Sonata form: the beginning of dance

I first saw a ballet when I was about seven. It was in a large botanical garden and I thought it was the most magical spectacle I had ever beheld. I never forgot how it made me feel and how it transported me to a world I didn’t know could exist. Honestly, I didn’t even know there was a such thing as ballet, it’s not really a topic of conversation growing up in a small, midwestern farm school.

I began dance as a child sometime after this point. We would drive 45 minutes each way, to go to the only class available in the closest town. I loved tap and gymnastics and ironically, despised ballet. My teacher adored me, but her daughter was absolutely dreadful and I would loathe being in class with her because she would make fun of me until I cried because I was poor. I remember writing my dad a letter when I was about 12, out of sheer desperation, asking for money, to pay for my dance classes because I knew I couldn’t continue going if I didn’t find a way to continue paying for them. The money never came. I guess maybe it was too much of wishful thinking on my part. I was a bit devastated but what can you do? It wasn’t the first time in my childhood where money was sparse. The dance classes stopped. I forgot all about it to be honest. I was athletic in high school, engrossed in nearly every sport, but the thought of dance just took a backseat in my mind. Thanks to other sports, I built endurance and discipline as well as athleticism. I would dream of dance every now and then but I lived in a place where there was not a lot of opportunity and although it was a safe place overall to grow up, I longed for more.

Fast forward to my first big move to a large city for college. I barely got into the school. I was an undesirable candidate based on the overall wealthy application pool. After originally being rejected, I got a phone call a few weeks later and I was accepted after all. I was completely ecstatic. However, a few weeks after my big move, I was an utter train wreck for the most part. I had no idea how to navigate a large city or budget the expense of housing and school. Most of my classmates had some type of wealth or financial support, but I didn’t realize this at first. I worked sometimes three jobs, in between classes and there were frequent times I remember I wouldn’t eat for a week. I had no furniture, no money and was living on my dreams. I was highly exposed to partying and a large social circle (for the first time ever) and was enamored by every person I met and every place I went. Three years into college, I got called into the admissions office. I was told I got denied for my last loan for school. I called my parents sobbing, but there was nothing they could do. I felt crushed. Panicked. I didn’t want to go back to a poor city and miss out on the world! I would have to leave this amazing city, an absolute mess and learn a very hard lesson. Life isn’t fair.

So back to the midwest I go, with my crushed ego in tow. I cried most of the entire 8 hour car ride home as my father came and picked me up. I became encumbered with so much debt, I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t have a car. I didn’t have a degree. I didn’t have money. I felt out of place in a place that I used to feel at home. I had no direction. I started working at restaurants and drinking heavily while going out dancing at night. It was all fun and games but I could NOT get on top of my loans and sort my life out. Not to mention the drunken haze I spent most of my twenties, the terrible decisions I would make from not being athletic anymore, to smoking cigarettes, to the horrible guys I would date, to the places I chose to live.

So one random day, out of the blue, I woke up and remembered I used to love to dance. How could I have forgotten this all of these years? That little voice came calling to me in the most unexpected way at the most unexpected time (you know what I mean if this has happened to you).

So it began.

Not too long after this moment of clairty, someone handed me a flier for a krumping battle at some church in a less-than-welcoming part of the city. So I decided to suck it up and go — at this point in my life I wasn’t afraid of much —and went to my first krumping battle, which you can only imagine how AWKWARD I felt going to this type of battle by MYSELF…feel free to laugh. I was painfully shy to even enter the room because I had no experience or connections and I needed to start somewhere. (Imagine Julia Stiles in Save the Last Dance, except a not as glamorous version of Julia and in a more shittier part of town).

This type of dance I had never seen before and I was infatuated with how freeing it looked. I met a group of people at that event who encouraged me to try hip-hop dance with their help and later they would become my friends.

