Discovering Center
By Valerie L. Egar
When
I turned thirty, I suddenly longed to learn ballet. Though I could hardly walk
down a flight of stairs without stumbling, I imagined leaping like a gazelle. I
usually avoided exercise, but now the idea of stretching until I ached
appealed.
I tried to ignore
the urge, but my desire persisted, acute as my need to smell apple blossoms in
the spring. In mid-December, I joined a
class that had been dutifully stretching and leaping since September. To the
instructor’s cheery, “Of course you’ve taken ballet before,” I murmured a quiet,
“No.”
That evening I
began a struggle that continued week after week. Like a kindergarten child, I
confused my left foot with my right. My knees creaked when I attempted to plié, a
sound as odious as belching at the Ritz.
When we moved away from the barre and combined steps, my memory and feet
failed me. My classmates leapt and whirled. I stared at the floor.
One evening, the
teacher demonstrated the pirouette, twirling gracefully across the room. “To
move easily,” she said, catching her breath, “keep your balance by staying
centered. Stay too closed up, you won’t move.
Extend too far off center and you’ll fall.”
“Extend too far
off center and you’ll fall.” When I tried to move forward, I didn’t take small
steps towards my goal, but invariably overextended myself, hit a bump and
careened off course.
So this was the
trick— to discover my center, the point of balance inside and to stay so
exquisitely in touch with this soft spot that I could leap, turn, move
constantly, without falling.
When I finished
the class, I still couldn’t dance, but I knew I’d come a long way.
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Copyright 2019 by Valerie L. Egar. May not be reproduced, copied or distributed without permission from the author.
Published February 3, 2019 Maine Sunday Telegram.
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