My Sick Body Made Me Wish I Didn't Have One. When I Discovered Ballet, Everything Changed (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

Elemental Media; Mariner Books

I don’t know a single woman who has an uncomplicated relationship to her body — or, for that matter, a single human being. Being a fleshy creature in the age of Instagram seems to be a universal curse. But when you get sick, like I did in my 20s, the complications thicken. When your body starts causing you constant pain, interrupts your life and wreaks havoc on your sense of self, remembering to be grateful for it becomes all but impossible.

Elemental Media

One day, one of those distractions changed my life for good. I stumbled acrossa video for Justin Peck’s balletYear of the Rabbit.Until that moment, all I knew about ballet was the shame I felt at age eight when my mother made me try a class and I saw my lumpy, spandex-clad body reflected in an unforgiving mirror. That, and the usual dance stereotypes: that ballet amounted to eating disorders, cutthroat competition, tiara-ed reeds in stiff tutus dancing in the moonlight.

From that moment on, I fell in love with ballet. Curled up with heating pads, I watched every ballet video I could get my hands on, especially about Peck and New York City Ballet. Soon, just watching ballet wasn’t enough. I longed to try dancing myself. I was still sick, still in pain, but love makes you do crazy things.

Durham’s ballet class looked nothing like the typical images of ballerinas.Getty

Getty

These weren’t just empty words: Sue took extra care to point out when students did something well, and took equal joy in the unique ways they screwed up. She clapped her hands in delight when my turnout disappeared during a plie: “Oh, your body is so very good at cheating!” she said, laughing. She kept a basket of tiaras in the corner that were ours for the wearing: everyone deserved to sparkle like a ballerina, she said, no matter how silly they felt at the barre.

The more time I spent in Sue’s studio, the more I began to relate to my body in a new way. For the first time in years, my body wasn’t just a source of problems and pain; it could also learn to do new — and occasionally astonishing — things. I could sink deeply into plié, feeling my thoughts slow with my breathing. I could match my limbs to the music and sync up with a barre-ful of classmates, chasing after beauty in my own awkward way.

Little ballerinas in the requisite leotards and tights.Getty

As a child, part of what had turned me off to dance was the uniformity required: all those perfect little girls, with perfect coifs, perfect pink tights, and perfect slim thighs. But Sue’s maxim was that ballet was for everybody — and every body — and her classroom was proof. We were a mix of all ages and shapes and colors and sizes (and, on many occasions, genders). There was no uniform required, save to leave your street shoes at the door.

In fact, clothing was what set the newbies and old-timers apart: brand-new students usually arrived in pink tights and leotards (though a few foolish ones showed up with white socks instead of dance shoes), but the students who had been around forever wore ratty leggings and sweats, clothing that had been lived in (and, more importantly, danced in) for years. A handful of the most experienced students — who, like the rest of us, came in all shapes and sizes — even danced en pointe. We were all here to learn ballet, but we were also here to be ourselves, in all our fleshy, incongruous glory, and some days Sue playedEmineminstead of Mozart.

I came away from each class feeling sweaty and exhilarated. It was deeply satisfying to watch my technique begin to improve under Sue’s watchful eye, if ever so slightly. Learning to dance was a transformation of mind as much of body: I couldn’t pull off a turn if I was thinking too hard, and I’d never be able to leap across the room in flying jetés if I was afraid of looking foolish. To dance, I had to learn to let go.

Even outside of the classroom, ballet changed the vocabulary of my body. When I walked, I felt my rib cage float up out of my waist of its own accord. I wasn’t so hunched over all the time at my desk job. And I knew I’d finally begun to rebound from a horrific bout of stomach flu when I found myself doing plíes at the kitchen counter. Dance was more than something I did: it became part of who I was. Suddenly, after frustrating me for so long, my body even began to be a source of accomplishment and pride. I knew I’d never be able to land a triple pirouette or do 30 fouettés, but the astonishment of tackling my first piqué turn or seeing my once-shaky feet high in relevé made me realize that even my sick body had much more potential than I’d realized. When, after a few years of dancing, the arthritis in my knees mysteriously disappeared, my rheumatologist told me my time at the barre had been healing. “That was just the targeted exercise you needed,” she said.

One of the biggest gifts dance gave me was the reminder that I’m not alone, even when my body disappoints me. Chronic illness is isolating: I often miss out on social events, even long-anticipated ones, sometimes at a moment’s notice. The experience of illness itself is also very othering. Sometimes I’m tempted to believe that being sick makes me a weirdo, or even less human.

Mariner Books

Whether we’re dancers, or ill, or simply aging, the truth is that we’re all at the mercy of our bodies. Being human means being vulnerable, means getting sick and hurt, means getting older too. But those same bodies that cause us grief also make it possible to live full and meaningful lives. Ballet continually reminds me that having a body — and being human — is beautiful, even when it’s hard. And it’s much more fun than being a brain in a vat.

Heartbreakingly, a few years after discovering ballet, I had to leave Boston — and Sue’s studio — behind. I’ve continued to take classes here and there, but nothing has matched the thrill of that first friendly classroom, with the basket of tiaras in the corner. Sue invited us all to try on the dream of being ballerinas, but what we didn’t know was that we’d discover something else along the way, something equally thrilling: the magic of being creatures. The magic of being ourselves.

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source: people.com