I started taking ballet lessons when I was 3 years old. I took lessons at a studio run by a woman and her daughter where everyone was treated like family. Classes were usually an hour long and ran from September to June with the summers off. When I was fourteen, I was able to start taking pointe lessons and began going to classes twice a week.
My ballet teacher was not the stereotypical teacher in the least. She wasn't Russian and she didn't bang a cane against the floor. In fact, she was almost the opposite of the stereotypical ballet teacher. She was generous, kind, had the patience of a saint, and genuinely loved each and every one of her students. She wanted them to learn and do the best they could during every class, but she also wanted them to enjoy dancing just as much as she did.
In the first year of ballet as a three year old, we would start off with the basics. We learned the six positions of ballet and were taught how to count out beats by using a drum. In addition, we learned other basic steps and how they always began or finished with our feet in one of the six positions. As we got older, the steps got harder, but my teacher never had a problem with going over them for students who didn't understand.
At age fourteen, I finally was able to get my pointe shoes, which was something I had been looking forward to for a very long time. Most of the girls in my class had been anxious to get them as well, but my teacher always stressed how important it was to wait until our feet, ankles and legs were strong enough. If we weren't strong enough for pointe shoes, serious damage could be caused to the feet and ankles, so it really was better to be safe than sorry. While I did love my toe shoes, and didn't get as many blisters as I expected, they still managed to appear on the sides of my toes, and it was very painful to continue to dance on those blisters. In addition, while hands and fingers tend to shrink in the rain and cold weather, feet do the opposite. They swell. So dancing on pointe shoes when it was rainy and cold was never a fun experience either. Thirdly, our teacher always reminded us to keep our toenails short because if they were any longer than the end of our toe, we risked the possibility of it being pushed backwards into the skin, leading to bruising and infections. Despite all of that, I loved dancing on pointe shoes and loved wearing them, even when they hurt.
While ballet does sometimes take a toll on ones body, it can improve it as well. For example, doing ballet, or any kind of dance for that matter, improves your memory. During my junior and senior years of high school, I was in the senior ballet classes and that included memorizing at least 2-3 dances that were about 3 minutes in length for the annual recital in June. In addition, our teacher encouraged us to be familiar with dances of the other girls in our class, just in case we'd have to fill in for them. All in all, that's a lot of steps to memorize, especially compared to the single and more simple dance that the little kids were learning. It seems intimidating, but by the time students had reached that point in their ballet career, memorizing steps was pretty simple. Dance also strengthens your muscles, teaches you how to count rhythms, and relaxes your body and mind.
By the time I graduated high school and left my ballet school, I had done ballet for fifteen years and to this day, it was one of the most rewarding activities I ever participated in. I started lots of great relationships, not only with my teacher, but with other students in the class. I also loved learning new steps and found going to class enjoyable and relaxing. There are even many traits that my ballet teacher possessed and used in the classroom that I hope to use in my own educational classroom someday. For example, I hope to be just as patient and kind as she was and I also want to be able to get my students excited and maybe even passionate about what we're learning.
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