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As I sit here, beginning to write this blog post, I hold the last pair of pointe shoes that I
ever wore in my hands. I see the pale peach satin of the shoes and ribbon, the rips in the satin of the toe box where I applied pressure, going from flat to full pointe. I see the stains from the hours of wearing these shoes on the studio floor, wings of the theatre, through the hallways. I see the wrinkle in the ribbon where they were tied in the knot and tucked into the ribbon protecting my ankles. I see the marks of sweat on the ribbon from the hours of incredible cardiovascular activity. I see the indents of my toe nails in the toe pads that are still in their place within the shoe. I see the loose threads from where I sewed the elastic and ribbons on. I feel the smooth satin beneath my touch and feel the tears where the dancing took its toll. I feel the rubbery gel of the toe pads and the glue at the seams of the toe box. My fingers run over the brand, Gaynor Minden, and the sound of piano music beats in the back of my head, I take a deep breath and I am transported back to time. I would ritualistically massage my feet fully and stretch my toes before and after slipping on these pointe shoes. I would turn and turn and eventually land in a plie. I am transported back to the moments where my hand would be resting lightly on the barre as I would tondue, close, tondue close, tondue, close. Where my arms were held gracefully away from my torso in a way that would seem effortless, although it took so much strength to do so. I remember the discipline that was instilled in me to be able to be the best I could be at my craft. I remember dancing away my days, to help me heal from the anxiety that I was enduring in the world as I aged. I danced for me, I danced when no one was watching, I danced in my hopes and dreams.
When I was very young, about two and a half, my mother begged a local studio to allow
me to take dance classes even though I was on the young side to do so. I remember her telling me years later that I was full of energy, constantly twirling through the kitchen and living room as I would watch dancers on tv. She enrolled me in the Jean Limmer School Dance Center in North Conway, NH. She told me that I loved every minute I was there and I was always asking if I could go back the next day. I never liked hearing that I had to wait until the next week to attend class again. Not too long after this, my mother and my father divorced and when I was finished with Kindergarten, my mother joined the Air Force and we moved away from my friends, our family and my dance classes, to move to Clovis, New Mexico. My mother told me that I begged and begged to go back to dance class in NM, and eventually, I did. At this new dance school, we would learn our steps and practice once a week. I know that I performed a number of songs in the recitals in New Mexico but the one that I recall the most was dancing to “Little April Shower” from the Disney Movie, Bambi. I was one of four in this number, and I wore a dark red tutu with silver sequins. I can even remember the beginning steps of the song even though I was only nine years old. I remember because the pas de chats(dance steps) that we did in the beginning were so fun to learn! I remember my instructor telling me that the term, pas de chats, translated to “step of the cat” in French. We were to think of ourselves as cats hopping over things in our path. It was such a fun word and such a fun movement. This recital was also more memorable because I knew that this performance was going to be my last one with this dance class and I was so sad. My family was moving to Central Illinois at the end of the summer because my step dad was leaving the military and had been offered a job with a hospital in Lincoln, IL. I loved my dance class and I was sad to leave, yet again. I remember begging my mom to find me another dance class to join where we were moving.
In the fall of 1994, I was starting at a new school, living in a new house, living in a new
state, had a new baby sister and my mom was staying home from work with all of us while my stepdad worked at the hospital each day. There was a lot of change. A lot. When my mom and dad divorced, my dad moved to California where he was to live with my stepmom and my stepsister. My siblings and I would board a plane shortly after school I was done for the school year each spring and fly to California to spend the summers with our dad and then we would fly back before school began again in the fall. Although there was continually a lot of change happening in our lives when we were children, I always had a constant comfort of dance classes. My mom had promised me that when we got settled in Lincoln she would get me enrolled in another dance class right away.
Not long after school started that first year, I began to meet some friends I was out riding bikes with my new friend Rachel. We were gliding down the street in my neighborhood and the next thing I knew, I flew over the front of my bike and the center of my forearm was broken in half, bending in a very unnatural way. Rachel got back on her bike and raced back to the house to get my mom. I was taken to the emergency room where my stepdad worked, then raced down to Springfield to have surgery on my arm to place it. My broken arm took a very long time to heal, with a few set backs. Because of this, I was spending a majority of my first fall at West Lincoln Broadwell(school) at home with my arm hanging from an IV rod in our living room. This not only kept me from being able to be at school, it kept me out of dance classes that year.