After the krumping battle, followed my first hip hop class. During this class, I was so embarrassed, my face was 500 shades of red the ENTIRE time. But I didn’t give up. I kept going back. I would spend some classes saying I needed a drink of water, and then hide in the bathroom stalls, sobbing. I tried group choreography hip-hop classes thinking they would be easier somehow, however these classes were the most humiliating because everyone was amazing. Self confidence was the part of dance I can hands down say, was the most painful for me, for the first few years. But I loved movement, especially in a bustling diverse city, where I had the opportunity to be engulfed by so much diversity. It didn’t take long for me to figure out I didn’t have a natural gift for it. However, after a lot of time in the dance world, this term gift means years of previous study (and the funds that go with that) or “natural hyperextension of flexibility.” I didn’t have any of that. I had mega body image issues, was a mixed up mess of a young adult, I had no idea what to wear to class or what I was doing at all. All of this didn’t stop me. I wanted to learn everything there was to know about dance. I didn’t know when to bring a water bottle, when to take a restroom break, how early to show up and not to chew gum during class. I started reading books on what to do, since the internet wasn’t really a reliable dance resource at the time. I decided I needed to teach myself musicality, rhythm and movement from ground zero and start my own dance school, for myself, so to speak. I could afford to pay for a few classes between work shifts, but still sometimes, I would sign up and then never show up because I was so nervous about trying new classes.

I decided I needed to just bite the bullet and do this! Not just “do this” but dedicate all of my income to this. So I signed up for workshop classes (normally a 6-8 week commitment) and dove headfirst into salsa classes for the energy, African Tribal for the rhythm, Modern for the movement, and some eccentric Reiki-energy type of dance classes. I also fell into a “beginning” (not beginning at all) advanced jazz class that left me standing on the side of the room, blushing because I understood nothing.

Although I was sticking to it, I just didn’t understand the lingo and anything more than a 5 year old could grasp about dance. I was spreading myself too thin. In the long run, these classes helped me with muscle memory and confidence at the time. I next decided I needed to learn the foundations. The ultimate fundamentals and I knew what I was avoiding. I looked up ballet. I took a beginning class at the same school I was going. It was an eclectic studio in the middle of the city, with former professional teachers and a fun mix of adult students from all backgrounds.

The teachers were normally rude, bitchy and sometimes smelled like cigarettes. One always complained of how her husband had left her for a man. They never talk to me, well not unless they had to. I’m sure I looked like a lot of work. They only talked to the other students that were actual college dancers at the time. I wore the wrong outfits to class. I mostly wore my hip-hop sweatpants and a hoodie because I was so self conscious. I didn’t fit in, but I kept going. Sometimes, some teachers wouldn’t show up for class at all because adult ballet was least financially lucrative with a low enrollment rate. They wouldn’t text or call and the doors would just be locked. I would be upset because I was trying to show up. I would shrug and leave. I kept reading and watching videos and working as much as I could so I could have money for classes. I wouldn’t let anything get in my way. Even absent teachers.

I then caught wind of a larger ballet school for adults. I showed up and was aghast at how beautiful and magical the building was. You could see real dancers in class and I felt again, out of place. However, I would meet some of the best teachers of my life at this school who pulled me aside after class to help me, gave me extra leotards the company dancers didn’t want that fit my body and helped me figure out which shoes fit my foot, the right way. They would go to lunch with me at times and tell me about dance. I had another teacher from my first school encourage me to try ballet at the community college where they were teaching. I took ballet 1 and passed with an A. I threw myself into as many classes as I could handle a week at the pretty new studio. I also tried intermediate, although I wasn’t even close to understanding it…I had to learn to throw myself into uncomfortable classes to grow, to manifest courage, learn new terminology, and challenge myself despite being so embarrassed most of class. Most of the intermediate classes welcomed me with open arms, the teachers had saw me at other classes or taught a beginning class and would ask if I would want to try them.

During this time the friends I made at the krumping battle would take me dancing in the city on the weekends. It was always so much fun and I learned about different styles, listened to how they would talk to each other about dancing and using dance terms. They would invite me to competitions and workshops and they were incredible dancers.

