Tag: ballet

Buying Ballet Shoes as a Grown-up

Published on by Emily Midorikawa4 Comments

One of the struggles Emma Claire and I face when we compose our profiles on each month’s literary pair is how to condense many years of friendship into just a few hundred words. Interesting episodes and key details about each woman’s personality often have to go by the wayside for the short-form writing we do here on Something Rhymed.

Marianne Moore’s commitment to lifelong learning, well into old age, was an aspect of her life that almost failed to make the cut. Moore’s enthusiasm for dance and even creative writing classes, though intriguing, didn’t seem to be quite relevant enough to her friendship with fellow poet Elizabeth Bishop.

But when we thought of the great affection with which Bishop had written about this aspect of Moore’s character, we decided it was something we wanted to explore through our writing this month.

The subject of adult education had, in fact, been floating around my mind ever since February’s Something Rhymed challenge, when I took Emma Claire to see a gallery exhibition about the Russian ballet The Bolt.

This image is in the public domain.
This image is in the public domain.

Ballet has been a love of mine for many years, and – having previously had lessons from the ages of four to eighteen – I took it up again as a hobby a few years ago. Like Emma Claire’s morning yoga sessions, it is an activity that hovers around the fringes our friendship. I’ve occasionally met her before or after an evening at the studio, and have mentioned class to her in passing, but a lack of shared vocabulary means I’d never thought to talk of it in detail, thinking it would be boring for her.

That trip to the gallery made me rethink my reticence, though – its costumes, rehearsal photographs and choreographer’s notes sparking questions from Em, not just about the exhibition itself, but also my own long-held fascination with this dance form. I was soon recalling the elderly babysitter, Mrs Tomlinson, who had enchanted my imagination at four-years-old with her crayon drawings of the Nutcracker’s Sugar Plum Fairy and the sad story of Swan Lake. I told Em of my childhood (highly unrealistic) dream of becoming a professional dancer, and also the rewarding but humbling experience of returning to ballet as an adult after such a long hiatus.

An idea for a story about dancing had pushed me to take the plunge and buy a new pair of ballet shoes. I’d wanted to immerse myself in that world again, because I wanted to write about it.

But taking class has, in fact, enriched my life in other unpredicted ways. It’s a part of the week to which I now always look forward. An hour-and-a-half of ballet makes for a wonderful way to change gears after several hours at my desk. The concentration required to try to master the steps empties my mind of any work-related stresses, and afterwards I feel refreshed and more enthusiastic about whatever I have to do tomorrow.

Being an initially extremely rusty student has also helped me in my work as a teacher. The experience of being unable to remember where to place my arms, and finding my feet no longer seem to work as they used to, has served as a great reminder of how daunting it might be for one of my adult writing students, who finds themself sitting in a classroom again after many years out in the world of work.

Though it’s unlikely we’ll ever find ourselves standing together at the barre, I’d been wondering, since our visit to the Bolt exhibition, about other ways in which Emma Claire and I might enjoy ballet again together. Then I heard about the Royal Ballet’s new production Woolf Works – based on the writing of Virginia Woolf – which opens in London this month.

Emma Claire and I have just bought tickets, and I’m excited to go and see a performance with her for the first time. Not only should it give me the chance to share with her something more of my love of ballet, but the subject matter will surely open up new conversations about one of Em’s own great passions, the writing of Virginia Woolf.

Work and Play

Published on by emmaclairesweeney1 Comment

Inspired by Helen Keller – who encouraged her friend Nancy Hamilton to turn her hand to something new – this month Emily shared an aspect of her life that was, until now, foreign to me.

Visiting the Gallery for Russian Arts and Design
Visiting the Gallery for Russian Arts and Design

Emily and I exchange long-treasured books, swap outfits and befriend many of each other’s pals. We trade critiques of early drafts, seek support during painful times and feel at ease in each other’s homes.

But there’s a central aspect of my friend’s life about which I know very little.

When Emily embarked on a story set in a remote children’s dance school, she reconnected with her own history of ballet by enrolling in a weekly class. Through my friend’s writing, I have become familiar with the intricacies of a dancer’s kit: the toe pads and foot tape, the pink stitches darned across a pointe shoe’s hard-blocked end. But I have never seen Emily’s own ballet kit. I feel as if I have met my friend’s fictional dance school principal – the eccentric Miss Violet who inspires distrust and adoration in equal measure. And yet, I have never asked Emily about the women who first encouraged her to take up ballet. I may have watched my friend’s characters warm up at the barre, but I have never seen Emily perform.

Last week, Emily took me to the Gallery for Russian Arts and Design to see an exhibition about a ballet that I had never even heard of before: The Bolt by Dmitri Shostakovich. It turns out that I may not be alone in my ignorance since the ballet was banned by Stalin back in 1931 after only one performance.

It was at first difficult for us to discern what the authorities found so troubling. After all, The Bolt celebrated the lives of Soviet factory workers and the communist league came up trumps.

As Emily and I explored the exhibition further, however, it became clear that the production’s playfulness had likely proved controversial. Perhaps, like us, audiences would have been more drawn to the bold colours and extravagant designs of the bourgeois baddies’ costumes than the sackcloth uniforms of the party faithful. These vaudeville designs were matched by the score, which Soviet critics condemned as flippant satire.

Tatiana Bruni, Kozelkov's Girlfriend, Costume Design for The Bolt, 1931, Courtesy GRAD and St Petersburg Museum of Theatre and Music
Tatiana Bruni, Kozelkov’s Girlfriend, Costume Design for The Bolt, 1931, Courtesy GRAD and St Petersburg Museum of Theatre and Music

I had expected that our outing would reinforce my sense of Emily’s self-discipline: her finely-tuned writing schedule matched by her rigorous ballet training. But I came out of the exhibition reminded that this aspect of my friend’s character is matched by her playfulness: the way she laughs uncontrollably when something tickles her, the uninhibited way she’ll get up on a stage or pose for a photograph, her willingness to take risks in her writing.

I may never be able to join my friend at the barre, but our daytrip showed me that there’s so much about exuberance and joie de vivre that I stand to learn from showing more of an interest in this part of Emily’s world.

Hot Off the Press!

We are delighted to announce that two of our guest bloggers have books out this month, and both of them promise to take us to new and unexpected places.

Beautiful and brutal, Emily Bullock’s novel The Longest Fight recreates the gritty boxing world of 1950s London. And her writer friend Ann Morgan has just launched her non-fiction debut Reading the World: Confessions of a Literary Explorer, which invites us to join her on a quest to read a book from every nation.

Having stood by each other through their fair share of knocks, it is cheering to see this pair of writer friends experience knockout success together too.