On a Tuesday afternoon, in September of 1995, my mom greeted me when I got off the
bus after school and told me she had a surprise for me. I was instructed to work on any
homework I had right away because we were eating an early dinner and then she and I were
leaving. I LOVED surprises like this from my mom. We spent so much time together and
we always did such fun and special things. I had no idea what the surprise was going to be but I was excited regardless. I finished up my dinner and we headed out. I kept asking her what the surprise was and she told me I would know soon enough. As we headed out of town, she looked at me and told me to reach behind my seat. In a bag was a pair of ballet slippers, tap shoes, a black leotard and pink tights. She told me I was heading to dance
class.
My mother had enrolled me in the Susan Collier School of Dance in Mt Pulaski, IL at the
beginning of my fifth grade school year. I asked her why she didn’t enroll me in the dance
classes in Lincoln where all of my friends took ballet and clogging and she said, I would like this school better and Suzy would be able to teach me so much more. The night of that first class, I walked in, very nervous I might add, and Suzy welcomed my mother and I to the
class. She told me she was glad I was there and to find a place at the barre with the other
students. I immediately liked Suzy, she was much shorter than my mom, had sparkling
nails and jewelry, a very short red haircut and smiled and laughed—a lot. Suzy was warm and comforting and I am so glad, still to this day, that my mom enrolled me in HER dance class.
Suzy instilled discipline in me that I would not have gotten anywhere else. She taught me that you have to work hard for what you want; not everything would just be given to you. She instilled a drive in me to succeed and she was always there when I would fall on my rear trying to nail the fouettes that we worked so hard to learn. She helped me prepare for the amount of auditions I would attend for plays, summer dance programs, and eventually college. She was always very honest with me; being candid about my strengths (great feet, talent, heart) and weaknesses (I didn’t have the right body type to be a ballerina). She encouraged me to work harder to learn tap because I was good at it but I only wanted to focus on ballet. She eventually told me in our acrobatics class that I needed to stop trying to learn how to do a backflip because I wasn’t going to get it and I would likely hurt myself in the process. Suzy could always be counted on to provide advice and give feedback (whether I wanted to hear it or not).
When I turned 16 and got my driver's license my mom was thrilled because she was
driving me to multiple cities, six days a week, for different dance classes and rehearsals for
different shows. When I was in high school I was taking dance classes with Suzy two nights a week, one for pointe and one for my regular ballet and tap classes, I would be rehearsing for the Nutcracker or a different performance multiple times a week and I took ballet classes in Springfield with the Ballet Company. I began to struggle with my auditions as I got older and my body continued to change. My love was for ballet but I had large breasts and curves and the ballet dancers that got cast for the roles I desired were rail thin, with no boobs. I started to hear a lot that I had "the feet, heart and talent" but not the body to be a ballerina. I decided that I would do whatever I could to make my body change in the way I needed it to and because of this, I developed unhealthy habits and unrealistic goals for my figure. My mom did everything that she could do to support me with this, and she and I would go on diet after diet. I look back at photos of myself back then, and I am just frankly so flabbergasted with the fact that I hated my body so much. What I see when I look at those photos, was a girl with joy in her eyes, that was healthy and very athletic. I don’t look at those photos and see massive amounts of pounds to shred away. I see a girl that loved to dance and would do anything to be in a studio with a pair of pointe shoes, a ballet barre and the music of a piano pounding away.
When it came time to get ready to go away to college, I had no interests other than going
to school for theatre and dance. I was smart, I excelled in my classes in high school and I
tested well on my ACTs, so my parents urged me to look at academic programs as well, but in my mind I was going to perform for my life, I knew it. I began auditioning for musical theatre and dance programs in the early part of my junior year of high school. My
mom attended many of these auditions with me, some I attended on my own. I took my ACTs in the fall semester of Junior Year (much earlier than most of my friends). I was ready to get out of high school and leave Lincoln behind and go to a school where I would be able to focus on what I loved, performing. By Labor Day my senior year of college, I already had college acceptance letters and had been accepted to all of the programs that I had interest in. By the beginning of October of 2001, I had made the decision to attend Millikin University with a talent scholarship for dance and I was thrilled. The rest of my senior year I took all of my required classes, but classes that I decided that I didn’t need and weren’t required I switched out for extra music classes. I was in go-mode for college and I would be as prepared as possible when I arrived at Millikin to start my freshman year along with the other theatre majors and dance minors.
