Back to Ballet with a Bang: Class with Peter Boal
At age 16, my hips shattered along with my lifelong dream of becoming a professional ballet dancer. After a yearlong recovery from a reconstructive periacetabular osteotomy surgery, I timidly made my way back to ballet class as a freshman Dance minor at Gonzaga University in 2016. By the last show in the run of university’s annual Spring Dance Concert that year, I had aggravated the cracked sesamoid bone in the ball of my right foot, which I had discovered shortly after my hip surgery. Since learning that completely removing the bone would prevent me from ever dancing again, I had survived on cortisone shots and prayers up until this point. Breathing heavily backstage following our seven minute cardio intensive piece with the screams of my sesamoid bones radiating into my shins, I felt like an eighty year old woman in a seventeen year old’s body. It was then that I told myself I couldn’t do ballet anymore. Since I had chosen college over a ballet company, my ability to walk to class was decidedly more important at the moment. The next year, I enrolled in Modern I and began my journey of abandoning my ballet elitist, perfectionist mindset for a more mature, relaxed perspective as I allowed myself to stumble happily through my exploration of different dance styles. Yet it seemed like ballet never left me. The world became my ballet studio: I did grand allegro down grocery aisles, struggled to keep my legs from turning out in yoga class, walked toe-heel down steep hiking trails, and would sneak the occasional out-of-practice pirouette on my slick bathroom floor. Even in contemporary choreography class, my peers would comment that my inner “ballerina” was showing despite my efforts to adapt classical ballet steps into something more accessible and innovative. My body and soul knew that I wanted to return to my beloved ballet before my mind ever realized that doing so would be possible. The latter occurred when I received an exciting email from my former ballet professor over winter break inviting me to take a free master class with none other than Pacific Northwest Ballet’s Artistic Director Peter Boal, who would be on Gonzaga’s campus to audition younger dancers for the company’s annual summer intensive. As a little aspiring ballerina who had pored over every single Pointe Magazine at least twice, I was quite familiar with Boal’s high-caliber career and could not resist taking part in such a unique and wonderful opportunity to represent the Gonzaga Dance Program. I responded, “I have not done ballet in two and a half years but might as well start with a bang, right?” and quickly shut my laptop, falling back onto my bed in disbelief.
Cupid solo from Don Quixote at Scripps Performing Arts Academy end of summer intensive performance 2013. Photo by Miah Nwosu
The day had finally arrived. Do I even still have tights? I wondered as I rolled out of bed, crossing my fingers as I peered into my dresser. I sighed in relief as I discovered that not only did I have pink ballet tights, I even remembered to stuff my grungy ballet slippers into my suitcase to travel back to Spokane from winter break just in case. However, one of the stretched-out elastics was hanging on by a single thread, thus requiring me to whip out the little pink sewing kit that was lodged at the bottom of my ballet bag for years in case of a shoe or wardrobe emergency. Even though it sat unused in various dorms throughout the past four years, its presence was comforting and conjured nostalgic images of my teenage self whiling away the hours sewing the ribbons on my pointe shoes and soaking in as many ballet documentaries, video clips, podcasts, interviews, as my ballet-obsessed brain could hold. And here I was, finally using the sewing kit during my last semester of college.
I then decided to start on my bun, allowing ample time for a treasure hunt digging for bobby pins and a hairnet before wrestling my now-shorter hair into a decent, slicked back, high(ish) hairball. Surprisingly, my hands remembered what used to be a daily routine: smooth hair into a fire hazardous, rock-hard ponytail with at least half a can of hairspray, split the ponytail in two, start twisting half and pin down the partial coil, repeat on the other side, continue until there is no more hair, double up the hairnet, pin down, garnish with flowers to make the teacher remember you, and do the final headshake. I smiled triumphantly, emerging from the bathroom with a smooth, flat bun (yes, I said flat! Don’t get me started on how wrong bulbous buns crafted with those foamy donut things are).
