Dancing Shoes and The Nutcracker

About a month ago, while I was going through basement boxes, I found my pointe shoes. Pointe shoes, for the uninitiated, are the fabric, leather, and glue-constructed, box-toed shoes that older ballet dancers wear that enable them to dance, literally, on the tops of their toes. I took a picture for posterity's sake.

I'd kept these old, worn shoes, I suppose, as sort of relics of a cherished time. I'd left sticky notes on the undersides of a few:


"First Pair--
9 years old
June Conn School of Dance"

"1996 Nutcracker
Baker School
Martzipan & Flower
(Later, Mom chalaced [sic] these & another pair 3 times! They shrunk!)"

I kept only one of my first pair, and I obviously was proud of the fact that by the time I performed in my last Nutcracker, I had to rotate pairs to get the best wear out of them, and even then my mom added a clear shellac to the shank to preserve their life. (All pointe shoes wear out after extensive use, and shellacking them can keep the shanks--the part that extends across the bottom of the foot--and the box--the flat part that dancers stand upon when in full relevé--from weakening more quickly. Evidently the shellac also ended up shrinking the fabric on my shoes, too.)

So with my shoes in mind, and in this the season of The Nutcracker, I'm indulging in a little walk down memory lane as I remember with fondness my years in ballet and the many productions in which I participated. A little history: when my family lived in southeastern Kentucky in the late 1980s, my sister and I, then first or second graders, began taking ballet lessons from dancers with the Lexington Ballet who would drive to our rural area once a week. We'd meet in an upstairs room above the fire station. I can still remember sitting in a circle with a bunch of little girls, my feet palm to palm, so to speak, gently flapping my knees, trying to be flexible enough to get them to touch the floor. The teacher would ask us what stickers we imagined we had on our heels. I dimly remember talking about butterflies and rainbows and fairies on mine. The incongruity of our setting belied the fine instruction we received; in retrospect, my parents and I were prepared only for classical, extremely high-quality ballet instruction after that.

We went to a production of Cinderella in Lexington at some point, and I will never forget how entranced I was--the music, the costumes, the loveliness. I wanted to be a dancer after that. Angelina Ballerina was a favorite (new back then!) book, as was one I found a few years later at our local library called A Very Young Dancer. That book, more than anything, made me want to visit New York, see Balanchine's production, and participate myself in The Nutcracker (but probably not at the New York City Ballet). Interestingly, this recent article on A Very Young Dancer includes this tidbit: “As a girl from Kentucky,” Ms. Whelan said, “this book literally opened the door to my fascination with New York City, ballet and Balanchine." That's how I reacted, too.

We moved several times, and I was blessed to take lessons for about seven years, including at the now-closed Lancaster Ballet and a short stint at BalletMet in Columbus, Ohio. I participated in countless Nutcrackers, in nearly every divertissement in the second act. My favorite was dancing as a Flower in The Waltz of the Flowers.  By the time I finished junior high school, though, I realized that I didn't want to be a professional dancer, and other interests--singing, mostly--were crowding out my time. I had to stop abruptly when I was fifteen due to continuing knee problems, and at the time, though I'd already decided I'd want to stop eventually, the rift between my pre-ballet life and my post-ballet life was stark. In some ways I had to figure out what made me unique outside of that ballet descriptor. (As a side note, Stephanie's experience after A Very Young Dancer was sad but common, I think. So many dancers don't "make it." I'm thankful  that my memories are good.)

 It truly seems like another life to me when I think about it now. At my peak participation, I attended three three-hour classes a week, from six until nine o'clock at night. (My wonderful parents were, needless to say, extremely supportive.) The slightly pungent air of big, open studios; the piano accompaniment keeping time and moving us; the feel of the wood or steel barre under fingers; the laughter of camaraderie between aching dancers; the tiny, quiet, authoritative ballet mistresses showing us movements that we learned instantly--tiny moments, snapshots in my mind, are what I remember now. I learned countless lessons from my time as a young dancer--an appreciation for beautiful music, for performance, for precision, for the effort seeming effortlessness requires. For smiling through pain. For how transformative and--I don't like this word, but it fits here--empowering dancing can be for children, even awkward teenagers (boys and girls). If my children ever express an interest in dance, particularly ballet, I hope we can provide that experience for them.

Lots of sweat, pain, and joy in these shoes.

So back to The Nutcracker. Over our first Thanksgiving of our married life, Papa and I--who were living in Connecticut at the time--went to New York City for the weekend. We saw the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, walked the streets of downtown (but decided against the three hour wait to get to the top of the Empire State Building), did some shopping, ate a 9 p.m. Thanksgiving feast at the Waldorf-Astoria (because we figured this would never happen again), and generally had a great time. Papa, in all of his kindness, agreed that the one show we would see was George Balanchine's The Nutcracker performed by the New York City Ballet at Lincoln Center. What a great guy. This had been a dream of mine, obviously, since childhood. And it was magic. Though I have no pictures of that visit, I have the 50th anniversary commemorative book of Balanchine's production (which was the season we saw it). And when I pulled it out the other day, I couldn't stop smiling. I hope you all can see a local production sometime, particularly if it's a traditional staging. So happy, happy visions of sugarplums!