A Return to the Barre

I secretly cursed Pierre Beauchamp. He was the French choreographer in the court of Louis XIV, and the likely creator of the five positions every ballet dancer lives and breathes. Even though I had decent natural turnout, the classical fifth position was its own form of torture. And yet, I can’t calculate the hours of my young existence spent standing heel to toe, toe to heel. Beauchamp had to have been something of a madman.

Today, at age 65, I have rediscovered the profound beauty of those positions and even found comfort in their discipline. I am back at the barre, and I love everything about it.

Mine is both a short and a long story. At age 4, I entered the world of ballet under the tutelage of Bess Saylor, Miss Bess, at the Dayton Ballet School. I was obedient and wide-eyed. Tiny but a little fierce. I worshipped Bess and the lure of her lyricism. I wanted to be just like her, to move with her special kind of grace, to wear White Shoulders perfume and mimic her heavily flourished handwriting.

I did most of it, including dancing with the company and considering a career in ballet. I even spent the summer of my 16th year on scholarship at the Joffrey Ballet School, sweating it out with a slew of other girls.

Then life intervened: college, dancing in the Washington Opera, random musicals and smaller companies, followed by aerial yoga, flying trapeze and other circus-like contortions. But no ballet. No way, no how.

That changed midway through 2020, on the brink of my 60th birthday and two decades into my life in Manhattan. I had recently left a writing job I’d held for most of that time and was oddly relieved that much of the world was knocked off balance by the pandemic. Somewhere in that uncertain pause, I grew curious.

I took a few virtual classes with New York City Ballet’s Tiler Peck. I didn’t have a real barre or ballet slippers, but no one could see me anyhow. There wasn’t much gratification in the process, and I didn’t feel particularly accomplished, but it was a pilot light. It was step one.

Step two: I dug up an old leotard and headed to Everyday Ballet in Tribeca. It was precisely what I needed. The music was canned, and the combinations were repeated every class for several months, but it boosted my confidence. Still, I was bored. Maybe I wanted something more.

I reached out to my dear friend Kristy Windom, who never turned her beautiful back on ballet the way I had. She sent me a list of studios to consider, and the Joffrey on Sixth Avenue and 10th Street was right on top. Why not? It was walking distance from my SoHo apartment and still exactly where it had been 47 years ago, when I was a scholarship student. It was intimidating and familiar all at once.

Saturday, March 30, 2024. Stephanie Godino’s 2:30 p.m. class. She came up to me and asked who I was.

“Last time I was in this studio was the summer of ’77,” I said.