I have been thinking about how precise ballet is, right down to the position of the fingers. The head is tilted and the arms are placed just so; the feet are presented daintily. Every dancer is practicing to be precise with each movement, which takes a lot of hours and effort. Now with hindsight, decades after I chose to pursue a different career, I’ve realized that ballet is the gift that keeps giving–because that same drive to achieve precision continues to inform everything I do.
One of my dance friends says it’s always easy to pick a dancer out in a crowd. Dancers learn how to fully inhabit their bodies in a way that most people don’t. All those hours of dedicated practice learning to control every last piece of the body (including those fingertips, of course!) translates into grace for life.
While I’m grateful to have an understanding of how to move well and how to maintain fitness, precision is the thing that really pays off. I don’t think I could be a writer without it (at least not a very good one). There’s no one to tell me what to write, when to write it or if it should be burned immediately. Any amount of precision comes from within and nowhere else. This isn’t always easy. Without my years in ballet I don’t think I’d be nearly as productive or as exacting today.
So let this be a moment of gratitude to all of the teachers who have helped develop these gifts, especially the School of American Ballet‘s Mr. Richard Rapp, who taught me the proper way to hold my fingers–the final punctuation mark that completes a ballet dancer’s line.
Just like dotting my i’s and crossing my t’s.
look at those fingers!