonight, well, because I think of her often. But tonight I trimmed my bangs. And thought maybe I should try trimming my own hair too--you know, the rest of it. She used to do that. Her hair was always in this perfect little French bob kind of thing, that she'd wear with her classy Audrey Hepburn clothes style. And she'd subtly brag about how she never went to a hairdresser, '"I just fuss with it myself all the time," she'd say. Trying not to smile.
She never smiled.
I really think she never smiled.
Or laughed, that's for sure.
But she demonstrated ballet for us beautifully, in those Audrey Hepburn clothes. And I'd wonder what she must've looked like as that Prima Ballerina. What would it be like to see her dance in real ballet clothes? What would it be like to see her really let loose the Prima?
We never saw that. She was very controlled.
The records were such a thing! So many records in that little space, but we often danced to the same ones. Every night, the same combinations to the same records. "Ballet is so boring!" my girls told me when they took a lesson or two. I guess I never thought so? I found comfort in that repetition. And you know how good for my brain it was? How often I think of the connection between that repetition, that practice of memory, and studying for school? Amazing.
And ohhhh those records. Crackling and sometimes re-starting if we didn't get the beginning right. Or if we were completely off and she'd get upset and stop in her quiet drama stare and we'd know without any words we had made mortal errors and must. not. go. on. like that!
"Can I go to the bathroom?" me, tentatively and assertively (--yes those two things can go together--) walking up to her in between a combination, if I had to go during class. Cause we had to ask first. "I don't know, can you?" she'd say, every single time.
And then I'd say, "May I go to the bathroom?"
And she'd say, "Yes, you may."
Every time.
I always said "can"...not because I forgot. Almost because I guess I liked the predictability of that little interchange? I liked showing her I wasn't so easily swayed to her way of doing things? And I also liked to show her that if indeed she asked for me to be more polite, well I'd follow through.
Just, next time we'd have to do it again.
Bizarre, aren't we?
I was never all that great at ballet. I'd gotten a scholarship in tap dance when I was about 10, but we moved and I never took tap again. Brigitte's studio didn't offer it, and the other studios in town she clearly snubbed, so I showed my tasteful loyalty by just taking ballet with her.
I really was never all that great, I thought.
I'd love to see some old videos now, though. Might change my tune! All those things I can no longer do!
But it's vulnerable, dance. Those combinations across the floor all by yourself! Comparing yourself to the person before you, knowing they're doing the same with you. It wasn't about body image for me...that wasn't pressured there. But, more about what my body could, or couldn't, do. And how gracefully and naturally I could pull it off. I always felt too stiff, and envied the freedom and grace of some of those other dancers. I never felt all that special there. I just kept going.
One year, though, Brigitte gave me the job of teaching all the younger dancers the Baby Swans, from Swan Lake. I was an expert in that dance, in toe-shoes (in fact I can remember all the moves to that whole thing even today!) and Brigitte knew it and asked me to pass it to the youngers.
That's when I knew my place there. And finally felt I'd made it, somehow. Made a place for myself there.
A couple years ago I found out Brigitte was teaching at one of those flashy kinds of studios she'd talked disparagingly about when I was her "can I?" student. I was just glad to know she was still alive! And teaching! I have no idea how old she might be now...as when I knew her my concept of age was warped...as it is when we're younger...thinking every adult is just so old.
When I found out where she was, I decided to write her a letter and thank her for all her teaching, tell her how I think of her often. I spared too many emotions, sensing she was never a fan of that nonsense. Told her I had children. All that.
I never heard back from her, but I did call the studio and they said she'd received my letter.
I know inside it would've warmed her heart...because...why not? She'd never say so...but I have a feeling she's softened with age.
Maybe now she even has a boyfriend (to intimidate and remind about manners!)?
Or, who cares, maybe better yet she's still on her own.
*Crossing my fingers her outside smoking turned to no smoking, though.*
And that she still dances gracefully in her Audrey Hepburn clothes, with self sculpted hair.
(How many times have people complimented me on my posture?! And I usually feel like I need to improve it!!)