Over the holiday break of my senior year of high school I was introduced to a performance troupe in the Wisconsin Dells by a friend and I was encouraged to audition for the company for the summer between high school and college. In the spring of 2003, my mother and I drove over four hours north and I auditioned to be apart of the cast of Fab 50s Live!. I was excited for this opportunity because I was going to be paid to perform and do what I loved. I was cast in the show and the day after my high school graduation, my mom helped me pack up my 1998 Mercury Mystique and her minivan with my belongings and she moved me up to the Wisconsin Dells for the summer. I was so excited. I was living in housing that felt like I was a part of the movie Dirty Dancing. I waited tables and acted as a mascot during the day at the Chula Vista Resort and performed six nights a week, with a total of eight shows every week. After a couple of weeks of their grueling rehearsals, the performances started. I began to quickly learn that performing for a paycheck was a lot of hard work. I struggled a lot. I started to feel like I wasn’t anywhere near as good as the other women in the show. I was the youngest and the emotional toll of being so far from home and being yelled at during rehearsals and never feeling good enough began to really weigh me down. I remember calling my mom crying and telling her that I was a terrible dancer, singer, performer, I was never going to make it in “real life”, and I wanted to give up. She would remind me that they cast me because I did have talent, I was good enough and they saw something in me. I struggled so much that summer, but I still had a lot of fun and it was a summer I will never forget. My mom knew how much I missed her and she came up with her friends and my younger siblings regularly to support me and that was always just what I needed.
The directors of the shows told me I was getting too heavy and I didn’t understand how but I am sure that not having freshly cooked food didn’t help. I began to be very careful
with what I was eating and doing my best to lose the weight I was told I had gained. Looking back I didn’t look fat or anything, but the directors were tough and I felt like I was constantly getting knocked down emotionally and physically. I began to question my future and I had a really hard time.
One Sunday night at the end of July, after we finished our second performance, I got
into my car and I drove straight back to Lincoln with an overnight bag; drove the four hours straight without stopping. I wanted to go home and sleep in my bed and be in my house with my things. When I pulled up everything felt different, the grass looked different to me, the light on the flagpole seemed so much brighter and the outside lights had a different glow. I parked my car in the normal spot I always parked in in the driveway, grabbed my bag and walked down the sidewalk to the front door of my family’s home. When I walked in the door in the early hours of the morning my mom came running! Why would anyone be coming in the door at 2:00 AM on a Sunday night?! She was surprised to see me, pretty angry I didn’t tell her I was planning on driving home in the middle of the night, but she wrapped her arms around me and gave me a huge hug. I remember leaning into her shoulder and taking a deep breath and crying that I wasn’t good enough. I can still feel her tight squeeze of her arms around me telling me that I wasn’t just good enough, I was great and I just needed to believe in myself. I held onto her and sobbed. A few minutes later she grabbed a mason jar from the cabinet, filled it with ice water, and sent me up to my bedroom. I laid down in bed, closed my eyes and slept til early the next afternoon. I remember waking up with a headache, walking downstairs to my mom in the kitchen and my youngest sister, Crystal(age 8), playing with her cat Barbie in the living room. My
mom jokingly remarked that she was glad I decided to join the living for the day and that she didn’t wake me up because I clearly needed the rest. The rest of the day I ran around with her to her errands and appointments. I caught up with my sister and brother and a couple of friends. Mom let me choose the dinner that we were having and I chose steaks, Ceasar salad, portabella mushrooms and bruschetta. I ate everything. It had literally been since May since I had eaten my mom’s cooking and I was starving for it. That night I slept soundly and the next day when she asked what time I needed to be back for my performance. I told her mid-afternoon and she asked what time I was going to leave and I told her I wasn't sure because I didn’t want to go back. It took a lot of tears and a lot of convincing but after, we came to an agreement that my mom would drive my car back up and my sister Shana would follow up in another car and they would stay with me for a couple of days and make sure I would get settled. I just remember not wanting to do that drive again or go back at all, but the two of them staying very much helped me through it. Before I knew it, the summer was over and I was back home and moving into my freshman dorm at Millikin. I was so glad the summer was over and I was so excited to start college.
