An old love never dies

When I was five, after just having moved to a village where I should spent so many years of my life, my mother asked me whether I wanted to do ballet. Well, as a small child, you don’t actually understand what ballet really is (I guess most children would say no then ;)) but I knew that it had something to do with moving around. I agreed and after some introductory lessons, I decided that I liked it. Don’t get me wrong, it was no professional school, it was once a week in the neighbouring town and at the beginning, we only did little concentration exercises and learned how to be a beetle and then a blooming flower in the wind. Of course, as the years passed on, it got more complex. Real ballet exercises started to be part of the weekly schedule and when I was ten, I got my first pointe shoes. I was sooooo proud although I hated it in the beginning. For those of you who don’t know, because no one doing ballet really complains, it hurts A LOT! Beginner shoes are usually a little softer but your feet aren’t accustomed to that kind of torture. But pride, joy, and the extraordinary feeling onstage were worth it. I loved every performance and although I can’t remember the choreographies anymore, I can still remember every role. Okay, to be honest, some roles were a little stupid: Who would ever like to dance a waltz en pointe in a bright green tutu? But well, it was my teacher who made such decisions. And I really liked her. She wasn’t that typical old woman you might imagine as a ballet teacher but she was always determined and knew how to talk to us children and later teenagers. She even showed us how to do tap dance.

After many, many years in which I really came to love ballet (I even wanted to become a ballerina as a girl, but I decided that something with sports shouldn’t be my profession), my teacher had to quit. She was old and had too many injuries due to her own dancing career as a young woman. A new teacher, only a couple of years older than me, came to our school and it was a hard time to adapt to her. She had another style to teach and especially a different way of dancing. But I loved ballet and didn’t want to stop. But after several performances and her treating our group (we were the oldest one and thus the most advanced) in such a way that was simply not acceptable anymore, I started to hate what I was doing there. Her behaviour towards us affected my feelings for ballet – by hindsight, I simply should have gone to another school – but after another performance, I quit. I dumped my pointe shoes and the rest of my equipment in a faraway corner and ignored any regrets...

After four years, I missed it terribly. I started practicing at home but it’s really difficult because no one has such a huge mirror and such a big place not to hit anything when dancing with your whole body. In the meantime, another teacher had taken over the school, and after many days of pondering on the pros and cons, I decided to give it and her a try. Now, to cut a long story short (I’ve already written more than I originally intended to), I’m more than happy that I did it and I will also be onstage again this year (I would’ve never imagined that I’d miss it that much)! I attend her classes several times a week now and after such a long pause there’s a lot of work to do. I’m not that flexible anymore, my feet aren’t accustomed to pointe shoes anymore, in sport terms I’ve become really old etc. But although every limb hurts and although I have to bandage my feet after almost every ballet class, I’m so utterly glad I started doing ballet again because: AN OLD LOVE NEVER DIES!

09/06/2014