The art of teaching ballet.

It may have gone unmentioned, but since February I have been teaching a ballet class in Payson. In my desperate search for a job {any job really} I came across an ad on Craigslist for a ballet teacher. The offer seemed a bit out of the ordinary and when I actually got the job merely by sending in a resume without ever having met the owner, seeing the studio, or knowing very many particulars, I was convinced that I had just signed on with a murderer. As all scams on Craigslist are run by murderers.

On a blustery February morning, I packed my dance bag, an iPod full of classical music, and myself into my car and drove through the wind and fog to Payson, hoping first that I would come back alive and second that I would know how to teach a ballet class. I arrived at a house that had children and pets spilling out of it. And then my prayers for safety and help tripled. Then I was shown down a tight staircase to the basement where the dance studio resided. I never could have been prepared for what I found there. A room of dead bodies would have been less shocking {I was expecting that}. But I was shown an inconceivably tiny space with a plush carpeted floor, a makeshift barre, and grimy mirrors shoddily tacked to the wall. This could not be the dance studio. Oh, but it was.

All my days of dance could not have prepared me for the shock of that room. I always thought that the studio where I had learned ballet was small, but comparatively it could not hold a candle to the closet I was now expected to teach in. I added a prayer for sanity for good measure.

The first couple of weeks were daunting. I was convinced that the task at hand was impossible. Ballet should never be done on carpet, and one cannot teach undisciplined girls to dance when they have a one square foot of space in which to turn and leap. Nevertheless, we pressed forwards and eventually a laminate floor was placed on top of the carpet {which gave the floor a curious spring} and the dancing progressed.

Though when I started, I had no positive outlook on the situation, and the pay only sufficiently covered my gas costs. But by the end, it was one of those radical experiences that only a life like mine could produce. Only someone such as myself {desperate for money and unable to say "no" to anyone}would have seen this job through. Radical though it may have been, it gave me perspective.

1. I owe a lot to my first ballet teacher, Joelle. She put up with so many shenanigans. She could have every reason to hate my guts for being so stubborn all the time, but to this day she is one of the people I look forward to seeing the most when I visit home. The lessons {both concerning ballet and life}she taught me are invaluable.

2. I had almost forgotten, but dancing is one of my life's greatest passions. Teaching brought that back, and now I don't know why I ever stopped in the first place.

3. Maybe that dream to own my own dance studio is not as unattainable as I had previously thought.