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Keeping the Dancer Inside Alive

  • Inspiration

    The word inspiration suggests the idea of being captured by a spirit within. “Let the spirit move you” is something people sometimes say in a variety of different contexts. In many religions the spirit is the Holy Spirit, a divine entity that is all-knowing, all-powerful, all-perfect, all-wise – the source of all creation and life.…

  • Loving the Floor

    I love to lie on a hard, wood floor. When I am alone, in my little wooden-floored room on the top floor of the house, there is a gleaming wood floor that is often warm from sunlight that comes through skylights in the room. I sneak up there when I am tense, anxious, cold, in…

  • Stillness that is Not Death

    It was a Christmas family gathering and I was complaining to the people who shared my end of the table about no longer being able to sleep through the night. “When I wake at 3 am and can’t go back to sleep, that is the worst,” I said. My Uncle Phil, my senior by about…

  • Holding On and Letting Go

    When I was a child, one of the many things that I loved about ballet class was standing in place at the barre. Each student stood a respectful distance away from one another, occupying their own panel of mirror. The barre was so smooth and solid under my fingers. It supported my full weight –…

  • Depictions of Dance

    I recently watched the first season of the Netflix series, The Royals, which has a character named Ophelia who is ostensibly a professional-level dancer who has been invited to audition for “Mr. Ballantine’s” dance company in New York. This is a tongue-in-cheek reference to Mr. Balanchine (George Balanchine, the longtime director of The New York…

  • Auditions

    A life in training to be a professional ballet dancer requires numerous auditions. As I child I auditioned for the School of American Ballet, a square with a black number on a white background safety pinned to the front of my leotard. The judges studied our bodies individually, one by one, and tested our flexibility…

  • What’s the Point of Pointe Shoes?

    This weekend my 12-year-old niece came to visit me. She is taking ballet classes, among other kinds of activities, and she has not yet begun classes on pointe. Often pointe training begins with 15-20 minutes of work at the end of a ballet class so that your muscles are warm. She hopes that she’ll be…

  • 10 Years To Make A Dancer

    There is an adage that it takes 10 years to make a dancer. I heard that while I was training to be a professional dancer. Based on nothing but my own experience this seems to be a rough-and-ready truism with some validity to it. It took me 10 years to go from beginner to advanced/professional…

  • Old Pointe Shoes

    My 12-year-old niece is coming for a visit soon. She’s a recreational ballet student so it’s not clear whether pointe shoes are in her future. And yet she is fascinated by them. She asked whether I might have an old pair she could try on when she is here. I don’t have such a pair,…

  • On Dancers and Athletes

    Last week I finished Tori Murden McClure’s book, A Pearl in the Storm, in which she becomes the first woman to row across the Atlantic by herself in a rowboat, beset by hurricanes and in danger of death. Her rowboat was called The American Pearl. When she achieved this, Tori had already been the first…

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