Some people get married or start having kids when they turn 30. I started taking ballet.
Every Wednesday, I throw my dance bag in the car and drive to NW Dance Project’s studios across the street from the Franz Bakery building just off East Burnside. I pay my drop-in fee and put on pink canvas soft shoes with the rest of the ballet students while we wait for the jazz class that meets before ours to end, hearing the trippy opening bars of the Ed Sheeran song they’re dancing to booming into the lobby.
Once they’re out, we place portable barres in neat rows, and I find a place at the barre where I can see myself in the studio mirror. We’re a big, varied group of adults, representing all body types and fitness levels. We show up in running shorts and sweatpants and leggings, because while ballet is full of rules and precision, in this class, no one cares what you wear. If you’re already an adult when you start taking ballet, no one will force you to come to class in the requisite pink tights, black leotard, and perfectly bobby-pinned, hair-netted bun (although some of us do anyway).
But the differences between most ballet classes and ours go well beyond optics. Before we start our barre exercises, our teacher always begins by reminding us that our level is for people who have never taken ballet before, as if politely encouraging those with more experience to leave before it’s too late. After class one day, a fellow student, one of the only men in the class, compares it to kindergarten. He’s right. There’s nothing competitive about our class: We are here to make friends. None of us will ever progress to a career in ballet, or probably even pointe shoes for that matter, and we all know it. We’re here because, for our own individual reasons, we’ve all decided to become dancers as adults.
Welcome to the surprisingly beautiful, improbably kind world of Adult Absolute Beginner Ballet.