After several years of continual classes and networking in the dance community, I applied for a travel job. I couldn’t keep affording my hobby, I wasn’t getting any younger, and my social life was starting to appear to me as very toxic and unsupportive. I was outgrowing my unhealthy friendships and felt I needed something more. I wanted this dance life more than anything at this point. If I could work for six months and save up, I could afford to fly around to different cities to try different studios AND I wouldn’t have to pay rent. Besides, I was feeling angsty about living in my city any longer. I felt I couldn’t get my head above water and I needed more than that to be successful at dance.

So I took a job on a ship and traveled the great wide blue for many years, working like a dog and trying to muster up the energy to squeeze in dance classes when traveling to other countries after working nearly 18 hour days nonstop, 7 days a week for months on end. I would fly to the Joffrey in Chicago and squeeze in a few classes (all while trying to retain ANY muscle memory I had from months prior) fly to Kansas City and squeeze in a few more. Then back to the boat I would go, not truly progressing but trying with all of my heart. I started traveling to foreign countries where I would assume there was ballet because the internet said there was. What a shock I was in for when I would arrive to a dusty, barely thriving, Central American town to discover there wasn’t ballet. There wasn’t money for anything. But there was Latin dance available on the beach. So off I would go to try to pick up the local dance in a whirlwind of a few weeks and fly back to the boat to work my arduous schedule again. All the while, I’m missing dance everyday because a few weeks every few months, just wasn’t enough for me and my body was taking a severe beating from working on the ship. The only free time I had to practice ballet on the boat, was on top of the boat, the only free space for crew to go, which let me tell you isn’t big enough. I felt insane trying to remember all the steps to barre all the while I’m sleep deprived and trying to balance on top of a rolling ship, holding on for dear life.

Finally, after many years of realizing this wasn’t working to propel me in the direction I wanted (again), I decided I needed to plant myself firmly on the ground. I needed to be around dance again. Indefinitely. So I said goodbye to the only life and friends I had known for the better part of six years and moved to a city where I knew only one person. 

I was shell shocked upon my move. I couldn’t figure out how to settle in and settle down. I couldn’t adjust as quickly as I hoped. I was missing travel, boats and friends. I started being confronted by obstacles. Obstacle one, catching up with technology, which I had been separated from, for a long time. Who needs social media when you are weathering a storm and trying not to puke and hoping the boat doesn’t capsize? 

Obstacle two, re-establishing friendships and this included contacting my old friends, while realizing some of my old friends are no longer my friends.

Other obstacles: Filing taxes, now that I was on land. Realizing I can’t burp or cuss in public since I’m not living on a boat anymore…I learned this the hard way. Figuring out the bus schedule and how to drive again. Trying to find an apartment. (Complication never foreseen: What is your rental history the last few years? Answer: A boat?) Finding a job. Making time for ballet/dance everyday. Trying to respond to long overdue emails one at a time.

I worked nearly seven days in a kitchen at a restaurant while trying to figure out how to survive, how to be normal and where all the dance studios were. I was tired, scared and excited. I could do this and I wasn’t getting any younger, yet again. I started going to every ballet studio I could find and absorb as much as I could in my days off. I sometimes showed up on the wrong day or wrong time due to exhaustion but hey, I was giving it my ALL.

Fast forward to today: I’m thrilled to say I have been in the same place for five years, soaking up the ballet world from square one, essentially all over again. It has been a long road but here I am, taking ballet and living the dream all while still discovering myself along the way. I have a total of almost ten years in dance, however some years, I barely progressed.

I have become immersed into latin dance as well, and when I’m not dancing, I’m relaxing, reading about dance or working. It’s all been a wild ride, mostly full of humor and the constant battle against thyself. I love being surrounded by dance and finally feel in the right place, traveling along the right path.

I hope this background helps to set the “stage” of my journey for you. I hope you enjoy reading about the whirlwind of the crazy dance world and join me on my adventure.

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A rosin box from one of my studios, that has closed indefinitely due to COVID.

Ballet, flamenco, and Irish dancers are known to rub the tips and heels of their shoes in powdered rosin to reduce slippage on clean wooden dance floors or competition/performance stages. It was at one time used in the same way in fencing and is still used as such by boxers.