After this post, I’m heading offline for awhile – I’ve got finals, then the busy, but wonderful, holiday season will be upon us, so I’m not going to have much time for blogging. I’ll be back in January.
So until then, I thought I’d leave you with a couple of things I’ve learned so far, coming back to dance:
1. It comes back easier than I thought it would.
When I started dancing again, I was really worried I’d be the worst in the class. That I’d be completely hopeless, falling around with all the grace of a two year old just figuring out how to run. Luckily, it turns out that my body has remembered at least a few things pounded into it over 13 years. My feet turned out and pointed naturally, my hands remembered their positions, and my head knew where to turn, etc. The details, it turns out, stuck in my head. On the other hand -
2. There are some things I’ve forgotten, and I can’t re-learn them overnight.
Turns, mostly. I was never particularly fantastic at turns, and now they are annoyingly imperfect. I worked for quite literally years to get good at fuette turns and triple pirouettes, and not practicing for two and a half years chips away at that work. It’s not as though I can spend two hours in the studio and expect to have perfect turns at the end of it – though I do expect to get better. I expect to get at least a little bit better every time, and then I’ll get there again.
3. I forgot how much work being good takes.
When I was in high school, I was spending at least a dozen hours in a dance studio a week, unless I was in a show – then some of that dancing was done in rehearsals. Point is, I worked. I worked hard, and I worked often. I had forgotten that being good takes work – a lot of work. The problem is that now I don’t have a dozen hours to spend in a dance studio. I’ve had to prioritize in a way that I didn’t anticipate, figuring out exactly how much I love dance and how much I love, say, showering. How much do I value dance, and how much do I value a high GPA, and sleep, and friends, and other extracurricular opportunities? With a frequency that has surprised me, I have gone with the option on the side of that calculation opposite dance. I love it, but perhaps not as much as I thought I did. Or maybe part of that passion was tied to a specific place and time in my life, or maybe tied to a specific group of people. Whatever the reason, I’m putting dance into the great-hobby-that-I-spend-two-hours-or-so-a-week category, not the I-have-to-do-this-as-often-as-possible-or-I’ll-go-crazy category.
4. Complacency is the kiss of death.
An old dance teacher of mine, Mark, used to say that he wasn’t interested in teaching anyone who couldn’t go to a beginning ballet class and challenge him or herself. Whatever someone is asking of you, Mark would say, do that and five times more. Don’t rely on other people to push you – push yourself. Quite apart from being an excellent guide for life in general (along with other Mark-isms, such as, “MAKE IT WORK!”), it’s a fantastic point in dance. The second I get complacent or comfortable, the second I stop pushing, the second I stop changing, I stop growing. And that is about the worst thing I could do. I never want to stop growing. (Except in the height sense. I’m 6’ tall – that’s tall enough, thankyouverymuch.)
5. Pointe shoes hurt like hell, until you get used to them again.
My feet are permanently misshapen from years of pointe. I hadn’t done it years, and when I attempted it again the other day, they yelled at me very, very loudly. But no worries – I’m sure I’ll beat my feet into submission again. 
A very happy holiday to your and yours, everybody – see you in January!
