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Guys who started dance study as 'creaky' adults speak out! I'm looking for new stories. If you have one to tell, please e-mail me.

The Women's Page
Tales from the adult dance student avant garde

40+ Married Couple Brave Ballet Together
My name is Elizabeth, and I've been studying ballet since I was 44. I did Scottish dancing in high school, so at least when I started taking ballet classes I could point my feet and stand up straight.

My husband and I are both scientists, so we tend to live in our heads. Ballet seemed to me like an aesthetic way to reconnect with the rest of my body. I think my husband takes classes for the challenge. He started ballet when he was 47. We've been improving, but it's slow.

When I started taking classes I was so uncoordinated. My friend had to physically move my foot for me to do a frappe. The frappe neurons just weren't firing on their own. And a waltzing turn? Not a pretty sight.

At one point, or is it pointe, I thought that I would have to put away the ballet slippers because my big toes are so damaged from arthritis that they could hardly bend. I had foot surgery on the worse of the two, and now I can bend the toe about 30 degrees. The other toe bends about 40 degrees. My sous sous are not things of beauty.

However! My ballet instructor, Abra Rudisill, former prima ballerina of the Oakland Ballet, was kind enough to let me try the beginning pointe class. I am definitely the oldest at 49. Actually, I would be the oldest at 17.

But now I can do echappes and not freak from pain! And great joy, I can do a sous sous with the rest of the little girls.

What I really like about ballet is that there is always something more to learn. Even if you can't dance anymore (horrible thought), there is still learning about the history of ballet, the nuances about individual
ballets, the dancers themselves, the list goes on. And there is costuming, which if you sew, is a whole marvelous study of its own.

I plan to be the most limber old lady in the rest home.

My pointe class is now planning a recital! Another tall girl and I hold down the back row. It's a little three- minute dance to the Tritsch Tratsch Polka by Strauss. Lots of tombe pas de bourre. Wish me luck. -- Elizabeth and Gary