Perfection is Highly Overrated

When I was five, my mother sent me to ballet class. She had always wanted to take dance lessons as a child, but for whatever reason – money – availability – I don’t know – she never did. Consequently, she was determined that I would dance. My teacher, Miss Haeusler was a former prima ballerina who had fled Hungary during World War II and for reasons I’ve forgotten landed in my small town and set up a dance school. It was located on the second floor over Newberry’s Five and Dime on Main Street. The entrance was through a nondescript, heavy door sandwiched between Newberry’s and Grant’s Department Store. You walked up the narrow staircase, down a long and narrow hallway, into a small waiting room. There were a few chairs and a low divan along with a desk where my teacher checked off attendance and accepted payments. A small dressing room with a curtained doorway opened off the waiting room to the right, and the studio was straight ahead, separated from the waiting area by a sturdy room divider. The studio had floor to ceiling mirrors on both sides of the room. Two barres were attached to each of the mirrored walls, one slightly lower than the other for shorter students. A window, too high to see out, was on the back wall, and just inside the studio, in front of the room divider, was the record player and a stool upon which Miss Haeusler perched when she wasn’t patrolling the dance floor.  The floors were gray and hard – not wood like the studios of my later dance years. Sealed cement perhaps….. 

I hated Miss Haeusler mostly because I was deathly afraid of her. I was little and shy; she was a formidable presence with a heavy accent that made her English hard for me to understand. She rarely spoke kindly to us – she barked instead, orders to do this, do that, do it better! She had a stick that she banged relentlessly on the floor in time with the music when she determined that we weren’t following it closely enough. She also banged her stick on the barre in anger when our form was not perfect or our little bodies did not yet contort in the ways that ballerina’s bodies tend to do. There were even times that her stick danced threateningly around our legs as she used it as an extension of her arms to shove our tiny feet into proper position. My goal in ballet class was to keep Miss Haeusler’s stick far, far away from my legs and to make my body move just as perfectly as possible to ensure mission accomplished.

When Tuesday late afternoon rolled around and it was time for ballet class, the tug of war with my mother began. I desperately did not want to go, and she just didn’t understand why I hated it so much. Mothers, for it was always the mothers who brought their daughters to class, were not allowed to stay and watch the class. Nor were they allowed to sit in the waiting room, listening. And for some reason, I wasn’t talking. Unable to verbalize I was afraid of Miss Haeusler and her big stick, I simply put my energies into resisting going to class. I was always relieved when sickness rendered me too ill to climb those stairs for an hour with that stick-thumping dictator.

I made it through the year of dance class, and performed in the recital. I still have the pink cotton costume my mother embellished with pink net ribbons at Ms. Haeusler’s request. I remember being on stage unafraid of the audience, as some of my classmates were.  I remembered all the steps to our “Music Box” dance and didn’t have to rely on my teacher’s cues at the foot of the stage. And afterwards my grandfather gave me a shiny fifty-cent piece as a reward. 

Like a recurring nightmare, ballet class started again in September. This time there was a new obstacle. Now our barre exercises required us to (gracefully) hoist our tiny legs up on that barre in a stretch that hurt-hurt-hurt. Once we got them up there, then the nasty business began of standing just so, pointing our toes just so, and – oh my goodness – sliding our hoisted leg even farther along the barre while bending (gracefully) forward, back straight and head moving (gracefully) downward toward the knee of our outstretched leg. Get the picture? Ouch, ouch ouch ouch ouch! And there was always the threat of that stick. Now I had a more compelling reason to hate dance class. I cried every week when it was time to don my black leotard and tights and carry my black ballet slippers out the door to the car and head toward what I considered the torture chamber.  I may have finally told her about the stick and how much my leg hurt stretched out on that barre because by Christmas time, my mother finally gave up the battle and withdrew me from the classes.

The following September, a new dance teacher, Miss Joy, came to town and opened a dance school in the basement of the Episcopal Church. My mother enrolled my sister and me in tap and ballet classes, and dance was transformed from something to be endured to an activity about which I was passionate. Miss Joy was aptly named. Together she and her congenial pianist, Miss Winnie, made dancing fun. No more barre. No more stick. No more fear.  

My love affair with dance has continued throughout my life, with multiple returns to the ballet studio and classes over the years. Two weeks ago, I started taking a zumba class. Zumba is kind of like aerobics was back in the eighties but with a distinctly Latin flavor. I have toyed with the idea of taking this class for over a year. Initially, I chickened out after watching a video of a zumba class on line and promptly determined that I would not be able to do that. Still, the need for exercise and the challenge attached to trying something new kept my mind revisiting zumba as an option. And in a moment of madness last fall, I enrolled in a class that was scheduled to commence in early January.  

The first night was exhausting. About ten of us – all middle aged white women of varied shapes and sizes – gathered in a mirrored fitness studio in the town adjacent to mine – all looking very nervous and eyeing each other uneasily. Our teacher, a tall, thin Latina woman in sweats, hair in a ponytail and a baseball cap on her head, announced that we were going to have lots of fun. For the next hour, we hardly stopped moving and the teacher never stopped calling directions and cheerleading our efforts. Grateful for my years of dance classes, my feet were somehow able to follow her steps without too much trouble and keep up, more or less. Arms? Forget it. If my arms did what they were supposed to do, my feet lost track of what they were supposed to do. Never mind about the hips. I decided that for the evening anyway, I would not sweat the arm or the hip movement.   

The second night, we had a different teacher. This one was shorter and a little fuller figured than our first teacher. She was also Latina, with very long hair tied back in a ponytail – no hat. And she declared as well how much fun we were going to have. Her method was a little less structured than the first teacher’s and she didn’t keep up a running commentary.  Whenever I thought I had the routine down enough to consider adding my arms to the mix, she would suddenly point both fingers toward her eyes, signaling to our reflections in the mirror to watch carefully because she was about to change things up. Her face looked practically blissful as she moved her body – all of it –in perfect rhythm to the music – easily and beautifully. Her midriff, from neck to hips was like – I don’t know – jello – I was mesmerized by the fluidity and grace with which she moved. I tried to deconstruct what she did. When this part of her is moving in that direction, what is the rest of her doing? I could not figure it out. During each short break, as I ran for my water, I couldn’t help laughing at myself and how ridiculous I thought I looked in the mirror as I attempted to emulate, unsuccessfully, her movements. Compared to her, my midriff looked like it was welded into one solid and rigid piece.

As the class ended, I said to one of my classmates, “I've gotta work on that hip movement. I can’t figure out how she does that.” My classmate laughed, “I was thinking the same thing. I was trying to decide what parts actually were moving, and I couldn’t.” “I don’t know,” I said. “I think I’m inherently deficient.” She laughed again, and agreed we all might be genetically flawed.

As I left the studio, I ran into the teacher. “Thanks for the class,” I said to her. "It was fun." I paused, then said, “You must go home and laugh like crazy at our efforts.”  She just smiled at me and chuckled.  I headed toward my car and suddenly, Miss Haeusler jete’d  into my brain. She would be rolling over in her grave at my loose hips efforts. I shook her memory away.

No stick. No pressure. No perfect. Just fun.