The Reinvention Continues: Ballet Conditioning

As if becoming unlapsed and joining the church choir weren’t enough, last Saturday I signed up for a Ballet Conditioning class at my local park—just minutes before it began at 9:30 am. (I suppose the fact that I was even up and out of the house at that hour is reinvention enough.)

I’d found out about the 10-week series a week earlier—right before the first class started in the park’s field house. I wander in there regularly to look at fliers for upcoming musical events and classes at the park. But never in my wildest have I ever considered a dance class.

Except that I guess I did.

And mostly because the instructor told me that only the first hour of the 2-hour session is the conditioning; the second is the ballet part. Well, except, as the class is described on the Park District’s website, the conditioning is based on ballet techniques. Here’s my favorite part of that description, with its grand promise of things to come: “This fitness class will help shape the body like a ballet dancer.”

OK, please hold that image in your head for a few minutes: my 73 year-old crinkly and shrinking body being transformed into that of a tall, taut, slender ballet dancer. Yee-haw. When that happens—only eight short weeks from now—I will run out and buy ballet slippers, maybe even a darn tutu.

For now, though, I’m hoping I’ll learn how to uncramp my quadriceps during some of the conditioning exercises. If not, the eagerly anticipated ballet dancer body may take a bit longer to materialize.