Looking around the room, it’s clear none of us are where a younger version of ourselves wanted to be.
The club ballet audition for this semester’s performance of Sylvia—choreographed and performed by students at my university—has a bittersweet taste. The long floors of taped-on marley are topped with first- and second-year students; for many of them, it’s their first weekend away from their homes, their studios, companies, competition teams, and friends.
Typical of dancers, especially ballet dancers, the room is populated with young, lithe girls. The closer you are to your high school years—typically the period when preprofessional ballerinas are at peak technique, flexibility, stamina, and physical condition for the sport—the better you fare in a room full of barre. If you didn’t opt to go professional, become a dance major, or dedicate serious time and money to keeping up your technique on the side, each progressive year of dance brings a higher likelihood of dropping from the sport. The “second puberty” which hits early-twentysomething women rarely leaves a ballet body behind, requiring serious, sometimes dangerous effort to maintain the youthful physique required of serious ballet dancers.
I am twenty-six, and I am still here. I always end up back here.
A scan of the room conjures visions of hopes and dreams—the better you are, the more I wonder what brought you here. The University is not a dance school; it is a T20 research university who boasts the slogan, “where fun goes to die.” The dance studio is filled with chemistry, anthropology, mathematics, law and government majors. These are high-achieving, perfectionistic girls, but our strict self-scrutiny didn’t bring us to a lead role in the Joffrey Ballet’s current Atonement run. We opted for the academic over the artistic, and we ended up in the gorgeous, wood halls of the library on Friday nights instead of a smelly studio. Our presence in this audition has a lilt of, not regret, but something like that—the studio clearly drew us back in, after all.
I know the young women in this room like I know a sister. In their audition smiles I see years of ballet masters and dance teachers, reminding (yelling at) them from behind the music system to REMEMBER YOU’RE AT AN AUDITION, YOU NEED TO LOOK LIKE YOU INVENTED FUN! Every pair of juicy thighs, or big boobs, or a bubble butt has an echo of the day they realized they were given different roles, or placed further in the back, or ignored, solely because of their bodies. The swish of trash bag pants is familiar; the ritual of dominance assertion through true, trashy balletcore, an adolescent yet familiar attempt to intimidate other audition goers. Their buns are tight, their breasts small, their asses flat, and their pink tights freshly washed. I wonder how many Friday and Saturday nights they spent in a studio, training. I wonder what they gave up to continually enter this world, with all its strict rules, conventions, artistry, and camaraderie. I wonder whose voices swirl in their heads every time they walk down the street with hunched shoulders.
I threw away most of my ballet tights a few years back. They had turned from pink into a greenish white, with almost purple marks where each foot had been—a typical deterioration after too many uses. I had no use for them, anymore; I was still dancing, but after undergrad (and after the initial COVID-19 lockdown) I wanted something more expressive and forgiving than classical ballet. I needed to be honest with myself, I would think. I always start looking at the clock around frappes. I always used to get so bored in ballet. I don’t want to pay to do that. For the first time in all my years of life, I did not need a section for ballet tights and leotards in my drawer. I did not need to keep my nails short-clipped and polish-free. I did not need to make sure my jewelry was easily removable before class. I did not need to make sure my hair was long enough to be in a bun. I was free—it was both self-affirming and self-isolating to sever myself from what was, truly, my first love.
These girls haven’t yet had that moment. The rhythm of school-to-dance-to-homework-to-sleep hasn’t yet been broken; like myself at 18 (and now, at 26), succeeding in school and succeeding in dance go together. Back to school season brings audition season, and winter brings Nutcracker season, and Spring brings character dance season, and so on and so forth. Ballet is still a part of the rhythm of their life, and every beautifully pointed toe, or exaggeratedly delicious a paul mon, or symmetrical pique arabesque makes me wonder whether they always wanted to live to that rhythm. To dance through life to it, of course, but also to be known for dancing through it.
I want to ask every one of them: Does the vying for the role of Sylvia, the nymph lead, feel like enough, or are you secretly counting in your head how many seasons you have left? How are your knees, your back, your hips, your feet, your shoulders? What was your big injury? What was your big heartbreak? When did you realize you could never be a dancer for real? Do you regret it? Are you scared of not dancing in the future? Do you want to know what it’s like?
You already know what it’s like. I’m right back here, next to you.
Auditioning.
The description of that room and the girls in there... Wow!!
The timing of this piece couldn't have been better! I've recently gone back to ballet classes at the age of 27 after a decade away from it but haven't met anyone else in the same situation. When you wrote about that second puberty, I felt that in my bones for real (my new teacher keeps telling me not to stick my butt out but I'm pretty sure that's just...where my butt exists now...) - anyway loved this piece! You describe the audition room so well🥲