I walk into my first pointe class last night with brand new, shiny shoes and no idea how to put them on. I change my clothes and start warming up bare-foot while class-mates around me don their shoes. These girls can dance circles around me on flat; I’m embarrassed to ask for help. One girl, a friend of mine, is sitting in the corner sewing on ribbons by hand.
My instructor quickly picks me out of the group and sits me down, expertly wrapping up my feet in elastic and ribbons. My new shoes are still stiff. They don’t bend with my arches and I can’t feel the floor.
Class begins. My instructor spends most of the barre exercises directly behind me, correcting and prodding. She tells me that I need to pull up through my ankles. I have a vague notion of what she’s talking about but no real frame of reference for applying it.
We begin warming up our feet and I can feel my shoes begin to bend a little where they ought to. The teacher issues the first command to rise to pointe, I relay that command to my feet, and to my surprise, they comply. This isn’t so bad. I can feel pressure in my feet that I’m not accustomed to, but no pain.
I work my way through the exercises with a death-grip on the barre, but my feet more-or-less underneath me and doing what they are supposed to be doing. When the teacher demonstrates a combination containing echappes, the color drains out of my face, but the music comes on and my feet remarkably seem to pull it off. I’m glad they know what they’re doing. When the degage combination goes on pointe, I keep up. When the instructor suggests we step away from the barre and repeat that combination, I cling to the barre with my death-grip renewed. Let’s not press our luck, shall we?
My instructor lets me do one combination in the center before stripping off my shoes and continuing on flat. It is a simple adagio and I follow along. I manage to rise and balance as instructed. I feel a little wobbly, but under control. The combination ends with bourees on pointe and I find that I can do this too. Now I peel my eyes of my shoes and venture a glance in the mirror. I think I can do this.
When class ends, a few particularly nice students ask me how my first class went. I make a comment on how much more slippery the floor feels in pointe shoes. “Ah,” says one girl. “What you do is you rip the satin of the tips and then dip them in rosin before class.” My hundred-dollar beautiful new pointe shoes? I think not. The conversation on shoe modifications floats easily into minor injuries. “I get blisters here, and here, and here,” she says, showing me red spots, as another student chimes in with her blisters. Did you see Lethal Weapon 3? That scene where they’re comparing battle scars? Yeah, like that.
So I survived my first class. I’m sure it was an easy class just for my benefit, but still, I survived it with no grievous falls and a bit of confidence that I didn’t have when it began. That’s good. My calves are sore, but my toes are fine. That’s good too.
We’ll see what next week brings.