I think I’m destined for a lifetime of comebacks, at least in one aspect of my life.

But one thing lasts for all seasons: feeling better about yourself after watching pretty people who slightly suck. Recent maniacal laughs:

• Dancers with beautiful bodies who perform choreo and make it absolutely unrecognizable. Haha, you made an ugly.
• Dancers who suck up their faces in funny ways when they concentrate. Hmm, maybe you shouldn’t have been talking in the back when we went through the combo.
• Dancers with diva airs who find out mid-combo that they don’t know how to do the moves. Oh look! Bitchiness does not negate sucking!
• Being the only person in class who can demonstrate a jump when you haven’t been in a technique class for two years. That’s right, it’s called muscle memory.
• And not being sore afterward. I don’t need your BENGAY.
  

Last week I made a return to the dance studio for my first technique class in two years. The original plan was to take a beginner or intermediate class, have the teacher gauge my skills, and continue with whatever class is actually my level.

Well, I overslept through the desired beginning and intermediate classes, and finally just bit the bullet and walked into Abby’s Advanced Modern class. My consolation was that I knew Abby (I met her when she was my first modern teacher ever four years ago.), and surprisingly, she remembered me, too. I told her “I haven’t taken a technique class in about two years, so I’m just going to try to get through the class and listen to my body. If I need to, I’ll just sit back.”

And that’s where muscle memory kicks in. Abby’s centering warm-up is more meditative than it is conditioning. It brought me back to dancing modern, where there’s a lot of choreography jargon like “phrase” and “place,” and a lot of release work. It was nice. The skin of my feet were dried and slightly battered at the end, but I felt wonderful. It’s a pity I let a regular work schedule inhibit me from building a sweat at dance class.

That class was small, with only two other female students. I had longer hair than all three of the other women in the room combined, and I am probably the only one who eats meat. Somehow, doing modern dance in a studio in Berkeley seems more pure than prancing around with a bunch of girls who came out of the typical tap-jazz-ballet ma and pa studio mill. Hippie fab.

Yesterday, I dared to go back to ballet technique. Ballet’s tougher than modern. There are more rules. I don’t have good natural turnout, so I was ready for the teacher to pull me aside and say, “You’re in the wrong class.” (Dennis Nahat did that to me once. Asshole.) Though Modern left me only nominally sore, I feared that with all the extensions, both assisted and unassisted, Intermediate Ballet would essentially leave me crippled for the next day.

Apparently in for a surprise, I reserved a corner spot near the door at the bar and cased out the other dozen or so students. There were some oldies up in there! Two women were probably in their 60s, and I think we should all aspire to be those women when we grow up. Probably retired. Dressed in cute layered ballerina outfits. And TAKING AN INTERMEDIATE BALLET CLASS. That is FABULOUS. When I’m old I want to be fabulous, livin’ life, and showing up the youngsters, which I’ll get to next.

I was very intimidated by all the dancers around me. Except for the two old ladies (Who both happened to be Asian, making me excited to grow up, and proving Bongo’s theory that “Asians don’t age.”), they were all skinnier than me, and probably more flexible than me, and some of them, cuter than me. ::huff:: Some of them definitely looked like they belonged to ballet companies or were aspiring to do so one day. I’m just over five feet, kinda stocky, and generally not a ballerina-looking person. I just tried to focus on my own lack of arch and get through the bar. I was over-ready to sit down, hypersensitive to any possible sudden twitching or spasming of my calves. Every time I saw the instructor looking my way, I tensed up and kept thinking “She’s judging me! She’s judging me! She’s totally disgusted by my track thighs and I totally don’t blame her!”

But I made it through! And as I suffered self-consciously through my awkward reunion with center work, I just kept praying, “Oh, please, can we just do some jumps or something so that I can feel better about myself?” And we did.

Marcia, who is absolutely gorgeous to watch and listen to, gave us three ballottes, four changements, soutenou, blah-blahs for the combo. I was so excited when she demonstrated it! What I originally wanted to do was split leaps across the floor, but ballottes aren’t a common jump. They’re relatively masculine, and thus not often taught to female ballerinas. This was a nice foray back into ballet jumps. We were doing something rare.

It seemed no one in the room knew what a ballotte was when we marked the combination. Of course I took the term “mark” wholeheartedly and flicked my hands and pushed my feet along in my spot in the back. When Marcia asked for someone to demonstrate the jump, three people attempted and failed. I did a couple small ones crammed in my dark little corner, and Marcia saw me. She said, “Yes, that is beautiful! Please show us.” I did, and I did not fall on my ass.

After another round of trying the ballotte, one of the Pretty Young Things in the room asked if we could do the combination slower, but immediately the Oldies spoke against the proposal with “No!” I didn’t want to slow it down, either. First, that combo would have been tortuous to go through slowly. Second, it just wasn’t a combo that needed to be slowed down. Slowing it down would have changed the tone of the choreo. And who wants a depressing ballotte? No one. It’s like bittermelon. Why?

Marcia then gave us the option to dance slow or fast, requesting the accompanist to play slowly first. So the slow people go. And the floor just fills up. With every person under 40. That came out to three-fourths of the room. So the bumbling youngthings go up. And, collectively, they didn’t know ballottes. They were close to running into each other and the space was too crowded for such an expansive, explosive jump.

They cleared the floor, and only the fast people were left. I looked around, and I was prepping in the company of the Oldies. Literally every other woman in my group looked over 40. Not a single PYT had dared to do the fast combo. We did the combo (I’m sure not everyone was able to jump super high.), and received a lot of “Oh, man…” murmurs.

“Lovely!” Marcia exclaimed at us. Hooray! I made it through an entire Intermediate Ballet class without collapsing to the floor!

I even made it back to Advanced Modern this morning, where I was reaffirmed in my belief that “Dance Major” does not equate “good dancer,” whereas I can communicate ethnic studies like the wind!

Is it weird that I love showing up pretty people? That’s just how I do. ::snap::