Sunday 14 February 2016

Dreams, Passions and Regrets

So, here's the news. I'm dancing again!

I said I'd come back. I have done too much to give up. Not now. Not yet.

I have been going to an adult class run by my usual ballet school filled with people I know and it is enormous fun and hugely satisfying. I come back from class with a huge grin on my face, hot and sweaty and happy. My husband says I skip into the house; Junice, my former teacher, says I have a look that says "I'm back!".

The class teacher is new to me, and that in itself throws up challenges. She doesn't teach my syllabus, so I have to think far more on my pointes than I have for some time, and she teaches what I refer to as 'performance' ballet, not 'class' ballet. And with a French flair, not the Italian, Cecchetti precision I have become accustomed to. I find myself pushing my Cecchetti to the back of my head and trying to drag the French that I consigned there to the fore, and not always that successfully either. So I end up translating in my head, where there is a translation!

Going back to class, and an interesting blog I found from a lady in Australia all about adult ballet (Zoe Does Ballet), got me thinking about my dancing.  

Marianela Nuñez


Let me get one thing clear - I am not an 'adult' dancer. I am a dancer who started as a child and grew into an adult.  I hate the term 'adult' ballet as if dancing, and ballet in particular, is the realm of children. Considering Dame Margot Fonteyn danced on stage until she was 60, I do find the term condescending. No one refers to Carlos Acosta or Marianela Nuñez as 'adult' dancers. So most of us who dance beyond the age of 18 are not on stage, but that doesn't mean we are somehow less deserving of respect.


My old Freed pointe shoes

Another distinction is that 'adult' dancer suggests someone who has come to ballet in their adult years and for many of us that is not the case. So many in my class on a Friday night have taken a break, of between seven and 20 years and have danced before.  Some still have their shoes from back then and I adore that - the reluctance to discard the shoes because they hold memories, and just in case, you never know, they might just be needed again, one day...  I still have my old satin exam shoes with the real silk ribbons, and my old Freed pointe shoes. Just in case.

We may never be on stage, us non-professional dancers, we may never perform Swan Lake, even in the corps, and we may never dance for anyone but ourselves. We may not have taken our opportunities as children and teens, started too late, found distractions in schoolwork and boys. We can all think 'if only' and regret our choices. 

But I can't do that, won't do that. 



Because, to regret would be to say that what I did instead of being a professional dancer meant less, was something I settled for, second-best.  That everything that came after was going through the motions while my heart and soul longed for something else.


I need ballet in my life, it was there from when I was very young and it got stuck in my psyche. But other things got stuck there as well. And not going to ballet school allowed these other things in.


I can still dance, not to the standard that I wish I could reach, or the standard I know I could reach if I had the time. But then my time is not dedicated to ballet - I have a family and a husband with whom I had a whirwind, crazy romance straight from the pages of a novel. I can speak fluent Spanish; my French is pretty good and I dabble in Catalan and Provençal. I played with the TOCA package and Formula One. I have my History, the passion for History that sent me to the other side of the country to study it, to study Welsh History in the only Welsh History department in the country; my ever-increasing library of text books and historical novels and more and more books everywhere.  And occasionally I put fingertip to keyboard and see what comes out.  I am finally, after many years, able to call myself a writer in my small way as a copywriter.  And that is one dream that I can say is accomplished, ticked off the list. Done. 

That is what I have accomplished, and none of it would have been possible had I gone to formal ballet school.

And I still have dreams.

Because we don't have just one passion. We have several. Life allows us to develop and move on. As Maria says in The Sound of Music, when God closes a door he opens a window. In my case I think he threw open a whole row of them and I have dipped in and out of them all my life. If I were offered, say, an hour in a studio with a great ballet teacher or an hour in a lecture hall with Dr Ian Mortimer or Professor Robert Bartlett, I would be completely torn. Maybe half an hour each...?! A few years ago had you added a BTCC meeting to the mix I'd have been a soggy heap of indecision on the floor.

Maybe ballet is the great passion of my life, maybe dance and the discipline it requires has shaped my personality. But without my family to come home to and share it all with, it would mean very little. I can pass on my love of ballet to my daughter, the daughter who would not exist had I fulfilled my first childhood dream.  My husband has introduced me to a world that involves Arsenal football club and that has had its moments too, and some exceptional people.

We are the sum of all our parts, all our experiences, good and bad. You can't go back and change things, but you can celebrate all that you are now and can yet be. 

Never regret. 

Dump your regrets in a bin and enjoy being you.

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