When Little Ballerinas Grow Up

Me 'en pointe'

To move away from History for a moment I decided this week to talk about another passion of mine - ballet.  

I love history and there is nothing preventing me from indulging whenever I choose, with a book, a film, a novel perhaps.  But when I go on holiday it is not a history text that I pack - it is my pointe shoes.

I can't remember a time before I danced.  I do remember my first ever class, hazily, but I don't remember what I did before that.  I attended a small school near my home for several years until after I did my first exam, which I passed despite the appalling pianist trying to muck it up.  So I left, and it was the best thing that could have happened to me.

My mum never gets the recognition she deserves for finding my next school, the Muriel Thomas School of Ballet in Rochester, which went back to at least 1956 and there is even a little Pathé news film of them here.  So, thank you Mum, for finding the school and to you and Dad for sitting in a cold waiting room for me week in, week out, and ferrying me to and fro, and any friends I decided to foist on you.

By the time I joined, Muriel had handed the ribbons to Miss Jenny, her daughter, and I remained with her for over a decade.  It is down to her that I am as well trained as I am.  She worked me hard but she was never a bully. She ensured that we knew the syllabus inside out, that we understood what all that French meant, the theory behind port de bras, pliés, and she drummed it into us so thoroughly that I still remember most of it.  She taught us the behind the scenes tricks of the trade, how to care for your satin shoes, how to darn the tips of your pointe shoes, how to tie the ribbons, how to score the sole to improve grip, where to put the animal wool (there were no fancy toe protectors back then).  She took me through five exams successfully over those years, and she believed in me and my ability, even trying to persuade my parents to send me to ballet school, which sadly fell on deaf ears.  She was amazing and I owe her so much.

Ballet even influenced my
GCSE artwork

And then life took over.  I had maintained my ballet through my 11+ exam, my GCSEs, my A-Levels, always finding the time to go to as many classes as Miss Jenny would let me, earning my place through being a teaching assistant for every class lower than my own, dancing for seven hours every Saturday and several more on a Wednesday after school.  Going to university was a different matter.  Aberystwyth is a long way from Rochester.  But along with my books I packed my pointe shoes.  However I only took one class at uni. I fled, distraught, having been told that my French full plié in fourth was 'wrong' but little did I know that I would revisit this 'wrong' plié many, many years later.

I didn't think that I missed ballet all that much.  I was satisfied with what I had achieved in ballet and Life took me in some interesting directions which were enormous fun, but now I look back I realise that giving up ballet had left a painful hole that, while being ignored, had affected me.  I rejected ballet - I had stopped watching ballet on TV, stopped looking at my books.  I did not see a ballet in a theatre until I was in my thirties.  I did some T'ai Chi and yoga but resented them for not being ballet.  And yet wherever I went my pointe shoes went as well, if only to hang on the wall.

My old Freed pointe shoes -
the loose shank was
part of breaking them in

Twenty years later I regained that part of me I hadn't realised I'd lost.  While looking for a class for my daughter, Junice, the proprietor of the first school on my list, said there was a class I could do if I wanted to give it a go.  So I went along to my second ever Italian Cecchetti class, complete with that 'wrong' plié.  I was the oldest by some margin, ten years older than the teacher, and I was dancing alongside girls as young as fourteen.  They politely ignored me, the old lady in the brand new soft shoes that didn't quite fit, until I brought out my trusty Freed pointe shoes with their ragged darning on the toes, heavily worn and danced in.  Those shoes proved that I had danced before and broke the ice with the other girls who were fascinated by them and their obvious antiquity.

The class now is taught by a lady Miss Jenny would have approved of.  Junice is made of the same stuff - hard, gritty, and knowledgeable - and can still dance rings around us even in her sneakers, and, just like Miss Jenny, is tough on us, but completely fair.  The three of us who have stuck it out this far despite Life, GCSEs and A-Levels, are working harder than ever. We have to as we are tackling a professional level exam with only an hour and half tuition a week, but under Junice we are improving in leaps, bounds and grands jetés and when she says "Now you look like dancers," we know it is all worth it and we've earned the praise.

Through the fabulous medium of Twitter I have met up with other 'adult' ballerinas (HATE that phrase - dancers dance regardless of age, as I prove every class) and I can fully indulge my love of dancing with people who understand and don't look at me as if I have lost my marbles doing a 'kids' activity in my forties. The Swan Lake masterclass was the most fun I've had with my pointe shoes on.

Now, for various reasons, I face a sabbatical from ballet again.  This time my pointe shoes will not just adorn my wall but will be worn in anger and I will still dance, if only in my kitchen with a dog-eared copy of the syllabus. I have left an exam undone, a loose ribbon that needs to be tied.  So it is au revoir not adieu, and I will be back.