Twinkletoes

In fulfillment of a girly childhood dream, besides everything else I've done lately I've also started a daily regimen of barré exercises for ballet, under the tutelage of divers people on YouTube. It is much easier at certain times of the day; I am far too embarrassed to want to grace my siblings with a sampling of my artistic endeavours (or catastrophes, if you will).

The first exercise is the plié. Ideally you turn your feet outward into the first position for this. I have managed to corral the feet in a straightish line after the first week of exercises; but mysteriously enough this only succeeds when I am in front of the computer and align my feet according to the seam in the floor in front of it. Therefore it seems to be my Lucky Spot.

Then you bend your knees outward and sink until you form a diamond with your legs. Then you stand up again.

According to the French etymology I should be thinking of delicately folding. As it is, I think of squatting; it is very hard to evoke poetry in motion if you are imagining Self as a supersized hen assuming the position to disgorge itself of an egg. A problem greatly exacerbated in the . . .

Grand plié. The feet are farther apart. In the video, the exercise practitioners sink so far down that their hips and upper legs form a kind of tabletop, propped up by their lower legs; I have not tried assuming this position exactly, having sworn a modified Hippocratean Oath: First, do not dislocate your limbs.

After that comes the relevé in the first position, which means standing with your feet outturned as in the plié and then rising to one's tippy-toes. This is quite easy, and still by the perversity of the exercise video I am only told to repeat it 16 times, rather than 32 times as with each previous ordeal.

Worse follows:
the arabesque extension. To begin with I consulted the mirror, to discover that — as feared — I was sticking out my leg to the rear, at ill-assorted diagonal angles which looked more similar to the efforts of an inebriate stork than to the graceful, gliding and perpendicular stance of a ballerina.

It is recommended to do this exercise in two rounds with eight repetitions per leg. Usually I settle for a single round in total; if it's worth doing well, I'd rather not do it often and poorly. I did it without a mirror for a while — nearly to weep with gratification when I revisited the mirror later and saw that, in fact, my legs had become perpendicularish after all.

In the port de bras, I ought to follow the details of the positions more closely. It embraces a fairly divers series of gestures: one stoops to the fore with hand lowered in terram, raises the hand triumphantly over one's head, throws back the head and the arm, and at last brings the arm around again and nods down the head again. When the mood of it strikes, it feels like I'm a torero or a courtier in obeisance to a dignitary — though it probably doesn't look it — and the drama is inspiriting.

***

Besides this ballet video — which is in fact simplified ballet adapted for exercise (to 'tone the legs,' says the video; sure enough, my limbs have been nearly unpleasantly tightstrung recently) — I've peeked at a handful of others.

One is by a professional dancer and celebrity trainer. She is as flexible as a willow and whose every hand and limb etc. moves precisely the way she wishes, which is intimidating, and her stretches look like the morning habits of Olympic gymnasts. I decided to try the first two stretches at a very gentle pace. Trying the second stretch for the first time, I felt as if my right leg were going to pop out of the socket. At this point of course I heeded my Oath, declaring a Truce with life and limb.

***

According to all the books I've read especially when I was little, ballet is generally quite boring for the first years; each detail is truly important so that amateurism is anathema; and after the pointe shoes are on and you are old enough to be told to starve yourself, it becomes actively disagreeable and neglibibly poetic. So experimenting with it at home, as a grown-up with a knowledge of limits, seems incomparably nicer at least in my case than joining a class as a munchkin.