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