a year in ballet:

One year ago today, I started taking individual lessons with my ballet teacher, which was only five months after I started ballet altogether. After that first lesson, my ballet teacher told me how important it is to visualize myself achieving those movements because the imagination develops muscle memory. And it wasn't until recently that I could see myself doing anything.

I could go on about how the presence of dance in all of its contexts (physically, spiritually, emotionally, psychologically, cognitively...) has dramatically altered the way I exist within my life and how, I think, dance has not just made me a better mom, but a better human, overall. But that's something I'm still working through. There is something very beautiful about the movement of ballet, how the moments while dancing are always right in front of you: the movement is where you are immediately going, and once you're there, once you're moving in that space, it's already behind you. There's already something else there, some other phantom you're about to become.

So to all of that, here's my first year and a half in ballet, in chronological images (befores, durings, and afters; practices and performances):