Chapter Twelve

We had a theif in the house! Either that, or some disgruntled dance student decided to exact her revenge upon our instructor.

Today was our first day for our remedial ballet class. I think it will be difficult to write about the next five weeks because every term in ballet is in french. I can hardly pronounce English words, let alone french ballet terms. But I digress. So, we began the afternoon with our usual routine: get changed, walk up the nasty back steps, get our attendance card, avoid running into the barre that was now set up in the middle of the gymnasium. It didn't take long for any of us to figure out that our prof was in a very nasty mood. Her face was furrowed into a scowl as she tromped around the gym setting up. It also didnt take long for us to find out why she was in such a nasty mood.

As she collected our attendance cards she began, "As you know, today is the first day of ballet. You should all have slippers or you know those cropped sneaker socks...yeah, like she's wearing." She pointed to the girl sitting two away from me. She continued, "I would have slippers on too except someone freakin' stole them along with my nice leather jacket!" She then proceded to mumble a whole slew of cusses under her breath organizing the cards back into alphabetical order.

"Ok, so just like we started Modern on the floor, working from our core out, in ballet we start at the Barre...B-A-R-R-E not B-A-R, although right now, going down the street to Shorties and getting trashed wouldn't be so bad...and work from our toes upward. I have these two barres in the middle of the floor that are regulation height, the rest of you will have to line up along the edge here and use those railings. And we'll switch off using the real barre so that you all have a chance to stretch at the right height at some point during our five weeks."

Confusion ensued as everyone vied for a position, somewhere, anywhere. There just wasnt enough space to put forty-five people at a railing or barre. We were crowded in, much to the annoyance of the already frustrated prof. "I go away for sebatacle and they stuff forty-five freakin' people in my class! This is rediculous!" I've discovered after six weeks she really likes to say the word 'freakin' and I've been guessing that 'freakin' isnt quite the word she really wants to use. So we finally settled into a place and she began our instruction.

The next portion of the class mostly began with some explanation of how a formal class would be taught, and how we wouldnt have the time to go through such formality. She told us of her own Russian dance instructor who would hit their legs when they were in incorrect form. Then she also explained how her instructor would "make us look her in the eye when she would speak directly to us, and say 'Yes, Madame' all the while my hand would be on the other side of the barre giving her the finger." We learned about the caste-like system amongst formal ballet schools of the past where the beginners wore black leotards, and white or pink thights, the intermediates wore something else, and the advanced wore a pink leotard with white tights.

After all the discussion, we really only had time to go through the five positions for our feet, which nicely enough are labeled first, second, third, forth and fifth position. We had to 'tondue' between each postion, and yes, I know I spelled that incorrectly. We ended learning about "plies" and "grande plies" which are basically knee bends in crazy contorted leg positions. I think my knees wanted to give out.