Ballet
A profile on Bluegrass Youth Ballet for Business Lexington.
There are so many arts programs and organizations in Lexington, Kentucky. So utterly fabulous. Bluegrass Youth Ballet is one of them, and I had a chance to interview founder and director Adalhi Aranda.
We communicated via email, back and forth a couple of times. I can only assume she is as lovely in person as her written tone indicated. And, you know, high standards, artistic integrity, and all that goes along with being a consummate professional.
I still cringe and twinge a little bit when I hear the word ballet, due to a childhood . . . is there a word between drama and trauma? if so, insert it here. By eight years old, I had a good four years of wanting to be a ballerina and a firefighter. I was already a veteran piano student and was ready to take on other art forms. Like ballet.
Except, I was a fat kid with no discernible hand-eye coordination and lived in a Southern Baptist household. So, no dancing. Dancing is the gateway drug that leads to all the other gateways.
But I begged and begged, and my mom went against my dad’s forbiddance (forbid WHAT? forbid DANCE!) and bought me a black leotard, pale pink tights, and slightly darker pink ballet shoes at a boutique that sold such things. I felt like a princess.
Then I took a ballet class. It was in a conservatory: an old building with a steep staircase that creaked and a brass handrail too high for me to grab comfortably. The ceilings were high and the walls had that awful institutional mint-green paint. The performance hall had the best acoustics imaginable, even when elementary students made lots and lots of mistakes on the grand piano. Hey, it was a lot more intimidating than the old upright in the tiny practice room, okay?
Every week when I went in for my piano lesson, I would stand at the door to the ballet studio and watch the real ballerinas. The room was magical and light-filled. The artists themselves floated and fluttered in tutus on toes.
My own first day of class was either my last or second to last — I tend to block out details when they’re not associated with fun memories — because my dad really put his foot down afterward and no more dancing lessons for me. But there were 10 or 12 of us in the studio that day, turned out in our brand-new leotards, ready to become dancing princesses.
Lordamercy, it was so much harder than the real dancers made it look. First position . . . do what? Second . . . oh hang on, this is easier. Third position . . . and, I’m out.
As I recall, the instructor had me in the back of the room and tried to ignore me. As one does a beached whale or something. The other kids and their moms (before and after class) kept away from me too, for fear of being contagious, I guess.
The lasting memory I have from that day is of standing there, BEING there, in a room for art and beauty and hope. I didn’t belong, at least in that particular form, but for an hour I got to try it.
Read the article about Bluegrass Youth Ballet online:
https://smileypete.com/business/bluegrass-youth-ballet/