Pavlova Weeping

Tomorrow, I'll take my first ballet class since...oh, since way before Baryshnikov retired. Balanchine was still kicking the last time I did.

It's been a lot of years and babies and general decline since I last ronde de jambed. Tomorrow,though, I will look myself in the (oh shit) wall of full length mirrors and hope for the best. I figure if I look myself in the eye, then I won't look down at my 44 year old un-dancer-esque body. Maybe I could keep my eyes shut. That will render me invisible, right?

Man, this is scary.

My body remembers ballet, I know it. Port de bras...arabesque (ow just thinking about it)...barre work...floor work...the curves, the angles are all still here somewhere in this old body, but *my* curves and angles are not where they used to be, to put it nicely. Nor shall they go where they should anytime soon, I would think.

But yeah, it used to be my thing. Five times a week, burning through pointe shoes, or rather, bleeding through pointe shoes, sewing ribbons, rubber sweatpants (god, we were so silly), it was what I did, and what I wanted to do forever. My parents were patently horrified because back then, it meant cutting off education to get a career over and done with by hmmm...maybe 34? I think there was an NYCB dancer who was 34, and that was completely calcified in ballet years. It meant killing yourself to fit the mold. Let's see--I'm 5'5 3/4 inches tall. When I was thirteen, I was also 5'5 3'4 inches tall. You know why? Because dancers couldn't be taller than 5'6. My mother swore that I willed myself to stop growing. Yeah, probably. Along with the diuretics, and the acquired eating disorder, it was all part of ballet's powerful hold on me.

What happened? Why did I stop? Oh God, puberty struck with an absurdly early vengeance, and it left me surrounded by my breastless, hipless classmates. How come they got the good bodies? They didn't know the difference between a glissade and a pique turn! They didn't drool over Peter Martins, or study Gelsey Kirland's technique for breaking in her toe shoes (it involved a hammer. I still like hammers). Not fair not fair not fair.

So yeah, The "Good Bodies." Not like mine, replete with heavy, unwelcome femaleness. Lithe? not exactly. And no matter how well that sturdy body knew the joy of ballet and the subtle nuances of the art, that body had most likely already failed me. At 14.

And at 14, I had what was probably my first episode of depression, which sort of makes sense, and sort of explains how I spent the next decade self-medicating, no? Then, in my late twenties, come to find out, I did get a "good body," but I wasn't dancing anymore, and it was more like a rental because that good body was gone, baby, gone, with that first baby.

Maybe I'll have some sort of psychological implosion concurrent with that first plie. Wouldn't that be um...interesting? I can't imagine. Even facing this chunky, creaky old demon in the wall of mirrors (more like funhouse mirrors) I don't think big body-length capes are de rigeur for floorwork, do you?

Probably not. Oh God.

Well, putting aside tomorrow's pending and very public psychological trauma, I should go.

I need to find my solar plexis.