Summer intensive audition arabesque photo 2013. Photo by Miah Nwosu
As I wriggled into my tights and pulled on the leotard that (thankfully) still fit (save the chest area), I could not help but notice I had woken up particularly bloated. Gazing into the mirror, I saw my old critical self staring disdainfully back at me. I wanted to hug her tight and tell her that she is so strong for dealing with daily worry over largely uncontrollable, natural bodily processes in a (mostly) healthy way. With the new eyes I developed in my years away from ballet, I regarded my reflection with compassion. From surgery, to gallbladder disease, to sexual assault, to mold poisoning, to candida and beyond, this body had gone through so much in my college years and emerged scarred but even more beautiful. Once in the studio, I removed my snow-soaked sweatsuit, put on my slippers and wrap skirt, and turned around to face the large studio mirror. My jaw dropped and my eyes filled with happy tears. Looking back at me was my true, authentic, unapologetically balletic self.
I had arrived at the studio twenty-five minutes early, my professor’s voice echoing in my head: fifteen minutes early to ballet class is late. Surprisingly, most of my peers had already arrived to claim a spot at the barre and chit chat as they exchanged wrap skirts, various foam rollers and tennis balls, and did warm-up exercises and stretches that I had nearly forgotten about. I chuckled at my lapse in memory regarding these elements of ballet culture. Surveying the room as we awaited Boal’s appearance, I could not help but marvel at the diversity of amazing women present: to my left were my former Modern and Jazz professors, the latter of which was merely six months postpartum and killing it. To my right was a mix of peers: some were brave high school students who had heard about the class, some enroll in ballet class every semester and have professional aspirations, some are contemporary dancers that also happen to excel in ballet, and some, like me, have had a lifelong love of ballet despite sidelining injuries. If I was twelve years old auditioning for a summer intensive and awaiting Boal’s arrival, the scene would have appeared to be much different: drawing inward as I religiously completed a rigorous warm-up meticulously tailored to my needs, my anxiety would have risen as I silently sized up the competition surrounding me. Yet, here I was nine years later, chatting with my professors as I stretched lightly and took in the scene calmly.
Ballet class at Scripps Performing Arts Academy 2014. Photo by Miah Nwosu
Boal arrived humbly and we quickly got to work at the barre, although I turned around to face the barre completely starstruck and began the warm-up combination slightly dazed. Many exercises emphasizing the cross of the legs in fifth position and tendu ensued. How Balanchine of him! I thought, amused as my thighs struggled to assume a position that had once been so natural in my skinny-legged youth. Although I gripped the barre slightly tighter as my muscles searched their memories, each rapidly-demonstrated combination felt like quickly running into an old friend. I had forgotten how swiftly I used to be able to pick up complicated strings of steps and all their nuances, down to the smallest details like the tilt of the head and whether to close the leg into fifth position in the front or the back. I marveled at the sheer intelligence of ballet dancers, who train themselves to watch and execute steps with laser-like focus and precision. Engaging in this type of extreme concentration and performing with intense accuracy, a skill I had honed while preparing for summer intensive auditions, was an element of my old ballerina life that I had so desperately missed. Nonetheless, I felt the rusty gears of my mind turning slowly but surely as my feet occasionally fumbled into positions they had not assumed in quite a while. While operating with maximal mental and physical energy, however, I had apparently forgotten one of the most basic tenets of ballet hands and allowed my thumb to stick out with my arms in à la seconde, which I realized as Boal came over and discreetly moved it into the correct position in silence. My cheeks reddened and I held in a laugh as I flubbed the rest of the combination due to the fact that my attention was isolated to a single digit. Who would have known a single finger could have so much impact and capture so much focus? I pulled a School of American Ballet teaching trick that they use to teach proper hand positioning to younger dancers from the deep recesses of my memory, touched my middle fingers to my thumbs, and giggled.
