{"id":10585,"date":"2016-01-28T05:00:06","date_gmt":"2016-01-28T11:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/?p=10585"},"modified":"2016-01-27T16:40:07","modified_gmt":"2016-01-27T22:40:07","slug":"ballet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/?p=10585","title":{"rendered":"Ballet"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"DSC_0010\"<\/a>\"DSC_0014\"<\/a><\/p>\n

For any of you who have dance experience, don’t look too closely — my form is terrible and I don’t know what I’m doing (yet! not yet!<\/em>), but I can’t keep to myself how much joy beginning ballet as an adult has brought me. Once a week, for the past 6 months, I’ve been taking a class, a class full of other adult beginners who line up along the barre and try, smile, sometimes giggle,\u00a0but always smile<\/em> while we learn the basics.<\/p>\n

I took ballet as a little girl, but that didn’t last long, as I decided that watching Pee Wee’s Playhouse<\/em><\/a> on Saturday mornings with my brother and sister was much higher on my priority list (obviously<\/em>) than working hard at this beautiful, graceful dance. As a high school student, I ran into my childhood ballet teacher and she tried to convince me to return, that it was never too late to come back, but I was in the thick of it with track, field hockey and a very busy orchestra schedule, and frankly, I didn’t believe her. There’s a part of being young and having the whole world ahead of you that brings out self-consciousness and trepidation. Confidence, the ability to do what you love and seize the day and risk looking silly, seems to come with age. It has for me.<\/p>\n

But she was right. It’s never too late to start, or come back to something that calls to you. What sets us free is the realization that perfection or a professional career or fierce competition is not the goal. It’s the lack of pressure, the lack of body shaming, the lightness of it that brings me such happiness. My favorite part of the class is anything that involves jumping, leaping, or moving across the floor — the faster and higher, the better. And I convinced two of my girlfriends, Emily and Elisha, to join me for this session! So once a week, smack in the middle of the day, I put on a leotard and ballet slippers and spend just over an hour with women I admire and smile with, and mess up with, and have fun with. Do not look too closely, unless what you’re looking at is the smile.\u00a0\"DSC_0022\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For any of you who have dance experience, don’t look too closely — my form is terrible and I don’t know what I’m doing (yet! not yet!), but I can’t keep to myself how much joy beginning ballet as an adult has brought me. Once a week, for the past 6 months, I’ve been taking … Continue reading “Ballet”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10590,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[179,68,95],"class_list":["post-10585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ballet","tag-jump","tag-lauren"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10585"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10585\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10589,"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10585\/revisions\/10589"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/10590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.crumbbums.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}