Every little girl who does ballet dreams of getting her first pair of pointe shoes, completing the ballerina look, and moving up in the dance world. But going on pointe isn’t exactly what every little girl imagines. They don’t realize the blood, sweat, and tears that go into pointe shoes. When I started dance I started at a competition studio that cared more about tap and jazz than ballet, but I loved the graceful and flowing movements of ballet. So imagine my surprise when my teacher gave me the all-clear to get pointe shoes, I was the first of my group to get the shoes and to really have the chance to take this next step. I got them because I fought so hard for ballet, they were my dream, I sat down with my dance mentor and she taught me all about ankle stretches and ways to strengthen my ankles for class. Then the time came for me to go to my first pointe class, I put my shoes on looked in the mirror, and waited for the teacher… I thought we were gonna start like any other ballet class but I was wrong. The first thing she said to me was to sit on pointe over my ankles, basically sitting and holding on to the barre with my knees on the wall pushing over the box of my shoe for 10 minutes. While the other students would start the class with actual pointe exercises I had to stretch and strengthen. I felt devastated I didn’t realize pointe would put me back at the bottom with baby steps, I began to get discouraged and feel like I was never going to be the ballerina I wanted to be because I wasn’t leaving the barre. Even as I started to learn more exercises, I was still at the barre.
One day my teacher told me I was ready to go to the center, I was so excited and when I started dancing in the center I looked like a baby deer. I fought so hard to try and be good in the center but it was so different. Thank God my teacher forced me to start at the barre, I understand why she taught me the way she did. She helped me strengthen my ankles and in turn, used the barre to teach me patience in dance.
In dance, ballet especially, we think that it will be so easy to learn a new step or to grow in a new capacity and when it’s not we beat ourselves up for not being good dancers. In a class that I recently took the teacher told me, “ We may have grown up and become masters but we never really master dance”. We can try so hard and still never be the best because there is no such thing, everyone in ballet is still learning, growing, and honing their technique. Being on pointe isn’t the cap saying you’ve made it as a dancer; instead, it is the next step you take to push yourself to become a better dancer than you were before!
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