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My ballet slippers have a lot they want to say.
Born a dainty pink, they are now frayed and soiled, their fibers penetrated by months of ballet studio grime. The leather pads beneath the balls of my feet have a patchy skin of rosin that looks like a nasty case of eczema. They have acquired a tangy scent. They are no longer pretty but what they have given up has been compensated many times over by what they have given me. There is no more potent symbol of who I have become than those battle-scarred, once-pink ballet slippers.
When I began ballet, I started with standard issue black slippers. Out of affection and frugality, I wore them till they were in tatters. My big toes eventually worked their way through the cloth. Doing routines at the barre one day I was suddenly ashamed of those toes gawking at me. Moreover, I felt pity for the poor bailarina working downwind of me! My classmates, almost always women, take great care with their attire: they pull their hair back in tight buns, put on make-up, have a rotating cast of pristine leotards. I may have come at ballet from a different angle — more Boy Scout than Bolshoi — but I suddenly felt ashamed, as if I were disrespecting five centuries of ballet masters. I resolved to change my ways.
The next day I went to a store in front of the Teatro Colón to buy new slippers. A young woman with erect posture and precise movements laid slippers before me in a variety of colors. I started to reach for classic black, the default color for men and by far the most practical. But something about a pair of faint pink ones caught my fancy. I remembered a professional dancer from abroad who had dropped in to take a single class with us. He had worn pink slippers. Perhaps I too could do the same?
I come from a ballet family. My mother was a great fan. My younger sister studied at San Francisco Ballet until she was 17 when she made the decision not to go pro. My older sister is on the board of the New York City Ballet. Picking up this family tradition, I took my first steps in ballet with great joy but also with the sensation that I was trespassing, that I didn’t belong. I was a man, I was nearing sixty and in far too many photos I glimpsed an unsightly paunch intruding (extruding?). Doubtless I feel younger than I am and I definitely behave that way but entering a ballet studio was pushing even my very flexible limits.
My curiousity was indeed fragile. I fled the first studio I inquired at when they told me that I had to wear tights. I was willing to make a fool of myself — but not that much of a fool! But to my credit, I am stubborn. I kept asking around and eventually found a studio where loose fitting clothes were accepted and so began my ballet journey.
A year and a half later, I am now training ten hours a week. For most of those 18 months my body has ached; it’s not age, my teenage classmates all complain of the same thing. Ballet just pushes you every day. I have endured raised eyebrows, questions about my sexual orientation, jokes and most of all, people just asking, Why? There’s not much future for sixty-year-old ballet dancers is there?
I don’t resent their questions. I’m as surprised as they are that this has worked out, that I didn’t give up. Previously I’ve powered my life by intuition and intense passions but I wasn’t big on sacrifice and discipline — until I was.
I don’t recognize myself either.
I tell them that I’m not going anywhere. I’m already here, exactly where I want to be: I am dancing ballet. And I am doing it a little bit better every day.
I love the soft pink of my slippers and I love that they are sullied and that the pink must struggle to assert itself through the accumulated grime. Ballet is the hardest thing I’ve ever attempted. For all the pink satin, tutus and tulle it takes real grit to dance ballet. I see it in my classmates some of whom look to be at the start of brilliant careers. I may never ever make it to where I can call myself a ballet dancer without chuckling but it hardly matters. I found something more important. I wasn’t sure it was there but I discovered that grit inside myself. In the end it’s the behind-the-scenes grit that makes beauty possible.
And, yes, in case you’re wondering, I now wear tights. I’d feel underdressed without them.
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