First Position

When I was a child, I wanted to be a ballerina. Well, briefly, anyway. Then I wanted to be a gymnast, and then an astronaut. And then I wanted to be Rainbow Brite.

Being a child of the 80s, ballet was not quite what my mother enrolled me in when I expressed a burning desire to don a leotard and ballet flats. Instead she enrolled my sister and me in jazz ballet.

Yes. JAZZ ballet.

My rather vignetted memories from my early childhood reveal only pieces of what this dance medium entailed. From memory, it involved us running around a big room doing somersaults. I'm sure there was more to it than that, but that's the only part that stuck. I didn't last long in jazz ballet - I'd specifically wanted to do ballet, and the lack of pliés and tutus was a source of great disappointment for me. Given that I have grown to a freakishly tall 5'11" and am less than petite, it doesn't really matter - I'd never have made it as a ballerina anyway. Anyway, soon after, I moved onto netball, then basketball, then judo.  

However, my fascination with ballet lingered. 

I have been reminded of this youthful obsession in recent weeks because of two things. First, the new Amy Sherman-Palladino series, Bunheads. Not the catchiest of titles, I must say, though fairly sel-explanatory, and which was explained rather awkwardly in an early episode when one of the main characters referred to the ballerinas by this title. This may be the correct slang term, but it doesn't make for a pleasing embouchure. But I digress.

The announcement of this show was met with great excitement by my closest female friends, as we all have worshipped at the altar of Lorelai Gilmore for many years. The quips and quirky characters of Gilmore Girls delighted us in our teen years, and have continued to do so as we have grown closer to Lorelai's age than Rory's. The thought of a new series by Amy S-P excited us greatly, and Bunheads delivered not only the fast-paced, witty dialogue we craved, but even provided us with a reinvented Lorelai and Rory. Watching it has thrown me back into the world of ballet. The show itself smacks of familiarity - a small town filled with quirky characters, with many of the same actors filling the roles.  

Julia Goldani Telles plays Sasha, the most talented of the ballerinas. If Alexis Bledel (who played Rory Gilmore) had been a ballerina, this is what she would have looked like - the similarities are eery. As are the similarities between Lauren Graham (Lorelai Gilmore) and Sutton Foster (Michelle Sims in Bunheads), though no woman has yet to dethrone Lorelai Gilmore in my estimations - she remains the woman, factual or fictional, that I most idolise.

All this makes for a rather surreal viewing experience. Watching it is somewhat like a nostalgia trip on acid.

The show has, however, renewed my interest in ballet, and my favourite pair of shoes at the moment is a pair of pale pink satin TOMS which remind me of ballet shoes.

And then there's been my more recent forays into the local ballet scene.

A friend of mine has a three year old son who has recently shown an interest in ballet. I'm going to call him Bastian, after the character from Never Ending Story, for the purposes of this story. His daycare group has an activity called "Happy Feet" in which they introduce the kids to different kinds of dance. Bastian Loves Dancing. His favourite proved to be ballet, so his mother enrolled him in the local three year old ballet class. He's the only boy in that age group, as most boys tend not to come to ballet till they're a bit older; parents tend to push the footy on their boys in Australia more than ballet.  

I was invited to see his class and, curious what a ballet class for that age group would look like, I went along. Plus I was promised hot chocolate afterwards. The girls were allowed to wear pretty much whatever they want, which varied from plain leotards and tights through to floor-length princess outfits. Ah, to be three again and able to wear such things in public without anyone calling security. The boys, on the other hand, have a fairly strict uniform. As in ballet, as in life. Bastian was thus decked out in black tights, a white t-shirt, white socks and black ballet shoes.

The class itself was rather well-designed - the kids were introduced to a series of games which actually taught them ballet moves without them fully being aware of it, couching them in a series of games. They pepper the activities with the correct terminology, so Bastian now knows how to stand for first position, and is learning how to plié. Jelly. That said, it IS still a class of three year olds, and everything that implies, so the highlights of the experience were somewhat incidental to the discipline of ballet.

First, there was the wand. When walking around the room in a line, learning to point their toes, the leader of the group gets to carry a metallic plastic wand with a head shaped like a star. The drawback is that whoever is designated group leader is so mesmerised by the shiny star wand that they promptly forget the rest of the world and instead gaze in rapt wonder at this idol of plastic shiny, or run off to proudly show it off to their mothers.  

Then, there was the scarves. They are given scarves to swirl in the air and practise their arm movements. Bastian took to this as keenly as he did the jumping, vigorously making windmills in the air, but one little girl was having none of this. Instead, she crouched by the box of scarves and proceeded to fold and stack the chaotic pile of leftover scarves into some semblance of order.

Lastly, there was the galloping. In pairs, the kids were instructed to gallop sideways hand in hand down the length of the hall; good practice for future steps the length of a stage when they are older. Bastian went All-Out Boy on this one, careering down the hallway at full-tilt, dragging a poor little girl with him. Their slightly differing tempos ended in the only way possible - they tripped over each other and crashed to the floor, Bastian crashing down on top of the luckless little girl.  

Unfazed, he staggered to his feet and dragged the luckless girl, still dazed, from the floor. He gave her about a fraction of a second to shake it off before hauling her off again. Somehow they managed to make it to the end, but the poor little girl just didn't seem the same after that.

Now, if that wasn't an entertaining enough image for those who know me, picture this: I've agreed to try an adult ballet class with Bastian's mother. If you don't hear from me again, you'll know how THAT turned out...