The first time I ever gave someone the finger
It was my ballet teacher, and I am very sorry.
I started ballet so young that I don’t remember a time when I didn’t do it. I was probably three when my parents signed me up for a local ballet school, which operated out of the home of the woman who ran it. It had just one studio, at the front of the house, with parquet floors and apricot walls. There were mirrors along one wall, and white barres along all the others.
The school had been founded the year before I was born, and still exists, Facebook informs me, but not in the location where I used to take classes. Real estate became so ludicrously expensive in that beach-side suburb that I suspect the sisters who ran the school sold the house to some very rich person, who probably turned the ballet studio into an open-plan kitchen with sleek Danish appliances and sweeping water views.
The sisters were known to us, as is still the custom in ballet, as Miss Mary and Miss Linda. They taught a form of ballet known as R.A.D., which stands for Royal Academy of Dance. It’s a curriculum set in England and taught all over the world, though it’s not the only one: some schools teach an Italian curriculum called Cecchetti, some teach a Russian syllabus called Vaganova, some teach a hodge-podge of several curricula.
The ballet school year was marked by two main events: the end of year concert around Christmas, and R.A.D. exams around Easter. Exams were essentially performances done for an audience of one. We’d spend months practicing R.A.D.-mandated exercises to R.A.D.-mandated music in the R.A.D.-mandated order, and then on the day of the exam, we’d gather at the council auditorium in our R.A.D.-mandated leotards - a different colour for each grade - and perform a ballet class for the R.A.D. examiner, who might have flown in from London to assess us. She would give each of us a grade, which decided whether or not we’d progress or be held back, and the grades reflected on the quality of our teachers and our school.
Exam season made everyone nervous. Parents were antsy about packing the right clothes, teachers assessed the cleanliness of tights and ballet slippers, and dancers, who had been preparing for this day for months, tried not to forget the steps and the order in which we were supposed to do them. We wore our hair in regular ballet buns, but with a special addition: every little girl got a little sprig of baby’s breath pinned to the side of her bun.
Here’s what I remember about the day I flipped my ballet teacher the bird. I was wearing tights and a pale pink leotard, and I’m pretty sure I had flowers in my hair. I was backstage at the local council hall, in the dark, and my teacher was yelling. I don’t remember what about. I stood in the dark behind a pillar, and I stuck up my middle finger and held my hand in her general direction.
No one saw me because again, I was in the dark, behind a pillar. I was six.
I couldn’t tell you where I learned that holding up your middle finger was something you do when someone’s pissing you off, and I remain grateful to this day that no one saw. God knows what my parents would have done, but I’m pretty sure it would have involved a spanking and the confiscation of all my plastic Fisher Price cassette player and Nutcracker cassette tapes.
Still, if by some chance you read this, Miss Mary, I’m very sorry. You were probably very stressed, mostly because you had put your professional reputation in the sweaty hands of a bunch of six-year-olds who couldn’t be trusted not to pick their wedgies in the middle of an exam (the R.A.D. frowns on both wedgies and wedgie-picking, which seems like a paradoxical position).
The certificate my mother has saved for 25 years suggests that on that day, I performed just fine. Not great, not poorly, just fine. That was the last time I ever took a ballet exam; soon after, I switched to a different school, one that didn’t have exams at all. And to this day, I dislike baby’s breath.
Dancers you should be following
Maria Khoreva is an Instagram star and an actual rising star at the Mariinsky Theatre, formerly known as the Kirov Ballet. The feeder school, from which Khoreva recently graduated, is called the Vaganova Academy, birthplace of the aforementioned Vaganova method. Like many dancers with substantial social media followings, she has an endorsement deal with a sports brand (Nike) as well as a dancewear brand, and like many dancers, she seems to view vacations largely as a chance to take photos of leaps and arabesques in picturesque places (same, Maria, same).
Talk to me!
If you’re a ballet teacher or a ballet parent, I’d like to interview you for this book. Whether your ballet student is in Baby Ballerinas or pre-professional, I want to talk. Ballet dads are very welcome. If you’re interested, you can reply to this email, or tell me a bit about yourself at turningpointebook@gmail.com.
And if you know anyone who might be interested in speaking with me, please don’t hesitate to forward this along to them.
That’s it from me. Thanks for reading, have a good week, and please don’t flip off your ballet teachers.