Photo by Sarah Cervantes on Unsplash

My mom sent me to ballet school when I was just four years old. My siblings and I took lessons twice a week from a retired ballerina of the San Francisco ballet who had set up a private studio behind her 1940’s bungalow. The studio was in her garage and had a bouncy wood studio floor and wall to wall mirrors with barres for the dancers to practise. She must have had at least a hundred or more students, because when I arrived for class, dancers were leaving and when my class left, more dancers were coming. We had a yearly recital at the civic center and the seats were always filled.

The discipline of ballet and the effect on the body is an experience that transports an average human being into a physical state beyond the norm. The repetition is like meditation and entering the zone happens almost immediately. Wether you like it or not, and if you have a good ballet instructor, they will keep you to task and do what ever it takes to keep you counting to eight and moving to the count of eight. Mind and body are willed into synchronicity. It’s a good lesson, and probably the best lesson, a child will ever learn. The lesson of repetition with good intent that results in beauty and sends positive energy into the world.

As I danced, my legs became flexible, strong and capable. As I walked to school each morning with my sisters and friends, we could leap more squares of the sidewalks then the others who didn’t dance and leap over puddles easily. At night after school we could climb up to the tops of the trees like monkeys easily and with speed. Our play evolved and we naturally assimilated graceful postures and movements.

Now as an adult, I don’t go to class anymore, but the barre stuck with me. It was the best way to limber up and release the joints that kept getting tighter with age and sometimes felt like a vice within my own body.

Looking through pins of ballet dancers, tendons, muscles, extreme flexibility and strength burst forth. Ballerinas on their toes in shredded satin and wooly soft leg warmers umbrella by small stiff tutus. The satin of the shoes stained with blood from the force of the dance. Pics of strong men and women and using their strength to create raw human beauty. Ballet was beauty, it was health and it made for a beautiful life.