Attending ballet class week by week is a challenge itself for most adult dancers. Far too often life gets in the way, kids, money, work, or other... ballet gets placed on the back burner... and it's really a sad day to discover yet another classmate won't be coming back.
Well my already small class lost another one. It's tough because you make such good (in class ) friends with your fellow dancers only to discover you wont see them again. Sure there is always facebook (if you ask / or they ask - a conversation that doesn't always comes up as people are rushing into class or out ) but even then it isn't always the same.
Adult ballet dancers are a rare breed. In class we encourage, applaud, become inspired by and even giggle with throughout the many up's and down's of the ballet world. The smaller the class get's the lonelier it almost becomes. (Sure there is more opportunity for private lessons which is gold itself) yet, I look out amongst what's left of the group and I can't help but wonder who I might not see next week...or the week after that....I dunno.... maybe I'm just too sentimental for my own good.
Have you've ever watched the movie The Sandlot, (1993) the movie about the story of a group of best friends told through the eyes of the new kid to the neighborhood. Together they survive a crazy summer full of adventures, hard times, and good which cement their bond..... You may remember the scene at the very end of the movie where they focuses in on them playing their very last baseball game together and one by one each child seems to fade away ( symbolizing their journey forward in their life / growing up, and, leaving their childhood, childhood friends and the baseball diamond behind) until there is only one remaining circling the baseball diamond to score a lonely home run by himself.
Ballet Class is the field in which we practice, the barre is the diamond where we perfect technique, classmates make up the team, and I, the narrator of our story.