I think of ballet nearly every day. Mostly because I have a beautiful photo of my ballet class from high school hanging in my bedroom. I hadn't hung that up for most of my adult life, until I moved into this apartment on my own with the kids. I remember pretty clearly the day the guy came and took the photo, and the other photos with it. He was a friend of one of the dancers, in a photography class or something, getting practice and doing us all a favour! (Or, maybe he was just creepy and I didn't realize it?!) We weren't a fancy school. Modest, low key, low budget, low flash. It was a super hot day when he came to do the photos, I remember that too.
It got hot up there in that old house where the lessons were, especially in the summer. The sweat would bead down our faces and our backs and we couldn't get enough water, or enough cool air from outside! And in the winter!---FREEZING! We'd all wear legwarmers and shirts for the first part of the lesson, until Brigitte's eyes told us to toughen up and take those silly things OFF! No silly ballet skirts either.
She could communicate all that with just her eyes quite well.
Brigitte De Calle.
What a beautiful name.
From Bogota, Colombia. Prima Ballerina there, and in Stuttgart, Germany as well.
I'm sure there were other accolades and notches to that name. But, impressive either way.
And romantic.
Her husband, we'd been told, had been a Colombian pilot who'd died in a plane crash and left her to raise their two daughters on her own. She never re-married.
I'm sure she had her offers. I mean, she was a beautiful Colombian ballerina! Head strong and smart too. Running a ballet studio and a little shop down the street, actually called The Fancy Shoppe (ohhhhh how I wish I had bought things from that place! how I wish I had cared more about it!).
Maybe it was the smoking. Maybe that's why she never re-married...ha!
No...I like to think more that it was because she had loved her husband so very much that she never got over him and never cared to even try. His memory in her heart and in her children's faces was enough. I always got that aura from her.
Or...maybe that's just me and my own dramatic storytelling.
Who knows!
But...the smoking!
Four nights during the week, and sometimes on Saturday afternoons too, I'd go to lessons. From age 11 to 18, and then back during college summers. I'd been dancing since I was four, but the original studio I'd went to closer to Seattle was a little more flashy. Tap, jazz, tumbling, BIG recitals with expensive sequined costumes. That kind of thing. Performances in places like The Seattle Center, or University of Washington's Meany Theatre. Lots of make up and fake smiling for those. Hey I even remember my mom doing some kind of tap dance to "Bust a Move" in a one piece sequined pants suit!
Brigitte would've been disgusted! Smoking her long, skinny cigarette in disdain. Using the cigarette holder to avoid staining and smelling her hands up.
Or, for added glamour.
Yes, 4 nights a week, sometimes Saturdays too, that's where I'd go. To The Olympia School of Ballet. NOT to be confused with The Ballet School of Olympia (or? which was it? ha! my dad asked every.single.time. that he wrote the check---oh the money---, and now I cannot even remember!). All those lessons I went for, and Brigitte would be waiting on the bench in between the dressing rooms and the dance space, smoking her cigarettes before the start.
Until at some point she had to smoke those cigarettes in some kind of outside space upstairs. And we'd know she was coming back--from stretch breaks during class--when we heard the door slam back shut, felt the outside air rush in, and smelled the smoke. (Time to straighten up! Look busy!)
Until at some point she only did that smoking outside DOWNstairs on the front porch of the building.
See, the studio was in a beautiful turn-of-the-20th-century house. Painted blue, with a grand white porch out front. In the old part of town, near the state capitol. We never really used the downstairs of the building--it served as The Women's Club (whatever that was!). But every one of those nights I'd walk up that porch, open up that big beautiful old door, and creek up those old wooden stairs that shot straight up to the rickety second floor with more wood floors and huge old windows, a couple of bedrooms converted to dressing rooms with toilets and then a big mirrored space full of windows, for dancing in. I never got used to she smell. It was lovely. Old, musty, sweaty, cigarette-ey.
Going there was like therapy every time. Only, at those ages I had really no idea. I just went. It was my routine, and I liked it well enough. It was good exercise. I don't think I entertained the idea of not doing it much at all! I'd been dancing since I was four! No matter what was going on in my world--with friends, family, boyfriends, school stress--I would carry it in with me, warm it up and thaw it out and then gradually throw it away as class wore on.
Liberating.
All the endorphins from the jumps at the end of the nearly two hours would get the very last bits out and I'd leave that session emptied and cleansed and energized.
Rarely did I miss a class. Only if I was very sick. Never just because.
