T

he day after Thanksgiving my 
senior year of high school, I board-
ed a 15-hour flight from San Fran-
cisco to Sydney, Australia. On my shoulder I 
carried a pink Adidas sports bag with eight 
carefully folded leotards, four pairs of satin 
pointe shoes, and a metal container full of 
bobby pins. In my left hand I held the top of 
a suit bag — borrowed from my dad — where 
I’d hung a sparkling white costume dress that 
would inevitably shed glitter everywhere. 
Around me, passengers shoved duffel bags 
into overhead bins as they squeezed into their 
spots for the impending journey. 
I remember looking around the plane and 
wondering what everyone’s story was. I won-
dered if anyone else was on their way to fulfill 
a lifelong dream. Had anyone else spent their 
childhood inside a ballet studio? I wiggled my 
toes in my sneakers. The edge of a bruised toe-
nail — collateral damage from a pointe shoe 
earlier that week — twinged in pain. I ignored 
it. I was too excited. 
I was on my way to the Geneé International 
Ballet Competition, an event which served as 
the capstone of my 16-year-long relationship 
with classical ballet. 
My mom started me in ballet shortly after 
my third birthday. I don’t remember asking 
her for lessons nor do I recall falling in love 
after my first trip to the studio. But over the 
course of the following decade, ballet would 
become my closest friend. I spent hours in 
the studio learning how to mold my grow-
ing body into the shapes, positions and lines 
required of classical technique. I fell in love 
with leotards and drooled over satin shoes. I 
learned how to make my hair into a bun that 
would stay back even during the fastest turns. 
I sacrificed sleepovers and sports games to 
perfect my pointed feet. The exacting nature 
of classical technique fed my eager work ethic 
unlike anything else my young self knew, and 
the focus it required gave me direction when 
I didn’t know where else to look. 
Despite that direction, I knew from an 
early age that I wasn’t going to be a profes-
sional ballerina. I was too tall and I wanted 
to go to college – two barriers in the world of 
classical ballet. This decision, however, did 
not stop me from wanting to get as close as I 
possibly could to those professional dreams. 
The Geneé is a competition sponsored by the 
Royal Academy of Dance, designed for the 
best ballet students across the globe. I was a 
sophomore in high school when I decided I 
had a shot. It would be over a year until I even 
qualified. The day that I found out, I sat in the 
car next to my brother and cried ugly tears of 
joy. 
Today, the pictures I have of me onstage 
seem like they come from a dream. Dressed 

in a simple leotard and tights with the num-
ber 54 pinned to my front, I am a facade of 
clam set against an imposing black stage. My 
face hides its nerves behind an expression 
of rehearsed serenity and a layer of heavy 
makeup that I’d applied in an underground 
dressing room. When I came offstage after 
my second solo, there was an email waiting 
for me from one of my teachers telling me how 
proud she was. Her kind words were reward 
enough for me. 
As we boarded the bus back to the hotel 
the last night, all 80 of us began to sing “Let it 
Go” from “Frozen.” Even the girls who didn’t 
speak English knew the words. We smiled 
and laughed and screamed the words in uni-
son. Many of my new acquaintances had been 
offered scholarships to professional-track 
academies and others would go on to be danc-
ers at world-renowned companies. The level 
of talent in that vehicle was unimaginable, but 
for that short moment we all existed together 
in one crazy obsession with a children’s song. 
 
My flight back to the U.S. was delayed, 
and by the time the wheels hit the ground I 
was ready to crawl into bed and sleep for a 
long time. When I woke up, I let it all set in: 
the competition, the training, the lifetime of 
hours. I’d accomplished my goal, so when I 
graduated high school the following spring, I 
put my leotards in a box at the bottom of my 
closet.
After almost two decades of tunnel-
visioned dedication, I freed myself for other 
things. Ballet could be one of them, but it 
wasn’t going to be the only one. 
In this spirit, I darted in and out of the bal-
let classes I could find in college. But the fur-
ther removed I became from my time onstage 
at Geneé, the more my muscles began to for-
get their training. The strength and control 
I’d once maintained through hours of daily 
classes began to dissolve. When I looked in 
the mirror at the front of the ballet studio, I 
saw only a shadow of the dancer I used to be. 
Ballet class became something to fear. 
What would upset me today? Which body part 
would fail me? Would this leotard still look as 
good as it used to? I allowed the voice in the 
back of my head to tell me that my changing 
body was a representation of failure — that 
my decreasing flexibility was a sign of my own 
lack of discipline. Ballet is a visual art. I spent 
years learning how to move my body in order 
to make the unnatural look natural. As my 
strength atrophied, I no longer looked like the 
sum of that knowledge. Brick by emotionally-
taxing brick, I built a wall between body and 
mind that left me blind on where to turn next. 
Last summer I caught in the midst of one 
of these arguments, upset with myself over 
my decreasing range of motion, I decided I 

needed a new coping mechanism. Fighting 
dancing with dancing wasn’t cutting it any-
more and the mirror wasn’t getting any nicer. 
I sat on my bed with my computer and 
thought about all the balletic knowledge I’d 
gained in the last two decades. I wondered if I 
would ever find a use for it. 
On a whim, I started to write. My fingers 
clicked across the loud laptop keyboard as I 
wrote about my favorite steps and the secrets 
I knew about them. I explained why certain 
things look easy but are actually hard and I 
wrote about the dance history I’d learned 
from years of watching grainy YouTube 
videos of famous stars from decades 
ago. I explained why I loved my favor-
ite ballets (Swan Lake, anyone?) and I 
tried to articulate what made them so 
important. 
Before starting to write, I had 
never given myself the authority to 
embrace all that knowledge, tell-
ing myself that I had to have 
made it professionally to 
have some sort of opin-
ion. When it dawned on 
me that this was stupid, I 
basked in the confidence I 
got in return. As I strung 
words together on a page, 
I became free of the physi-
cal limitations of my body. 
On paper, I was as malleable 
and flexible and strong as I 
wished I could be in the 
mirror. I was free to move 
— to fly — without chal-
lenge or pain. 
Upon making this dis-
covery, I have since sat 
on couches and coffee 
shops, sometimes at 
odd hours of the night, 
figuring out how to 
tell others why all 
this means so much 
to me. And as I slowly 
explain to the world 
what I love about bal-
let, I remind the voice 
in the back of my head 
that she loves it too. 
The system is not perfect. 
The mirror still isn’t always kind and the 
writing doesn’t always flow (writing this 
piece, in fact, involved a substantial amount 
of pacing and complaining). Despite the occa-
sional curse word muttered under my breath, 
however, this intermingling of expression 
— of writing and of dancing — gives me the 
peace of mind that allows me to do both with 
pride.

Wednesday, November 13, 2019 // The Statement
6B
A pointe shoe and a pencil: How a 
dancer learned to use her words

BY ZOE PHILLIPS, STATEMENT CONTRIBUTOR

ILLUSTRATION BY CHRISTINE JEGARL

