OK – Not all of my dance teachers were nuts, however there were quite a few who probably would have been a lot more comfortable in a padded cell rather than in a dance studio teaching a bunch of young kids. Unfortunately for the student – there’s not much you can do except endure. Ballet is a monarchy. No democratic process in this part of the world. The teacher is king and you are simply a peon waiting for your next instruction. It’s simply a prequel to your future when the artistic director of the company you work for is king and you are regrettably still a peon.
One particular teacher was a prime example. Every week the class would grind to a halt while she and the accompanist got into a lengthy and ongoing fight – about ¾ tempos. Every week she would ask for a ¾ tempo for one of her exercises, which he would play. Then she would stop him and tell him to play a proper ¾ tempo – clapping her hands and shouting out the timing to demonstrate exactly what she wanted – “One, two, three, and, one, two three, and,” (Which is a 4/4 tempo). The accompanist would scowl at her and try to explain what constitutes a ¾ tempo and what constitutes a 4/4 tempo. She never got it. He never backed down and the next week they would go through the entire routine verbatim. What could we peons do? Nothing – peons don’t correct kings.
Some teachers took a lot of joy in frightening their students. One of my teachers was a master and he had the physical attributes to back up his scare tactics. He was large man with a deep booming voice. He frightened students so much that many would begin to shake a half an hour before his class started. I could understand their fear – every one of his classes was a physical and mental survival course – demanding maximum precision and strength. His favorite saying was “It’s not that you can’t, it’s that you won’t.” Before you’d begin an exercise, he would look you straight in the eye and say, “This is it. You have to do this perfectly. If you don’t – you’re going to die. Right now. Screw up and you will drop dead.” He was also big on hitting. His favorite tactic in class was to sneak up behind you and then hit you full force on the breastbone when you weren’t expecting it. If you fell out of whatever position you were in at the time, you were thrown out of class. One day we were wrapping up an extremely arduous exercise that ending in an arabesque (standing on one leg with your other leg behind you at hip level or higher) when we heard him bark out, “Everybody down…Except you”. All of us quickly looked around to see who he was pointing at. A beautiful lithe blond girl dressed in a lime green leotard with matching flowers and ribbons in her hair. She was a student from one of the other big ballet schools in the city. He began to slowly walk circles around her as she shook from the strain of continually holding her leg up. Around and around and around. Sweat started to pour down the poor girl’s face. After two minutes (and trust me – we were watching the clock) he finally stopped in front of her. “Is that the best you can do?” he asked dripping with sarcasm. The girl was devastated. We didn’t see her again. Some of the best professional dancers in the country regularly attended his class which meant that the technical level in the room was at a premium. And I will admit that many of us reached a technical level that we had never thought possible. I do wish sometimes that we could have learned to achieve the same thing without the fear factor. While I was one of his favored students that didn’t necessarily mean that I was immune from the constant onslaught of abuse. It simply meant that I wasn’t subjected to his public and humiliating “you should think about another career” sessions.
In many professional dance schools, you can choose where you want to stand at the barre for the first part of the class, but many of the teachers assign you your centre position for the remaining portion of the class. Your center position changed daily, depending on how the teacher felt you were working on that particular day. Center positions also denoted your status in that particular class with the most favored students in the front row of the first group, next favored were in the second row of the first, next group down were in the first row of the second group, and so on and so on. One teacher would walk around the room and drag his finger across our chests. The sweatiest dancers were given the choicest positions while the poor kid who didn’t have over active sweat glands was condemned to the worst position. My usual position in most classes was the choicest of placements – front and centre of the first group. Not in one teacher’s class. In this woman’s class, at the commencement of the barre, we were to remain standing in our barre positions until she designated our center positions. Every day she would stand directly in front of me while she directed each and every student to their center position – every student except me. Then she would begin to demonstrate the first center exercise. I would heave a sigh and trudge back to the second line of the last group. I felt like the scrawny kid that no one wanted to pick for team sports in school. Actually – I was the scrawny kid that no one wanted to pick for team sports in school. But I digress. Every single day, we went through exactly the same routine. One day rather than wait for the inevitable, I started to walk to the back of the room as she was placing the other students. “Debbie,” she screamed, “What are you doing?” “I’m going to my group,” I answered. “Front and center please,” she said pointing to the first line of the first group – which became my placement for the rest of the year. Sometimes it’s best if you just don’t try to understand the minds of crazy people.
While I do understand the sentiment behind “the show must go on” – I have yet to understand how canceling one ballet class designates the end of the world. It was the middle of winter and the building’s heating system broke down. It was so cold that you could actually see your own breath. Imagine our surprise when our teacher refused to cancel the class. All of us trudged off to the dressing rooms where we bundled up in extra layers of clothing. Rather than waiting quietly in the studio for the class to begin, we were moving about – swinging our arms and bouncing on the balls of our feet – trying to get the circulation going in order to survive. The teacher walked in and immediately demanded that we remove the leg warmers, sweaters and gloves saying, “The cold is only in your mind.” – yeah, right – tell that to my frozen muscles.
Ballet teachers use a lot of imagery to get you to understand movements – Like: “brush your foot through the sand” or “imagine you are looking over a wall”. Some of it made sense but a lot of it just didn’t gel with me. While I did understand their tactics – I wasn’t overly thrilled about practicing carrying an imaginary ball for twenty minutes. I finally decided that I wasn’t “deep” enough to get this aspect of my dance training. One teacher took imagery to new heights with one particular session that still remains in my head to this day. During a series of arm exercises, the teacher began a story – “Here little bird, here little bird, fly away, fly away, now wasn’t that delightful?” My mouth dropped open and I could see the teacher staring at me – daring me to loose it and laugh – giving her a reason to throw me out of the class. Did I forget to mention that everyone in the class was over the age of seventeen? You know – now that I think about it – maybe the woman had a point. Thirty odd years after that class – I still remember the exercise. Maybe that was the point of the story?