Radically Re-Inventing Yourself in Midlife - The Ultimate Gift of Adult Ballet?

Always start something. Here, for the first time trying Character Dance barre exercises from YouTube as a preparation for my upcoming audition! Note that even the shoes are improvised (I am using my old Latin ballroom dance shoes) :), and I don’t have a Character skirt. But who cares as long as I am giving it my best shot!

Can ballet radically change you and your life - to the point where at or past middle-life, you start to look different, behave differently, embark on new career paths, make money they way you love it, and generally wake up with a renewed sense of purpose?

As I am days before my audition for the Teacher Training Program at Canada’s National Ballet School, I have started wondering about that a lot.

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The audition for a super prestigeous ballet teaching education is sort of a culmination of all the unexpected and radical turns that my life took since I started ballet from scratch eight years ago, at age 37. Back then, I was far from the typical ballerina persona: I had been in “tough“ sports all my life (hockey, long-distance running, heavy weight lifting, all the team and racket sports that you can think of); I am tall; I didn’t qualify as “pretty” or “graceful” or overly flexible, or in any other way as talented. “Plain” nailed it more for me, especially when it came to dance or any other aesthetic movement forms. Ballet was also not some unfulfilled childhood dream. I was not even that much into arts in general - I grew up with a scientific mind, and eventually got a university degree in physics.

Over the course of my life until then, I had developed a concept of myself as a hard-working, rational, and physically unrefined woman with a somewhat male energy - far from the divine qualities of a graceful ballerina. And everything I did - whether professionally, or leisurely, would sort of re-confirm that concept: Which jobs I picked, which sports I played, how I approached lifes’s problems, even how I acted in relationships with others.

And that’s how life works right? You grow up, you develop a personality and beliefs about yourself; you pick an interest and get a degree in it; then you start working in your area of training; you pick hobbies that are in line with your qualities; you develop friendships and relationships that confirm who you are. And then you just keep being that person and keep doing those things and hang out with the same type of people, indefinitely. Everything stays pretty close to that initial trajectory you picked around that initial concept of yourself that you had.

Also, how you perceive your body is a big part of that. The experiences you have and the messages you get during childhood and adolescence form your physical identity and your self-beliefs about what your body is like: Whether you think it’s strong - or frail; whether you believe it’s talented/coordinated - or clumsy; whether you consider yourself a back pain person - or generally free of ailments; whether you can get it into a front split - or not even touching your toes, no matter how hard you work at; whether you age healthy - or deteriorate quickly. All these aspects are not some sort of inborn qualities - they are ideas about ourselves that solidify with time.

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So when I stepped into a ballet class for the very first time - it felt like two diametrically opposing worlds clashed in a powerful big bang. It felt like I had slipped into a parallel universe where I was invited to break with everything I knew and believed about myself. Surprisingly, it didn’t feel alien - it felt like coming home. It felt liberating to not only have to be that rational/though sports/tom boy persona any more - I suddenly had permission to be someone more ethereal. It didn’t feel forced at all. In fact it felt less like becoming someone else - and more like releasing someone else who had been waiting for that release since ages ago.

That initial feeling of permission and release would have a huge impact on my life. Over the past eight years, my life has changed considerably to something more true and real for me.

Physically: I turned from a heavy work horse - into a much lighter and supple version of a horse (not sure if I would see myself as a “horse”, but hey, for the sake of the metaphor :-D). You can literally see it. Even though I was never much of a bulky and muscular person, I was very proud and identified with every muscle bulge I could grow. I equated muscle mass with strength and resilience, and my way was to muscle through everything. Ballet has shaved off lots of the superficial muscle volume and taught me that power and strength come from movement quality, from muscle efficiency rather than from muscle size. My posture changed, to the point where people started commenting on it.

My approach to life changed. “Muscling through” did not only apply to my physical activities - it was an attitude that guided so many areas in my everyday life: How I approached work, how I dealt with conflicts and challenges, how I parented, and how I chose what I did minute to minute. Ballet taught me that there is another way: That you can be powerful and effective, while staying calm and graceful. I became more targeted in my actions, started to pick my battles more carefully, and turned inwards more consistently, instead of looking to others and outside circumstances. It is way less perfect than I make it sound, haha but there is a trend :-D

I even left the city that I had a half-hearted relationship with, and moved to another continent. While that wasn’t initially planned nor connected to ballet, it was a result of graceful discernment of what was truly important to me, and what environment I wanted to be in. And it did create tons of ballet-related learning and performing opportunities, as well as many wonderful connections.

The audition for a high-level ballet teacher training program feels like a culmination, a very special milestone in that development. I am essentially taking a stab at becoming a professional ballet teacher. At age 45. If all goes well, I could be going back to school full-time this fall and come out with a professional ballet teaching certificate. Even if I don’t make it into the program, it took a lot of work to even successfully make it through the first stage of the audition, and the whole application process has given me more clarity about what I want. And no, it’s not about the piece of paper - it’s about the desire to learn in a professional environment and the commitment to create excellent learning opportunities for adult ballet starters.

It’s been a long way from the clumsy work horse physicist, and the absolute ballet beginner student - to this. To the person that is not so concerned with status, job positions and career steps any more, but is aspiring to make her livelihood from teaching ballet.

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I am telling this story because there is so much fear in our world, in our society, to re-invent yourself radically at a later age. Especially if that reinvention involves your body and your physical performance and appearance. Women past 40 are expected to be on a downward path when it comes to their body, and better not draw too much attention to their apperance any more; and particularly not suddenly start learning and teaching ballet. Someone who aspires, enjoys, and seriously invests in this radical reinvention is often judged as flaky, irresponsible, not serious enough, and not a proper contributor to society. Those judgements and stigmas keep us locked tightly in semi-happy lives and deteriorating mental and physical health. They make us believe that radical re-invention is a frivolous luxury for ungrateful middle-aged women that are unwilling to commit.

So let’s set this straight: Re-inventing yourself and your life, turning towards what you really want even if you’re “old” - is NOT a luxury.

It is a necessity.

It keeps us not only alive - it enables us to live our best life. It’s a skill that can take our life from exhaustion to finally getting on track. And THAT will bring out the best in us - for our sake, and for the sake of the whole world.

Ballet, taken up late in life, certainly doesn’t solve all the problems. In fact it comes with its own baggage. But for some of us, it can be a powerful vehicle to the opposite of who we thought we had to be. It can open us to qualities in ourselves that we never knew we had. It can point to professional paths that we never expected to be available to us. It can help us build a body that we didn’t think we could have at our age.

If ballet helps us to radically redefine who we are, something incredibly freeing becomes available to us. So let’s take it and make something good with it 💜

I have tried time and again to keep ballet as a casual love affair - but it always wanted a serious relationship :-D While in the first years, it was all about moving up class levels and performing, I now feel very passionate about teaching and paying forward what I have received from countless wonderful ballet teachers over the years. What about you - what’s the status of your relationship with ballet? Fling? Until death do us part? “It’s complicated”? :-)