The Ballerina

In my dance studio, we have a girl who is the ballerina.

She waltzed in last year in the early spring, fresh from southern California. I was in pit orchestra at the time, and was missing a few classes because of shows, and I heard from my other dancer friends that we had acquired an amazing new dancer over the weekend. Nobody knew how old she was. Nobody even knew her last name. But she said that she had been dancing for thirteen years, and, based on her perfect turns and natural grace, it looked like she had been doing it for twenty.

In my several years of dancing, there have been some wonderful dancers who kind of led the way, trailing scores of hopeful ballerinas behind them. When I was seven and just starting, it felt like there were so many older girls, with their prim buns and tight leotards and shiny pointe shoes that just dazzled on the rosin-smeared marley. It's true that there are a lot less now than there used to be, but it just seemed so amazing when I was younger. It's not like we're hardcore Russian ballerinas or anything. I live an extremely artsy community, actually, and the standard uniform of a dancer was commonly replaced by ripped tights and loose shirts (as much as they could get away with without my teacher getting annoyed), and dreadlocks and messy braids instead of buns.

Dancers are some of the most interesting people in the world, next to orch dorks, in my opinion. There are so many different kinds, each with a different story to tell, but we all have one thing in common, and we can all tell those stories through dancing (or music). There are people who immerse themselves in song and just move along with a flow of energy, and there are those who carefully count beats and focus on technicalities, making every turn and fouetté perfect. (Actually, perfect is a funny word. They don't achieve it, necessarily, but to someone else it might appear perfect, while to the dancer him or herself it's far from it. Either way, they're mostly always striving towards that intangible concept of perfection). And then there are those of us who dance just for enjoyment, just to have fun while leaping through the air, to have that feeling of being in control (or out of control), and to be able to sweat buckets and still feel happy about it.

I used to love watching ballerinas. Whether it was onstage or in books, they always seemed so beautiful to me, and so amazingly ethereal. When I was finally going to get my first pair of pointe shoes at age eleven, I couldn't stop talking to my cousin about it. It was something I had literally dreamed about for years, and it was unthinkable that it was actually going to happen. Finally my cousin, who is six months younger than me, said, "Why do you even care so much? They're just shoes". With her being a competitive swimmer,  I racked my brains for something to compare it to in her sport, but I couldn't think of anything. What a non-dance doesn't really grasp, I guess, is that these shoes are a rite of passage. Not every girl has a a ballerina dream, but a lot of young dancers do, and pointe shoes, being on TOE, are like a gateway to becoming one for real. Your work becomes a lot more demanding, and you're serious about what you do. And it's a wonderful feeling to actually be on your toes, spinning around the stage, the lights streaking and blurring in front of your eyes, hearing that beautiful clunking sound beneath you. I took a year of beginning pointe in fifth grade, a year before I actually got the shoes, and I couldn't wait every week to get to that class, just so I could stare at the shoes and the perfectly angled feet inside of them, wishing that they were mine. It really was a dream that came true, only a dream with blisters and tendonitis threats.

I wrote this last Thursday, after living through a torturous P.E. class with idiots who think that football makes them the strongest and coolest people in the world.


  I laugh at those people who say that dance isn't hard at all, because in truth, we work almost harder than them at times. I'm sure that the snobby volleyball girls would stop laughing as soon as they started trying the stretches and bar work, their smirks replaced by grimaces. I'm sure that the supposedly strong football boys would think twice about snickering after an intense hour, sweat pouring and showing through their clothes. I'm positive that my mom couldn't get through an entire class of even the easiest work, and would stop telling me that dance isn't considered an aerobic activity that requires lots of work. It's not looking pretty that makes my muscles ache for days, or gets me blisters on my feet. I didn't suddenly become flexible just by putting my hair up and wearing satin shoes. I spend several hours almost every day at the studio, and I'm proud of what I do. So be quiet, hypocrites.

I know it's kind of narcissistic to agree with myself like this, but hear, hear! We work hard at what we do, and there's so much work behind the prettiness. Yes, it was my dream when I was small, and it still is my dream, but now I know the truth of it, and, if anything, that makes me enjoy it and appreciate it even more so.

