Feel the Beat!

Yesterday..

Well yesterday I went to my ballet class, like I do every Monday and Wednesday, and I didn’t really think it would be all that different than it usually was. I showed up and saw my fellow dancers there. We had a conversation about a dance that we were putting together for a little show, and then we entered class. Usually we always start off with a warm-up that includes stretching the back and leg muscles. Then we started the bar exercise which we usually memorize at the beginning of the year. The first “barra” (as they say in spanish, for bar exercise) is always the easiest. It consists of plies [pli- ae] and releves [re-le-vae], which are probably the most simple steps in ballet. But as we were practicing these, the teacher stopped us, which was unusual, and asked us to do plie and stay in that position. She explained what feeling you were supposed to get as you bent your knees (that is what you do in plies) and what part of the legs you were working. Then, we did it again and ,unlike I might have felt before she explained, it actually hurt. I never really thought of this step to be all that painful, but as soon as I did, I was glad the teacher had explained. There were a lot of things that the ballet instructor explained to us that class yesterday, such as where your shoulder plates needed to be and how that created good posture. As I got home last night and was getting ready for bed, I kept thinking over and over in my head, what if she hadn’t gone in to depth with these simple steps? What if I hadn’t learned to do this correctly now? If I hadn’t, would I ever have learned it later on? That thought kept piercing my brain, and I just kept wondering about it. If I had never learned to do it correctly, it would be so much harder to get it in the future, and not only that, but I had been doing it this way my whole life!! Imagine, 11 years of dancing and I have been doing one of the most simplest steps incorrectly. Could that have been affecting my skills? Now I know though, that doesn’t matter anymore, because now I know and now I will apply my new knowledge to my dancing. See, when we have been doing something wrong our whole lives, we take the opportunity to correct that mistake. And having this experience has really helped me realize (and this has nothing to do with dancing) that its not too late to learn from your mistakes. I know now that you have to ask to get things right, and people just seem so afraid to ask questions. Some people say that it makes them feel stupid, but it makes you quite the opposite. Asking questions shows that you want to learn more things and understand better. I know that asking questions has helped me come a long way academically and through dancing. People may also be scared to ask questions becuase they think that they should have the answers to all their questions. Although we all like to feel like we know so much, not asking questions is refraining you from becoming the best you can possibly be.

Its funny what a simple ballet class can make you think. Some days, you might think, “Gosh this is so boring and seems pointless.” Other days you might get out of class and say, “Oh, I never knew that was the way you did it,” and there are times where you feel so happy that you’re doing it because you love it and you learn so much. Its not very ordinary that I walk out of a ballet class and start thinking of it as a life lesson, but situations like mine just show that the simplest things can teach us something important. And maybe what you just read will make you roll your eyes and think,”Whatever, its not that big of a deal,” but it truly has made me think. And if something that you never realized suddenly just popped out in front of you and finally made you see, take the time to think why it affected you. Its not that hard. Really.