I’ve always admired the grace and glamour of ballerinas, so taking a barre class sounded like the ideal way to live out my unfulfilled dreams of pirouetting across stage in a leotard. Cut to 15 minutes before class starts: I think of myself as being in mildly good shape, but I’ve already worked up a sweat on the walk to Strom, and class hasn’t even started yet.
Girls who look straight out of a Netflix ballet documentary are sitting or standing in the hallway, all wearing colorful Nike sneakers and stretching casually. Finally, class begins. I stand on my mat (there weren’t enough portable barres to go around) and fan myself; a dozen fans are spinning above me, but the room is still warm. The cheerful instructor has us step from side to side in time with peppy music. Okay, this isn’t so bad.
Suddenly, she throws in some side-to-side arm movements, and I remember why I never took up dance. My arms and legs are flailing hopelessly out of sync with everyone else. By the time I catch up, we’re moving on to the next movement. Our instructor shows us how to do pliés: heels together and bending slightly from her turned out knees, arms curved gracefully. As I attempt to imitate her, I realize those floor-to-ceiling mirrors are more useful for seeing how awkward I look than anything else.
What feels like 10 minutes later, we’re still doing mini-squats, my legs are burning and I’m completely over wanting to do ballet. I have no idea what to do with my arms, since there’s no barre to rest them on. I try clasping them in front of me as if I’m praying for strength to keep doing this class (which isn’t too far from the truth), but I see myself in the mirrors and quickly abandon that. Instead, I try holding my arms down and curved in, like I’ve seen ballerinas do in movies, but it looks more like I’m carrying a huge, invisible trash bag full of my dancing dreams.
Suddenly, I realize we’ve moved on to floor exercises on our mats. Thank goodness, I can sit down. My elation is short-lived as we begin Pilates-inspired ab crunches. After about 10 seconds, I’m wiped out. If this is what it takes to get dancer’s abs, I’m resigned to having a one-pack forever.
We move on to arm exercises, using small medicine balls, and I realize that one of my weights is heavier than the other, so I give up on them. However, it turns out that it looks even more ridiculous doing arm circles without weights than it does doing pliés. As the class ends with stretching, I decide that it’s difficult to maintain any sort of ego in a group exercise class. And as I carefully navigate the stairs on knees that feel like Jell-O, I decide that for now, at least, I’m content to leave ballet to the experts.
