Pliés have become squats that last six minutes; arabesques have mutated into glute torture
I was prepared to give the world of ballet one more shot, more for its sake than mine. This pointy-toe stuff will do nothing for my core strength, I thought, but I have been unfair about its core, a discipline before mindfulness, what we once called concentration. Plus, Define is a ballet class with a difference: it promises you’ll add two inches to yourself, though I didn’t think that through, just assumed “add” was a misprint of “lose”.
I should have realised something was up when we started the class with jumping jacks. Inelegant, boisterous and extremely hard, these feature nowhere in my understanding of the genre, and nor did anything else. What’s happened here, people, is that an ex-dancer, who is also a New York badass – Ashley Verma – has identified everything related to a barre that might slightly hurt, and exaggerated it wildly to make it hurt more. Pliés have become squats that last six minutes; arabesques have mutated into glute torture. In regular ballet, the barre offers just the suggestion of support, a thing upon which gracefully to rest your hand, like touching the back of a chaise longue as you make a witty remark while smoking. In this kind of ballet, you grip it with both hands and hang on for dear life, as ridiculous demands are made of your flexibility and muscle tone. Whatever circle my active leg was turning, my supporting leg was usually shaking like a leaf.
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