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

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.

I spent many of these years wishing I were a brain in a vat. It’s a tempting concept: brains in vats don’t get let down by their bodies, or have to cancel their plans on account of Lyme disease’s unpredictability or the agonies of endometriosis. On my most difficult days, trying to distract myself from discomfort and pain, I used to chase after a feeling of disembodiment — a feeling our tech-obsessed culture is all too willing to provide. Over and over, I’d find myself seeking out distraction on a screen, trying to forget I had a body at all.

One day, one of those distractions changed my life for good. I stumbled across a video for Justin Peck’s ballet Year 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.

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But Year of the Rabbit began not in the moonlight, or in some enchanted forest, but with a woman in a beach house, doing the dishes, which was the most un-ballet thing I could think of. Soon, the woman was joined by a partner, and they danced barefoot on the beach—which seemed dangerous to me (because it was).

It wasn’t just the setting of the video that compelled me: the movement itself was fascinating. Peck’s choreography was deeply lyrical; it was impossible to separate the dancers’ movements from the notes themselves. Though I’d heard this particular song hundreds of times (“The Palm Sunday Tornado Hits Crystal Lake” by Sufjan Stevens, one of my all-time favorite musicians), this was the first time I’d ever seen it. Here it was, staring me in the face: the reminder I desperately needed that having a body could be frustrating and heartbreaking, but also thrilling, surprising, even glorious.

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.

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Luckily for me, there was a dance studio right down the street from my apartment in Boston. On a day when I felt well enough, I mustered my courage and enrolled in a class. This was no ordinary studio: it was for adults only, and beginners at that. Sue, the studio owner and primary instructor, loved teaching the basics of ballet, and she often began classes full of new folks by asking everyone to share their personal history with dance. I shared the truth: that I’d hated my first ballet class — and, perhaps more truthfully, that I’d hated my leotard, which highlighted everything I loathed about my prepubescent body (cf: that Dove commercial from last year’s Super Bowl). “I’m sorry that happened to you,” Sue said. “We’re here to help you remember what’s really special about ballet — and about you, too.”

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.

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 played Eminem instead 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. 

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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.

Even on weeks when my illnesses kept me at home, ballet helped me remember that physical setbacks are often temporary. Watching videos of New York City Ballet dancers like Tiler Peck and Sara Mearns gave me courage. Like me, they’d often been sidelined by injuries and pain over the years, even for long stretches of time, and seeing them dance gave me hope I’d also return to the barre.

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.

You can imagine my relief, then, when I began to realize that dancers (and, really, all athletes) experience the same thing. In such a physical art form, injuries are inevitable, and they can strike when we least expect, even if we’ve worked for years to avoid or heal from them. This pattern is so familiar to me: this spring, my husband and I planned a long-awaited trip to New York, a sort of victory lap after I’d overcome many physical obstacles. When, just a few days before the trip, my illnesses flared back up again, I was heartbroken: the victory lap became yet another cancellation.

Turning to the internet for consolation (old habits die hard!), I saw an Instagram post by Tiler Peck that made me gasp. Peck, who had recently come back from a devastating injury, was announcing it had flared up yet again and she had to pull out of performances once more. The video she posted for her fans sounded so familiar to me: she said things like “I know this is not the news you were hoping for” and “I’m so sorry if I’ve let you down,” phrases I’ve uttered many times myself when canceling plans with family and friends. For once in my life, my illnesses didn’t make me feel like a weirdo: they made me feel like Tiler Peck. They made me feel like a human being.

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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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