It’s a typical Monday night, and I’m at my dance studio getting ready for class. First up is ballet; this means buns, pink tights, black leotards and a black chiffon skirt. I put on my pointe shoes, taking time to put tape on my toes to cover blisters, then toe pads to cushion my feet while on pointe. Then, I wrap satin ribbons around my ankles and tie them tightly to secure my balance while in relevae. After the five minutes it took to put on my toe shoes, I glide over to the bar to start the class. At once my world is simple and my mind wanders. The feet are turned out, the arms soft, and the head slowly following the fingertips as the bar digresses. The music moves slowly along and I am at peace with myself, concentrating solely on my body and leaving my troubles at the door to the studio. After a short bar and center, the pointe shoes come off and it’s time for jazz.

I carefully untie my skirt and gingerly place my pointe shoes back into my dance bag. I throw on a pair of jazz pants and lace up my black jazz sneakers. The class almost doubles once jazz starts. The music is faster, the warm up brisker, and the movements looser. The careful turn out and graceful posture of ballet is transformed into rigid turn in and “jazz hands”. Isolations and floor stretches take the place of the strictly regimented bar and center routines. Breathing is heavier during jazz class due to faster routines and exact moves. Quite a few times I’ve had to take a minute or two to recover from being winded after a tough routine. Jazz teaches me to be loose and free, to smile and let the music take over. For the most part this feeling is new and exciting, but a little frightening. In ballet there is no room for interpretation- what’s right is right, but in jazz, there is a sense of freedom.

Since the age of five, I have been an avid student of ballet. I have thought of what it might be like to see Barishknikov for myself, or to be a principal in the Boston Ballet. For a while, ballet seemed to be boring and too structured for my taste, but I have always gone back to the bar. Recently I have been forced to switch schools, and ballet is something that local dance schools do not particularly specialize in. Of the five other schools in my town, one offers ballet classes, and even this is a sad attempt. The half-hour class comes no where near what my three-hour classes covered. Even at the studio I dance at now, the classes are much shorter than what I was used to at Chambers. I pride myself for being the only one in my class who can do a double pirouette and fuette turns, or who has the right posture, the best turn out. It may be a worn out art form in the eyes of today’s youth, but ballet is one of the few things that I do better than most people.

While jazz is what today’s youth crave, I feel a little left behind because I’ve been so strictly and classically trained. When I first started taking jazz classes I would feel silly or think I looked absurd doing things that seemed so wrong. For ten years I had heard “Turn out!”, or “Straighten your arms!”, and now this backwards dance form was telling me to do all the things I had worked so hard to fix. Now jazz seems to be okay. I can admit I’m not absolutely, 100% comfortable with the dance form, but it has its perks.