ballet whore

by Dorian Burden

HALFWAY THROUGH AUGUST the summer I was fifteen, I was dancing in my second ballet class of the day. Beads of sweat dripped down my face and back. The class was in an open-air studio at the summer arts camp my younger brother and I attended on Long Island. We took an hour-long bus ride each day from NYC where we lived. I could have been drawing, painting, or studying music the second half of the day, all of which would have been less exerting, but this summer, the third year we’d been coming, I had decided to devote myself completely to dance. Ballet was hard for me. I wasn’t naturally gifted, and I had started later than most of my peers, but I was determined to make as much progress as possible.

“Chasee, pas de bourree, glissade, assemble,” our teacher chanted in her French accent as we traipsed across the room in unison. We were lucky to have professionals from the big dance schools in New York City spend the summer with us.

“Okay, now we do the entire thing and I remain quiet.” She motioned to the accompanist at the piano to start from the top, and we took our positions. I caught a glimpse of our instructor’s expressionless face while we danced, but I knew we were doing well. Despite the immense effort, it all seemed to flow naturally.

We were rehearsing for the end-of-summer gala for which our class had been chosen to perform, and I was excited to show off my progress. Only a few classes each year were selected for the show. My class had been chosen the previous summer, but I wasn’t able to participate because my family was leaving for vacation the next day. My mother said there was too great a risk in us attending camp the day before the trip. One of us might get hurt, she said, and ruin our travel plans. I’d had to watch each day as everyone rehearsed for a performance I was not part of.

But this year there was no conflict. I had been working so hard; I was feeling more confident than I ever had; and I was having a much easier time with combinations.

My two closest friends at camp had skipped their own afternoon classes to come watch me. “Dorian!” Ursula said when I stepped out of the studio blotting my face and neck with a towel. “You did so well.”

“You looked really comfortable and graceful,” my other friend Adrienne added. I was relieved. It wasn’t just my imagination. They’d been watching me dance for three summers. Their approval made me feel proud.

Taking ballet had not been my idea. It was my mother’s. She had wanted to be a dancer as a young girl, but her parents wouldn’t let her. When she was finally old enough to take classes herself as a young adult, she was too old.

“The teacher said it was the greatest waste of talent he’d ever seen,” she recounted more than once, her eyes welling up. I felt sad for her but also was skeptical that she would have been successful. Even if she was talented, I didn’t think she had the discipline for ballet. She liked to control others. When it came to herself, she had none. She wouldn’t have been able to show up regularly for classes. She had to have a job where she made her own hours. She was hopelessly late for everything. And she didn’t stick with anything. She’d plan a new exercise routine and give up after a few weeks. She made us all swear off sweets and then sent me to the store to buy chocolates. She had tried to stop smoking a dozen times but still smoked two packs a day of Camels. And she’d swear she would never have another drink again, but inevitably, I’d hear the clink of ice in a glass and know she was about to get sloppy or angry or both.

I had taken my first ballet classes when I was about five or six, but that was mostly rolling around the floor and going home with dirty knees. I didn’t take another class again until I was twelve, when my mother declared one day that my brother Brett and I were going to take an after-school ballet class once a week. She was sitting at the dining table reading and didn’t even look at us when she said this. I wasn’t sure how I felt. I wish she’d asked if this was something we wanted but that wasn’t a question that passed my mother’s lips often. The ballet class wasn’t up for debate. Nothing ever was. So once a week, my eleven-year-old brother and I dutifully attended a small ballet class held at the nearby international school, attended during the day by the children of consulates and others who worked at the United Nations. Some of those students were in our class, too. There were just eight of us including Brett and me. The teacher was really nice and so patient. She explained that she was trained in a method of ballet called Cecchetti, named for an Italian dancer and choreographer. She seemed to feel this was a really important fact. I hadn’t even realized there were different types of ballet.

The following fall, I moved to the more competitive Manhattan School of Dance where I auditioned by myself in front of the intimidating Margaret Craske. She looked to be 100 but apparently had been a renowned dancer in her own day and was a well-regarded teacher. She had been a pupil of Cecchetti herself. She accepted me as a student, but since I was less experienced than the others my age, I would have to work at first with “the little ones,” as Miss Craske referred to the prepubescent girls in her British accent. It was a small school with one large studio, and the two groups worked separately for portions of the class.

