Photo by Jeanne RiceI really hate it when other women make me feel like a kid at fat camp with headgear and an inhaler. (Not that there's anything wrong with that, kids. Follow your dreams!) This is why I decided not to get back into shape with a bunch of beanpole gliders who hadn't yet attended their senior prom when I decided to end my five-year hiatus after 11 years of intensive ballet training.
Slyly, I figured dancing in a class with middle-aged women would not only be better for my self-esteem but also let me kick a little ass. And so I embarked on my foolproof plan, only to find these middle-aged women spinning and leaping gracefully across the floor while my years of cardiovascular neglect left me heaving and wiping away pints of sweat while draping myself over the barrefor support.
At 21, I'm supposed to be in my prime, while many of these women have had babies. Who were these women, and what were they doing with my self-esteem? As it turns out, many of them have been dancing their whole lives—they took breaks when they began their careers in insurance, property management, teaching or medicine but returned to their lifelong love of dancing in order to torment me.
“Once you start dancing, you can't stop,” says a 40-year-old doctor.
“Ballet is so much better than those dreadfully repetitive and dull step classes,” says another 40-year-old who divides her exercise time between yoga, the gym and ballet classes. Or as 50-year-old Marie Luebberg, whose modern dancing background adds a lyrical twist to all her steps, puts it, “Some people jog. I dance ballet.”
In a twisted, hateful kind of way, I admire them. They seem to appreciate dance more than the kids I used to dance with, and they seem to do it out of real love, not to fit into a size four skirt.
Ballet teacher Tanya Durbin notices the adult dancers have a more cerebral approach than their adolescent counterparts. “The adult dancers want to know every detail about each move, such as precisely which muscles should be involved and why,” she says. Still, one woman told me it's frustrating to understand the technique better but not be able to extend her legs or carry her arms the way she could 25 years ago. Forty-nine-year-old Leslie from Irvine said, “Just because you have danced before, that does not mean your body will go into autopilot when you pick it up again 10 years later.”
I hear ya, sisters. After just five years off, I can tell you the whole muscle-memory thing is waaay overrated, though the body apparently never forgets how to ache. Still, it feels good—in a horrible kind of way. And there is no better motivation to get back into shape than watching middle-aged moms flit and flutter across the room while you nurse your sore muscles. I can only hope that when I'm approaching menopause, I can leave 21-year-olds in the dust (or in the resin) as I pirouette across the floor.
They'd hate that.
I'd like that.
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