Everything I know, I learned from ballet
Life ·I’ve thought for a while now that I knew what I wanted to write here about ballet being my greatest teacher. It taught me about passion and determination. Discipline. Resilience in the face of tremendous difficulties. Self-inquiry, self-improvement, and self-expression. Creativity through structure. The power of a good story.
But lately, as I’ve been in a transition out of Red Leader and onto the unknown next thing, my relationship with ballet has also been changing in an unexpected way.
I’m breaking up with ballet.
I never quite thought I would put it like that - I’ve taken some breaks before, especially with COVID, but always with the intention of going back soon enough. I do love it after all, and why quit doing something you love, right?
Well, as of late, my relationship with ballet and with myself by extension hasn’t been that great. After taking time away from the studio and not having the same structure, time, or discipline as I did dancing in high school or college, my skill level understandably declined. As a result, it made it really hard to feel good in a dance class. Not even really about body image, but just the feeling of defeat from seeing how far my technique is now from where it once was. I haven’t come up with the right word for it yet - maybe something to go into The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows - but I describe is as “the feeling of being bad at something you were once good at”. Which is somehow much more painful than being bad at something you’re just bad at or new at. There’s a distinct sting that comes from knowing what good is like, knowing that you once had it, and knowing that you no longer have it and are in fact, a long ways away from it. It’s really hard to find motivation to go to ballet, when every time I go, I just don’t feel that good about myself. Even in my most compassionate voice, the objective truth is there - I am not good at ballet anymore. And that sucks. Because I want to be good again, but I feel too dejected about how far and how steep the slope is to get even halfway to as good as I once was. Because I know how hard it is to climb that hill. And you could say, “well, don’t worry about the technique, just go and have fun doing it”, but half the fun was getting better at something you can never be perfect at. And you can’t do ballet without worrying about technique anyway. That’s like the whole point.
The long and short of it is my realization that I have now a lot of emotional baggage to unpack with my relationship to ballet. And that’s not a number one priority for me right now.
In a turn of events though, this has become just another way in which ballet continues to teach me lessons about life. Lessons about knowing when to stop and take a step away from something. Lessons about boundaries. Lessons about values alignment and managing my emotional energy capacity. I don’t know when I’ll step into a ballet studio again. Maybe in a few months. Maybe not for years. Maybe not ever. I hope that last one’s not true, but I’m open to the possibility. It’s hard to leave a bookending unresolved as someone who loves skipping to the end just to see how things turn out, but I truly have to trust in my future self to figure it out and know that whatever resolution that is, it’s the right one for me.