I asked a group of young ballerinas recently, “What are some of the biggest challenges you face in ballet?” The very first dancer to raise her hand sweetly shared that her biggest challenge was dealing with being tired. Ballet is so challenging, requires so much time, energy, and effort, and quite simply, it can exhaust…
The very first miracle that Jesus performed according to Scripture sits in John 2. Tucked away in a short chapter that takes place at a wedding, it happens so fast and we’ve heard it so many times, that it almost sounds nonchalant. It wasn’t a miracle of life-saving proportions. It was a practical miracle. The…
When I was first starting out my ballet career, I studied under one of my very favorite teachers of all time, Truman Finney. His classes were so simple, yet so hard, but all in the best kind of way. We literally did the same exercises at the barre every single day for the entire year….
For dancers, the mirror is part of the gig. As I reflect back over my dancing years, I realize that it is quite normal as dancers to check ourselves in the mirror for all the wrong reasons. The mirror is there to help us correct our lines and movement, but too often, the mirror becomes a…
Throughout my dancing years, there were many days when ballet class felt monotonous. Same set of plies, same set of tendues, rond de jambes over and over and over…mirrors staring back at me, muscles unhappy with me, and my heart feeling the mundane-ness of a habit of ballet class that was not optional. Give me…
“Secure your pointe shoe ribbons”…that’s my greatest advice to ballet dancers on performance day, as well as my greatest secret weapon for a successful show. By secure, I mean sow the ribbons together at the knot with a needle and thread. I usually do three or four secure knots. Then I spray the knots with a…