“En pointe” is French for “on point”. In ballet terms, it means the actual dancing on the tips of ones toes.
I did not study dance as a child. I remember telling my mother several times that I wanted to dance. But she was a single, working Mom and only had so much time to lug me around to so many activities and back home again.
Or perhaps I just seemed content enough to dance around the house, free-form to whatever music was playing.
In school, I picked up bits of dance steps from friends who were allowed the luxury of formal classes. I still remember the week I spent agonizing over the time-step. An older girl named Mary was a trained dancer and tried to teach me and a few other girls this signature tap step.
The next day, I saw her at a play rehearsal. “Did I get it right?” I asked and did my demonstration.
“Well…no. Not quite,” she answered back. And, once again, gave me another lesson at the side of the gymnasium.
Day after day, I would find her doing homework on the gym floor and beg her for an evaluation.
“No. But it’s almost there,” she would patiently explain and try to instill the rhythm in me once again.
Finally, one day, I spotted her in the hallway on the way to a class. I dropped my books to the floor and said, “Okay----I think I got it this time.” And gave it my best shot.
“Yeah! That’s it! You did it!”
By that evening’s rehearsal, I had forgotten it again.
You would think this week-long master class to learn a simple step would have deterred me from future dance studies. But no. If anything, it taught me that I could do anything if I really set my mind to it.
Eventually, I went on to actually study dance---tho, like Zelda Fitzgerald, a bit too late in life to become a prima ballerina. But I didn’t care. I just loved to dance. Can’t say I’m the sort of person who gets up and dances at the clubs on a Saturday night. That’s mostly just young women shaking their hips in search of a mate. But pretty much any other sort of dance piqued my curiosity. I studied jazz, ballet, tap and even a bit of modern dance. I’ve also been known to do a mean
But over the past few years, with money and time at a premium in NYC---I slowly drifted away from dance classes. Even the free classes offered with my gym membership just didn’t fit in with my work schedule. I’ve had to settle for workouts at my gym with some ballet exercises at the barre in the stretch-out room beforehand.
Today, I whip out a videotape I own called “The Ballet Workout” and pop it into the machine. Within moments, I’m instantly taken away to my wonderful classes at Ballet Arts in
Ballet teaches discipline and fortitude. And being “en pointe”, a feat that seemed staggering in the beginning---eventually became a natural progression of all the hard work I’d already done.
Today, I regress to mere slippers as I attempt to re-train my body in preparation for a ballet class next week. At first, it seems sad to me that all that hard work went to waste. But as I continue dancing along to the tape, I realize two things:
First, that while going back to ballet is certainly not as easy as getting back on a bike---it’s also not as difficult as the first day I showed up at a ballet class with nothing but my socks and a dream.
Second, that while I may have lost my discipline for the dance, I’d certainly utilized that discipline in another area of my life---writing.
Though my pointe shoes may remain in the closet for a few more months, I have a trunk load of written material I need to start submitting.
I sit down at my desk, wipe the dancer’s glow from my forehead, pop open a bottle of water and begin to write some query letters.
Today, I put on my writer’s pointe shoes and make my first valiant effort in almost a year at submitting again. I put all thoughts of rejection letters out of my mind and simply focus on the position of my fingers over the keyboard. The letters come easily because I’ve already done all the work. Just like dance, I decide, it has to be a natural progression.
In one way or another, I’m determined to be “en pointe”.
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