My first love and why we broke up

When I was 10 or 11 years old I came across a video on Instagram of a ballet dancer trying on her pointe shoes for the first time in years. She was a beautiful dancer. She had perfect legs and lines, perfect turnout. She seemed like the epitome of a ballerina.  Why would she ever stop dancing, is what I wondered. I remember thinking how this would never in a million years, be me. Ballet consumed my entire life. I couldn’t imagine life without it. 

I woke up every morning before school at 5am for the sole reason of doing at least 2 hours of ballet practice. I basically ran through a whole class in my room by myself before getting ready for school. Followed by a full body stretch and strengthening workout. Then after school I would come home, get ready for ballet, do another full body stretch before leaving and dancing for 3 or 4 hours and then come home at 11pm ready to do it all again the next day. This was my life 7 days a week. On the weekends, I would spend my Saturdays in class from 11am until 6pm and on Sundays I would start the day at a ballet associate program I was accepted into then head into central London to take commercial classes until the evening. I was non-stop. 

I never quit ballet. I finished all of my grades under the Royal Academy of Dance and I finished with a high merit grade. At this point, I was recovering from a major surgery and the effect of that was losing the passion for the art. My reasoning for stopping ballet was kind of a series of unfortunate events if you will. 

   

When I was 12, I was accepted into the Central School of Ballet, which is a prestigious associate program. I was absolutely buzzing. I had auditioned a few years back and not made the cut so when I got into the school I felt as though all the early mornings and late nights were finally paying off.  At the time, it was covid. So I started my journey with CSB over zoom.  After my first year of training, I finally got to go to the studios for the first time. When I got into Central, my intention was to stay there for further studies, after I had finished my GCSE’s. But it didn’t quite work out that way, and looking back now I am thankful that it didn’t. 

 

At Central there were yearly assessments to see if you were still suited to stay in the program. I thought that was always quite harsh but I understood why they had to do it. My third assessment at the school came around and it didn’t go so well for me. I already knew that there was a small tumour in my knee which was causing me a lot of pain and I had just sprained my ankle a few weeks before during a combo on pointe, where I lost my balance and my ankle gave in. So it already wasn’t looking good for me. I was asked to re-audition. I think there were two other girls from my class who were also asked to re-audition. But it was still quite heartbreaking for me, watching all my friends be excited about moving up a class and I felt like I had been made to start again. After the audition, I didn’t hear anything for a few weeks. So I still went to class and  saw all my friends who were moving up. I had no idea where I stood in the program. Then one morning I got a call. I was told that I was no longer fit for the program. I was told that my body just wasn’t the right fit for a ballet dancer. I was heartbroken. I was down for weeks. It felt like all my dreams were crushed and all those years working to have the best possible abilities were wasted. I had to pick myself up and keep training because I wasn’t going to let that stop me from becoming the best dancer I could be. Regardless of if anyone thought my body was right for it or not. 

When I think back to this time, I remember shortly before this in 2019 I was training under Dexter Carr in LA for commercial and hip hop and he told me to complete my ballet training as it is such a strength as a dancer of any style. That stayed with me through times like these. 

After leaving Central, the pain in my knee grew more and more everyday. So much so we had to arrange an emergency appointment to see what was happening. Which is when I found out that a week later I would be getting surgery to have a tumour removed from my knee. As someone who has never been injured to that extent, this was beyond scary for me. We didn’t know if the tumour was cancerous or not and we certainly didn’t know how big it was. Luckily, it wasn’t cancerous which they found out when they took it out. I am grateful for that everyday. But it was a lot bigger than they thought it would be. Let me put it this way, it was supposed to be a keyhole surgery that would take a maximum of an hour. I ended up being under for 8 hours and left with a 10 cm scar on my left leg. I also have no feeling where the tumour was because my nerves were damaged in the surgery. I then had to be on crutches for three months and couldn't dance properly for around six. I was in the worst pain I have ever been in in my life. 

Despite not being able to dance and having to hobble around in crutches for months, I still attended class. Every night. Just to watch and take notes for when I was able to dance again. Then when I finally could dance again, I was nowhere near the level I used to be. I am not a naturally flexible person at all and I worked for years to become as flexible as I was. Six months of not stretching and training literally took me all the way back to square one. I am still not back to how I used to be despite stretching everyday and working really hard to gain it all back. This was heartbreaking for me and it felt like my body was doing a disservice to me because I knew what I was once able to do and my body just wouldn’t let me do it anymore. I would be in class holding tears back because I just couldn’t do certain things. It drained the life out of me and made me lose all the passion I had for ballet. 

Now, I am actually grateful that things took a turn because otherwise I wouldn’t be where I am today. Well, I think I would've always gone down this root as being an artist  was in my heart from birth but I think it would've looked very different if I had gone to ballet school and tried to pursue that career as well. I’m a firm believer in everything happening for a reason and I’m very happy that I am where I am today which is partly because I was redirected from what I thought I wanted. 

Back to where I started, as I watched that ballet dancer picking up her pointe shoes for the first time in years, and thinking to myself that there is no way that that would ever be me, I now find myself being that person. For three years my pointe shoes have been nothing but decoration on my wall. But I have been finding myself recently wanting to get back into ballet. Not to train professionally of course but just to reteach my body to move in that way. I was at my strongest when I was doing ballet because it requires so much from your body and I would love to get back to that. Ballet was my first love and I think I owe it to my younger self to start training again and move my body in the way that it was intended to.