My mom, step dad and little sister got me all moved in and then left to head back to Lincoln. I probably couldn’t push them out the door fast enough, I was ready to start my life!
The first week was busy with freshman orientation and all of the auditions for the dance
and theatre classes. I was one of two freshman that were placed in advanced ballet. I was so excited for this. This helped reassure me that I was good enough afterall. My first semester I took advanced ballet (soft shoes), audited Ballet 2 (pointe shoes), tap, and modern. I was in the dance studios the entire day on Tuesdays and Thursdays and I would take my audit ballet class for point on Monday and Wednesdays. I loved my Tuesdays and Thursdays. I loved being in the ballet studio. I remember I would always stand on the far-right side of the room in the upper corner near where the music was. I always preferred the barre attached to the wall. When the music would begin, I would feel the beats deep within my soul.
I remember a moment: where I was standing and facing the barre with both hands lightly
resting on it, pink tights on, black leotard, white dance belt tight across my waist, feet in first
position. I would raise my feet to releve, bringing my arms to fifth, pull my right foot in tightly to my left and then meticulously raising my right foot to the passe position with perfect control and watching my dance belt to make sure that my hips stayed stationary. I would achieve the perfect passe. I would then lower my right foot and then my feels back to the first position and bring my leg into a perfect developpe where I would hold it before I would rest it on the top barre to check my turnout and then slide into a deep stretch and then back up. In the ballet studio I had control. I could control my movements, I could control my body. I could control this when I couldn’t control anything else in my life. This was one place I could achieve what I thought was perfect even though I was always told I didn’t have the right body. I could make myself as technically perfect as I was able. I could be great. When I walked into the studio, other than concerns I saw of my body shape in the mirror, all of my stress and anxiety that I was dealing with each day would melt away.
Tuesdays and Thursdays were my favorite days. I worked out an arrangement with my ballet instructor to be able to go to the ballet studio when it wasn’t in use if I wanted to decompress. Ballet was something that again brought a life of chaos and change back to being stable. In the ballet studio it didn’t matter who my friends were, or what boy I was talking to. It didn’t matter what was going on with my sorority or at my job or with my
family. In the ballet studio, I could shut off the world and I could just dance. This was the
therapy that I needed. This was the therapy that kept me sane. This was the therapy that made me happy. Dancing was how I survived. Dancing made me want to live.
My junior year of college a lot changed. I became injured and had to sit out of my
classes, so I started to work more. I picked up a business degree because I realized if I became injured out in the “real world” I would no longer have a pay check but I still kept my dance minor because of my love to dance. My senior year, I had to cram in a lot of classes to be able to graduate and I couldn’t take any dance classes in my schedule that year. My regular therapy of dance was gone, and my world began to spin out of control. I went through a lot in that last semester before I took a medical withdraw and then followed with a year off. When I went back to school I could no longer take classes with the program. It was something that I lost, I thought for forever, until 2022.
In 2022, I was cast in a local Dancing with the Stars Charity competition with my(now) best friend. I was going through some of the darkest moments of my life that year and the dancing became therapy for me once again. For that experience, I am so incredibly grateful. When we rehearsed, that’s what I focused on. When I was alone and I would practice or work on my technique, that would be all that I would care about. When I was in my leotard and tights, the noise of the world would disappear and all I heard were the beats of the music as they filled my soul. I needed that dancing more than anything else at that point in my life. All of my worries and stress would be gone and I would breathe without stress, resentment, or anger for my present life situation. On November 5th, 2022, my friend and I took the stage and we danced our hearts out. In that moment, everything that was creating the noise in my head disappeared. We danced and we danced damn good. The second our performance was done and we struck the final pose, the crowd launched into applause. I pulled away from Mike and hugged onto him so tight. I didn’t want to let go. He helped me accomplish what I needed so badly to do in my life again. Being a part of that cast, to raise money for the charity that it supported; but it meant so much more to me. In that moment, the world stopped, I smiled and I felt happy and accomplished for the first time in so long. I am so thankful for that dance, in that moment of my life. When all I could see was darkness, it helped me see light. That dance helped me see my future.
-Heather
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