The giggle was shortly followed by a gasp. After sixteen years of studying ballet, I had finally learned to laugh at myself. I was in a ballet class for the first time in years having fun, not criticizing myself. I noticed the same thing as we moved across the floor--the comforting familiarity of the steps along with the fact that my hips and feet were in minimal pain caused a huge grin to spread across my face. I, Kaylee Bosse, who used to be so serious that I would not even smile during performances until I was much older, was smiling in ballet class. That’s not to say that there weren’t happy moments during my training, and my teachers growing up were always incredibly supportive. However, six days a week for hours a day, I used to constantly stress myself out so much about honing my technique so I could capture the attention of a company to hire me, and only then I could be happy. It took up until a moment later in class as we did my favorite exercise, jumps, to unlearn all the lies I had internalized during my years of rigorous pre-professional training. As pure energy and love for my art fired every fiber of my being as I beamed and soared through the air, I finally took the oft-quoted ballet cliche to heart: it’s not about the technique or the roles at all. It’s about the serendipitous feeling you get when all your cells and bones and organs and nerves and vessels and everything in between all work together to allow you to engage in movements that result in overjoyed, unabashed abandon. I could not believe I had not allowed myself to return to ballet sooner. In a matter of an hour and a half, I saw how silly the excuses I made as to why I could not ever do ballet again were. It was almost as if I had condemned the steps themselves for the physical and psychological stresses I had suffered as a younger dancer.
Speaking of steps, Boal transformed the way I look at them, and at ballet as a whole, all in one class. In an earlier post, Taylor 2 Master Class: An Embodied Experience, I discuss viewing dance as language. Boal broadened my understanding of this concept during petit allegro, when he likened dance to sign language--both are a means of expressing oneself without words. He then urged us to find our own way of signing, “hello, my name is [Kaylee]” through our movements, whether that be with a beckoning of the hand or a sudden reveal of one’s smiling face accompanied by a sharp tendu. I enjoyed Boal’s emphasis on individuality throughout class, as many dancers are taught to blend into a corps de ballet. His comments during adagio were particularly powerful. After telling us to stay rooted while undulating our upper bodies, much like a piece of seaweed, he advised us to explore our own ways of accenting the steps and moving our arms. Then came the kicker: “it would be boring if you all looked the same.” After all my years of working tirelessly in seemingly endless rehearsals to move in exact unison with my colleagues in dances like Waltz of the Snowflakes or Waltz of the Flowers in The Nutcracker, this statement hit home. Boal went on to say that although we work so hard on our legs and feet, audiences come to see YOU. This struck me as a beautiful sentiment, one that I had never thought of as a younger dancer as I used to be so nervous as to how an audience would react to my dancing, especially if it was not one hundred percent perfect. As most audience members ironically look at your face instead of your feet, Boal said, it is important to free the space around your face and show all its angles as if you were in a photoshoot. This makes the movement more personalized and interesting to watch. As a teacher, Boal really did seem to care about us as individuals, even taking the time to talk to us during stretches and ask us who our favorite choreographers were. He jokingly said, “now you have to talk to me,” which I found humorous as ballet dancers are often so quiet that they do not even respond if the teacher raises a question to the class. Boal later connected dance to another passion of mine, music, as he told us to imagine “conducting the music with your legs,” keeping them sharp and in time so that the same qualities would be reflected in the sound. I let out a satisfied sigh. Boal’s unique metaphors were so clarifying and perspective-changing.
Waltz of the Flowers Nutcracker 2015. Photo courtesy of Southern California Ballet.
All too soon, class was over. I timidly asked Boal for a picture with him, jokingly remarking, “I have to commemorate my first ballet class in two years somehow!” He looked surprised and said something I will never forget: “I can still see it in you.” This brings truth to the following statement, however cliche: “once a dancer, always a dancer.” After receiving this confirmation from a figure I truly respected, I couldn’t stop smiling. I beamed over dinner, and when I took a shower later in the evening, I was still grinning. As I roll out my sore feet and type out my thoughts, I am still so joyous. Despite the hardships I endured as a young dancer, I can now confidently say that ballet makes me happy, and I will continue to practice it. And I will never lose sight of that joy again.
PS: A huge thank you to Pam Erickson, our beloved ballet, Strategies for Dance Instruction, and Dance History professor for making this amazing experience happen!
End of master class with Peter Boal. Photo by Suzanne Ostersmith
