I feel silly.  I am wearing a new, black leotard and ballet pink tights.  My full-sole leather ballet shoes are stiff and smell like the store they came from.  I decided to wear roll-over yoga shorts instead of a wrap skirt to class because I thought they would make me look more experienced and casual, but I was terribly wrong.  Standing in the middle of the dance studio, left hand on the barre, eyes forever open – I looked, and felt, terrified.

I took hip-hop and jazz the previous year in this same studio, so I don’t know why I’m nervous.  I’m in a class with beginner ballet students who are all my age, and have also had no experience with ballet before.  I recognize some of the students from my classes last year, but I’m too nervous to try and talk to them.  There are maybe 11 students, and they all look like they belong here.  I think I stand out like a vegetable in a fruit salad.

Then, the teacher walks through the glass studio doors and says hello.  She is an attractive woman, maybe in her forties.  She has bobbed brown hair held back with a tasteful red headband and wears all black.  Her nose is dainty and small, her face is beautiful, and as far as I can tell she wears no makeup.  She is probably 5’7 or 5’8, and I feel self-conscious because I stand taller than she does at 5’9 and half.

She introduces herself and takes attendance.  The entire class is silent.  My face is blushing already from the anxiety.  I always get like this when I try something new.  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

The teacher demonstrates our first barre exercise; two demi plies and a grande, combre forward and back, and then releve, hold, and other side.  Even with her slow and exaggerated movements I find it hard to grasp and understand.  She puts the music on, but I cannot hear it because I am too focused on her and trying to copy what she’s marking.  When we do it on the other side, she walks around and makes corrections.

   Shoulders down, ears tall, ribs in, heels front, eyes up, hips square, elbows soft, relax the thumbs, breathe.  I have no idea what any of this means, except for breathe, but I can’t do that right now either.  We go through combinations for tendus, degages, grande battement, and develop, and I start to feel even more lost. 

We put away the barres to do center work and across the floor, like pas de bourre, chaines, and sache temps leve.  I struggle to follow along, and my brain is tired from trying to remember all these new words.  When the class is over, I am grateful.  I don’t know how I’ll make it through a whole year of ballet.