I am frozen , stage left , and the five-year-old corps de ballet is clustered stage right . Perhaps the audience is merely delighted at the sight of little girls in scratchy tutus with crests of pink tulle on their heads , twirling to Mussorgsky ’ s “ Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks .” Or maybe they ’ re mocking the carrot top who doesn ’ t know her right from her left . In my memory , it ’ s the latter . It was 1961 . Young Rudolf Nureyev defected from the Kirov Ballet at the Paris Airport , while the U . S . State Department deployed dance companies abroad as a counterattack against Soviet cultural supremacy . Ballerinas became celebrities on “ The Ed Sullivan Show .” In search of the next star , America ’ s middle-class suburban moms herded their daughters into dance classes .
My mother , who , at age three , famously earned her older siblings a quarter or two singing “ Minnie the Moocher ” on her father ’ s bar , and claimed a connection to show biz via a distant cousin who was a burlesque comedian , was determined to make a performer out of one of us . So , ballet it was .
I was no budding Margot Fonteyn . Obviously . The recital movie in my head features a kaleidoscope of jeering adult faces — a mortification so nuclear , it obliterated all recall about the end to my ballet career .
Sixty years later , though , dance classes are the pinnacle of my days . I take my place at the barre after eight hours hunched like a stone gargoyle at the computer , and I feel tall : gaze level , chest lifted , pelvis slightly tucked , shoulders down . Or , I ’ m head-bopping to Lizzo , lost in the music , ready to explode into the first eight counts of a hip-hop combo . Or , the entire class just nailed the choreo in Jazz , and our teacher pronounces : “ That was legit !”
It all makes me so happy . Adult life is freighted with chores : Going to work , mopping floors , hauling the children , cutting the grass . In the fragments of free time , we might do something enjoyable . But going to the movies doesn ’ t produce euphoria . Drinks with friends won ’ t reveal a talent you didn ’ t know you had . Dance class is the one-hour vacation from the rest of life . It demands total focus : Leave your marital spat , aggravating co-workers and climate anxieties on the other side of the threshold . You can walk into the studio in the blackest mood , seemingly sapped of all energy , and bounce out of there smiling — even if it wasn ’ t your best day on the floor . Dancing is pure joy .
I became a late-in-life dancer the way any person winds up in an improbable circumstance : by degrees . Dance kept sneaking into my life . I folk-danced in summer camp and made the high school cheerleading squad . We clapped and pounded our saddle shoes in straight-arm routines that were more military drills than dances . Still , there were leaps and splits . We fanned out in synchronized formations . ( I still went the wrong way sometimes .)
In the 1980s , I took up figure skating . I was just beginning what would be a short stint as a high school English teacher for Baltimore City Public Schools . Teaching was not as I imagined it , and I was failing miserably at a job I thought I was born to do . One Friday night , a group of colleagues headed down to the city ’ s outdoor ice rink . I had never ice skated in my life , and ankle-slogged it around the edges for a couple of hours . My attention was on the skaters in the center . They sailed fearlessly on a knife blade , and defied gravity with such grace and speed . I wanted to do that . I took lessons from a husband-and-wife team of old show skaters , and my troubles did not follow me onto the ice . As my teachers guided me from waltz jumps and back cross-overs to axels and illusions , I briefly enrolled in a dance class to improve my form , capped by another embarrassing appearance in the studio ’ s all-classes recital . I eventually converted to the church of Jazzercise . A devout follower , I mourned when the trend died out . I still
52 RHODE ISLAND MONTHLY l MARCH 2022