I liked to think Miss Craske saw some potential in me. And I had to live up to that by working hard. Ballet made it clear that I was not naturally well-coordinated. I had difficulty remembering combinations of steps, and I felt intimidated watching the other dancers. I was embarrassed to be towering over the other girls in my group but I joined the older students within a few months. That summer, I had an opportunity to try to catch up when my brother and I began going to the arts camp, where I danced every day for eight weeks. I didn’t consider that any of the other students at ballet school might be doing something similar in the summer, and I imagined instead that everyone else would stay exactly where they left off while I alone was improving. But I was hooked.

Miss Craske occasionally called a student to the front of the room if she’d been giggling or didn’t seem to be taking the class seriously. The student stood before her, and in a very pressing but controlled tone, she would ask, “Do you want to be a dancer?”

Even though I was never called up to the front for such a scolding, I answered the question in my own heart each time. It was clear that answering no was not an option. You might as well walk out the door at that very moment if you answered no. What were you doing there if you didn’t want to become a dancer?

Every night, I carefully washed out my tights and leotard. I had only two of each, and they were expensive. If I needed a new pair, it would be up to me to buy them using my babysitting money, which I also used for the endless hairnets and bobby pins I seemed to need.

I found it easy to make the commitment to ballet, where everyone was so serious. The discipline was one of the best parts. Ballet was so controlled, exactly what I wanted to be. There was a strictness, a tightness to everything: your body, your mind, your time.

When we got to high school, my friend Nadia had to make the tough decision to leave ballet. We had met in dance, but we really became friends when I turned around in the line at the student union shop in high school and found her directly behind me. Ours was a huge school in Brooklyn, and we were so far from home, so it was nice to see a familiar face. Like me, Nadia had a single mom. It was just her and her mother. She didn’t talk much about her father, who didn’t seem to live in New York from what I could tell. We were also both Catholic. And we both had scholarships for the ballet school.

Nadia had been dancing longer than I had, and she even got to perform with the school. But she admitted to me that she wanted to be an architect. That’s why she had chosen Brooklyn Tech for high school. I was there because I’d passed the test my guidance counselor insisted I take and was accepted. I really wanted to go to Performing Arts for dance or drama. I’d auditioned for both but didn’t get in for either.

After school on ballet days, Nadia and I took a series of subway trains back into the city for class, stopping for snacks along the way. On Saturdays, we hung out together after class before each heading home. Eventually, Nadia decided she could no longer manage the rigorous academic program at the intense science high school and continue the ballet.

Her last day was sad. Miss Craske was really sweet to her, reminding her if she did her daily stretches she could return to ballet one day if she wanted to. But I detected a sense of judgment in the air from others about her decision. The ballet school administrator made some snarky comment when I said I was going to miss her. I hadn’t come to the same conclusion Nadia had, and it wasn’t because I was any better at managing school than she was—my dismal grades were testament to that. I was just more blindly committed to dance and far less studious. I could see that Nadia’s decision was a practical one supported by her mother. My mother wasn’t that aware of how school was going for me. I also wondered if the last time someone had been brought to the front of the room and asked if she wanted to become a dancer, Nadia realized she could no longer answer yes. I didn’t ask her about this. I knew she was sad to be leaving.

Even though I often felt inadequate compared to others in class, who moved on to pointe shoes as I was still trying to work on remembering moves they had long mastered, I expected to continue to work hard to become a ballet dancer.

I traveled home after dark on the city buses feeling a sense of euphoria. Some of it was the growing sense of accomplishment, but it was also the excitement of being a part of something, even if I wasn’t the best at it. In high school, dancers were easy to spot. We walked around with feet turned out like penguins, our backs straight and our rib cages held high, our hair in buns. Of course mine was held up by dozens of bobby pins because of my hair’s short length. I’d been begging my mother for years to let my hair grow—it would be easier to put in a bun—but she wouldn’t give in.

Dancing wasn’t just something I did. It was who I was.

The camp Brett and I attended had 200 acres of wooded paths and outcroppings of studios for dance, theater, painting, and music. The schedule was rigorous, broken up by periods just like in school. The day started with two periods of a major interest, in my case ballet. After lunch was a performance by well-renowned artists, another arts class, recreation, and a swim at the end of the day. The first year, I chose ballet as a major and chorus as a minor. The next year I chose painting as a minor. But this summer, I decided to dance for three periods, spending close to three hours a day in ballet. I had never been as determined.

Shortly after our classes began for the summer, the teacher in my morning class took a group of us aside and told us we were ready for pointe shoes. I was so excited. I felt that it was proof I was making the progress I was working so hard for. I would be like Ursula and Adrienne who’d returned to camp already in pointe shoes. I went home on the bus that afternoon, a Friday, elated, but when I got in that evening and told my mother about the pointe shoes, she said I couldn’t get them.