Last year, before my pointe dance, I was standing backstage with a two other dancers my age. Wearing our tutus-the only tutu I've worn in dance in the past five years-and covered in sparkles and silver glitter (we were supposed to be stars), we watched as this ballerina girl, who is so good that she's now an assistant teacher, chassé and leap and piqué around the stage, looking just amazing with all those years of serious ballet training. She was like an alien dancer to us, who had always worked with contemporary styles rather than Russian form, and we were just enthralled. She made me realize that no matter how many other dreams I have or have had, dance has and will always be one of them.

Alice McKinley

I'm fourteen and a half years old, and I've been reading the Alice books, by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor, since I was about ten. The first time I ever laid eyes on one was when I was backstage during a dance performance, back when I was young enough to hang around in the studio theater with the other younger levels, instead of being in the dressing rooms. My friend, who was in fifth grade at the time, had one of the prequels in her bag of blankets and snacks, and I picked it up to look at it. Since then, I've been nearly inseparable with them.

Alice McKinley is a young and honest girl who was first brought to life in 1985, and has only just had her famed series completed. The first book, The Agony of Alice, starts when Alice is in sixth grade in a new town, but Naylor soon began to write prequels for her younger readers, which span from her third to fifth grade years. Alice lives in Maryland with her father and brother, with her mother having died years ago from cancer, and in the first few books all she can think about is completing her family and finding a new wife for her father. In her own life, she has friends, enemies, and teachers, all who have their own stories throughout the series that matter almost as much as her own.

I'll admit that I did read the books of Alice's high school years when I was twelve or so, without waiting and growing up with her, but having that knowledge of her life helped me all through middle school, and now I can refer back to them when things in my freshman year sound familiar. Alice's life isn't perfect-far from it, really- but she has a keen sense of humor and goes through horrifying, embarrassing moments, just like everyone else, and still lives to tell the tale. As the books go on, you can hear her voice start to mature, and her likes and dislikes become more clear, while at the same time she's still trying to figure herself out, trying keeping her peers in line as much as possible. Twenty-eight books span for ten years, and finally the series is drawing to a close.

'Now I'll Tell You Everything" takes Alice and her readers to college, through marriage and troubles, and all the way to age sixty, in only about five hundred pages. I can't say that I'm a lifelong Alice reader, because really it hasn't even been five years, but if feels like I've lived a second life through her. The last book comes out in October, and I just can't wait to read it and find out what happens to her. As a fair warning, Alice does cover some mature topics, but not as much when she's younger and in middle school.

Are there any other Alice readers out there? If so, I'd love to hear from you and discuss the books. From reviews that I've read about the last book, it's mostly designed for those who just want to know what happens next rather than a curious reader, but I strongly encourage you to read the books anyway. My mom reads them as well, and has described them to be as "Judy Blume for this generation". They're perfect for growing up, or just for reading for entertainment, to live along with Alice as she deals with her life.

High School

It's so weird. It's like I'm walking through a dream, a dream that I've been writing for myself for the past few years, except everything is so much different than I thought it would be. I can't really be here, can I? To be so far away from elementary school, to be able to walk through the halls without feeling like the lowly middle schooler in the lowly band. I can eat lunch wherever I want, sit in the back of the bus, and take classes with teachers I didn't know before yesterday. After three years of almost the same thing, how can that be possible?

But it's still true. You can bring your backpack to your classes, I actually have to go to P.E. and wear gym clothes for the first time ever, and I sit in front of juniors in Spanish class. I can actually belong in concert band now, and in journalism, my first class of the day, we sit on beanbag chairs and couches instead of at normal desks. And speaking of desks, I've never even had the desk where the chair is attached to the side. We just sat at tables in middle school.

In a way, high school is kind of like a big event going on, every day. I'm used to being in a school where you can always see people you know just by coming out of a classroom, and the lockers are just feet away from the classes and the bathrooms. Here, it's normal to go a day without seeing a certain person. There are two buildings (one across the street), and you have to really plan everything out perfectly to get to class on time. It's all calm for about an hour, and then there's this mad rush where everyone spills out into the hallway and crosses the road or whatever for about five minutes, and then it's quiet again. I don't even have to carry around a normal binder anymore, and my back doesn't break from the weight of the books I'm stashing in my backpack. Kids I knew as eighth graders back when I was in sixth grade are once again in classes with me, and even some kids who were in the old building, the tall upperclassmen, when I was in fifth grade are there, too, reappearing this time as seniors. I'm once again with the friends who left at the end of seventh grade, and finally get to talk to them again.

It's just so crazy.