I'd eat dinner, and then my dad would take me.
And then my dad would pick me up. And have to wait in the car for indefinite amounts of time as my South American teacher with her loose sense of time wrapped up class when she very well felt like it. Time? What's that?
(Oh my poor dad...all that soft rock in the car!)
I thought of her tonight, well, because I think of her often. But tonight I trimmed my bangs. And thought maybe I should try trimming my own hair too--you know, the rest of it. She used to do that. Her hair was always in this perfect little French bob kind of thing, that she'd wear with her classy Audrey Hepburn clothes style. And she'd subtly brag about how she never went to a hairdresser, '"I just fuss with it myself all the time," she'd say. Trying not to smile.
She never smiled.
I really think she never smiled.
Or laughed, that's for sure.
But she demonstrated ballet for us beautifully, in those Audrey Hepburn clothes. And I'd wonder what she must've looked like as that Prima Ballerina. What would it be like to see her dance in real ballet clothes? What would it be like to see her really let loose the Prima?
We never saw that. She was very controlled.
The records were such a thing! So many records in that little space, but we often danced to the same ones. Every night, the same combinations to the same records. "Ballet is so boring!" my girls told me when they took a lesson or two. I guess I never thought so? I found comfort in that repetition. And you know how good for my brain it was? How often I think of the connection between that repetition, that practice of memory, and studying for school? Amazing.
And ohhhh those records. Crackling and sometimes re-starting if we didn't get the beginning right. Or if we were completely off and she'd get upset and stop in her quiet drama stare and we'd know without any words we had made mortal errors and must. not. go. on. like that!
"Can I go to the bathroom?" me, tentatively and assertively (--yes those two things can go together--) walking up to her in between a combination, if I had to go during class. Cause we had to ask first. "I don't know, can you?" she'd say, every single time.
And then I'd say, "May I go to the bathroom?"
And she'd say, "Yes, you may."
Every time.
I always said "can"...not because I forgot. Almost because I guess I liked the predictability of that little interchange? I liked showing her I wasn't so easily swayed to her way of doing things? And I also liked to show her that if indeed she asked for me to be more polite, well I'd follow through.
Just, next time we'd have to do it again.
Bizarre, aren't we?
I was never all that great at ballet. I'd gotten a scholarship in tap dance when I was about 10, but we moved and I never took tap again. Brigitte's studio didn't offer it, and the other studios in town she clearly snubbed, so I showed my tasteful loyalty by just taking ballet with her.
I really was never all that great, I thought.
I'd love to see some old videos now, though. Might change my tune! All those things I can no longer do!
But it's vulnerable, dance. Those combinations across the floor all by yourself! Comparing yourself to the person before you, knowing they're doing the same with you. It wasn't about body image for me...that wasn't pressured there. But, more about what my body could, or couldn't, do. And how gracefully and naturally I could pull it off. I always felt too stiff, and envied the freedom and grace of some of those other dancers. I never felt all that special there. I just kept going.
One year, though, Brigitte gave me the job of teaching all the younger dancers the Baby Swans, from Swan Lake. I was an expert in that dance, in toe-shoes (in fact I can remember all the moves to that whole thing even today!) and Brigitte knew it and asked me to pass it to the youngers.
That's when I knew my place there. And finally felt I'd made it, somehow. Made a place for myself there.
A couple years ago I found out Brigitte was teaching at one of those flashy kinds of studios she'd talked disparagingly about when I was her "can I?" student. I was just glad to know she was still alive! And teaching! I have no idea how old she might be now...as when I knew her my concept of age was warped...as it is when we're younger...thinking every adult is just so old.
When I found out where she was, I decided to write her a letter and thank her for all her teaching, tell her how I think of her often. I spared too many emotions, sensing she was never a fan of that nonsense. Told her I had children. All that.
I never heard back from her, but I did call the studio and they said she'd received my letter.
I know inside it would've warmed her heart...because...why not? She'd never say so...but I have a feeling she's softened with age.
Maybe now she even has a boyfriend (to intimidate and remind about manners!)?
Or, who cares, maybe better yet she's still on her own.
*Crossing my fingers her outside smoking turned to no smoking, though.*
And that she still dances gracefully in her Audrey Hepburn clothes, with self sculpted hair.
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