“You’ll only be there for another six weeks. It really doesn’t make sense,” she said. She didn’t even seem to give it any real thought. She didn’t understand how I was feeling. I’d gone from elation to heartbreak. And I was angry. Wasn’t I doing the ballet because she wanted me to? Why was she holding me back?

“Just wait till you get back to the school you spend the rest of the year in. We’ll see if they really feel you’re ready.” What did that mean? If the summer was where I made this progress, why couldn’t I go on pointe now? Did that mean she didn’t believe I was ready? She couldn’t know. I wanted her to see how much this meant to me and to relent, but she wouldn’t. She never did.

I returned to class the following Monday and, feeling embarrassed, explained to the teacher that I would not be taking pointe class. I watched sadly and enviously when, later that week, the other girls the teacher had chosen pulled their beautiful new pink satin pointe shoes out of the bags, lacing up the ankles with the satin ribbons they’d sewn on themselves (or had their mothers sewn them on?). They pressed the tips of their shoes in the rosin tray in the corner, which would keep them from slipping, and got in a line at the bar in the center of the studio to do their exercises on the tips of their toes. I felt I really ought to be with them.

I continued to work hard and improve. I was feeling more confident and dancing more fluidly. And that afternoon when Ursula and Adrienne watched us rehearse from outside the studio, they could see it, too.

On the day of the performance, the girls from class milled about getting ready backstage. Our teacher brought in the rolling rod of dance costumes, and we each gathered ours up to put on. We wore pink tulle skirts that went just below the knee and strappy bodysuits. On our heads we wore wreaths of pink flowers. With costumes on we sat about in chairs or on the floor before the mirrors, preparing for the show by putting on make-up. We helped one another with eyeshadow and blush, giggling in our excitement and nervousness.

There was a little time before the performance for me to go out and find my mother. I stepped out a side door and past the stage where performers from all over the world came to perform, people like Harry Chapin and dancers from Twyla Tharp and musicians from the New York Philharmonic. I would be on that stage in just a short time. It was scary. I searched the crowd for my mother. She had to take the Long Island Railroad out to get there and then a taxi. I hoped she hadn’t missed the train. Other young dancers and musicians were finding their families. My heart pounded loudly in my chest. I scanned the sea of people and finally spotted my mother’s bright red long hair. She was always easy to find in a crowd. I waved my arms high for her to see me, and she came walking over. I was so relieved. I would have been heartbroken if she had missed my performance.

“Dorian!” my mother said. “You have way too much make-up on.” I tend to flush when I’m excited or nervous, so my cheeks were probably already pink even without the blush I’d put on. But the pink likely became crimson at that point as the heat of shame rose from my chest up towards my face. She continued to scold me. We caught the attention of the others around us.

“You look like a clown,” she said. I wanted to explain that it was make-up for the stage. Surely she understood this, and anyway, what difference did it make? But I said nothing. It wouldn’t have done much to counter the onslaught of insults she hurled at me about how ridiculous I looked.

“You’ve got to take off that make-up.”

“But there isn’t time,” I mumbled.

I stood before her, getting smaller and smaller and redder and redder. It was like a bubble formed around us—there were only the two of us there. Nothing else mattered, not the make-up, or the stage or the costumes, or the hours of dancing I’d done each day for weeks. There was only her and me. . . then there was only her. I was gone. I didn’t exist.

Suddenly, another dancer from class brushed past me and pulled me from my trance. I ran from my mother just after I heard her say, “Dorian, you look like a whore.”

I made it into line with the other dancers off stage, one or two of them staring at me with concern.

“You okay?” one of the other girls mouthed. I nodded quickly, holding my breath and tightening my stomach muscles to keep back the tears that would emerge as I stepped onto the stage, the dance moves coming from somewhere so deep in my body’s memory I didn’t have to think about them. I’m sure that makeup ran beneath my eyes, but I doubt anyone in the audience noticed that I was crying.

About the author:

Dorian Burden was raised in New York City and worked at publications such as Working Woman and Psychology Today before becoming a New York City school teacher. She later moved to the Hudson Valley where she continued teaching middle school English and history for twenty-six years. She has had essays published in The Huffington Post, Human Parts, and Bright Flash Literary Review. She is at work on a memoir of which this essay is a part. A curated series of her essays can be found on Medium. Cover photo for this story by Pieter Pienaar on Unsplash.