I have a confession to make...

Yes, Lexie... What is it??? You can tell us anything... We'll still love you no matter what crazy nutso thing you've done!

no, no, no... its not anything I've done. (recently, that is) and its not bad... Its good... its just about my insane love for ballet and the story of how I started dancing which I've been promising to tell you, but haven't---yet. ;)

Well... here goes. This is how it all began...

I was born with the love of dance and music.. My mother still loves to tell everyone how much I LOVED Frankie Avalon-- circa 1959

and would dance around the living room for hours and hours... (That Frankie sure WAS cute, wasn't he? I guess I've always had a thing for cute guys.) What Mom doesn't really remember is my plastering my ear to the stereo which also doubled as a sideboard--;) for hours and hours listening to the likes of West Side Story and the Sound of Music--- and of course, singing ALL of the parts!!!


There was always music in our home. It wasn't like any of us were great musicians, but my parents had a penchant for Latin Jazz, Bosse Nova, show tunes and the like. I was taken to the philharmonic, the theater and ballet, such as it was in our not very big river town. I think my mother always wanted one of her daughters to dance. Mistletoe took some lessons but wasn't really very good at it and stopped when we moved from Chicago to Evansville, in 1957. My mother's mother also loved dance and the stage and was always pushing my mother to perform, but she also stopped after a time (after her feet got mangled from going into toe shoes... waaaaaaay tooooooooo early.

For any mothers hoping that their daughter will embrace ballet, if the desire's not there, it ain't gonna happen and if it IS there, there is nothin that is gonna stop her!

And the fact is, that in my youth, I was on both sides of that coin, but then again... are we talking about "ballet" or are we talking about something else?

My first recollection of "ballet class" was when I was five and now living in Indiana... It was a class with about 10 other five year olds in someone's basement and that is all I remember--- just vague recollections of a dark, dank basement.

By the time I was 7... it was time for more "serious" training... so my mother enrolled me in the Nancy Arbuthnot School of Dance.

Well... folks... I googled the school (of course!) :) and found no trace of it, however, I believe that Nancy herself is still alive at the age of 87, but I couldn't find any particular other information about her except that there's a dude who's 101 associated with her. Her father? :)

Wow!!! People shor do live a long time, these days...

The "serious training" at this place was something I was looking forward to, because I was a pretty serious child and I loved the "idea" of taking ballet even though I'm not sure if I had actually ever SEEN any real ballet at that time!

The lessons were one hour long and consisted of 15 minutes of acrobatics, (I could already do the splits!) 15 minutes of hula, (yes! hula--- it was the early sixties!!!),

15 minutes of "modern jazz" and yeah... 15 minutes of "ballet" (or something that was CALLED ballet) and I'm sure a bit of "tap" thrown in there somewhere.

I do recall standing at the barre and doing plies, but not too much else.  I was flexible and motivated and as Nancy loved to point out to my mother...

"Alexandra has such lovely arms-- she shows such promise"

(indeed) ;)

Nancy had a lot of energy and forgive me... but my most vivid recollection of her as an 8-yr-old was that she had the hugest thighs I've ever seen on a woman... so developed that I'm sure that she could've easily kick started a jumbo jet...haha!!! However, her very unballet-type body aside, she was warm and kindly and I liked her and I especially loved the studio during the holidays because she had set up a big Christmas tree in the entry and she painted that fake snow shit on the windows, with lots of ornaments and snowflakes and of course, we got a candy cane of our very own to eat after every class... the memory of that is visceral.

I enjoyed the classes-- very much, and looked forward to going, but... come early January... the Xmas stuff got put away until the following year... and then the lessons now consisted of a short warm up... which followed a "rehearsal" for the RECITAL which was going to happen in JUNE!

Week after week we'd practice the same friggin (boring, dumb) dance that my class was going to do.  Have to say that by March, I was pretty damned sick with "the dance" because I had gotten it by February and was good at it and was ready to move on... but no... we had several more weeks to practice it, before the RECITAL.

The first year, was well................... a Hawaiian theme duhhh... cause it was circa 1964-- nuff said, if you're up on American history. Hula was IT!!! Luaus, tiki lamps, paper lanterns, bright colors, hula hoops... you got it.

Haha!!!

I will never forget my grass skirt (or the way it smelled) and my boobless bikini top in HOT PINK and my plastic lei, but I did get to show off my beautiful arms doing beautiful hula moves pretending to "eat" raw fish...

The next year... Everything was

yeah...

(RIP E.)

That year, since everything was Egyptian, my bikini top was gold sequined over some harem-type pants, which my mother made for me... and we were each given a beautiful silk blue scarf which billowed beautifully as it caught the air, as we ran around with it...

yawn...

The only problem, was that now I was nine and quite frankly, I was ready for more than just running around with a fuckin blue scarf over my head and especially for five months!!!

I stuck it out, however, and then spent the following summer working out each morning for the swim team, but come September... I put my little Lexie foot down and said "NO MORE!!!!!!!!!"  "I hate that school... I hate the dumb dances and I hate practicing for that fucking recital for months and months!!!"

Okay, I didn't say fucking, but the message was the same.  I was done with Nancy Arbuth NOT. :)

My mom was pretty upset about it because she really wanted me to take "ballet lessons", but I wanted to take ice skating lessons and so, as a compromise, she took me to another school called Hodgini's where I took a lesson.

I walked into the class and didn't know anyone. I guess the girls looked to be about my age, but I was pretty tall, for my age, so they might've been a year or two older.

The barre wasn't too bad... I didn't know everything they were doing, but I muddled through it and did a nice stretch which felt good. The teacher walked by and complimented me...

But then, the center came-- the heart of the class and all of the girls were on pointe (shudder)... which now I realize was absurd,(they weren't really ready) but at the time... not only were they already on pointe, but I couldn't keep up at all, was completely lost and felt like a complete toad and ran out of the room in hysterical tears straight into the dressing room...

I was inconsolable.

And that my friends... was the end of that. All hopes of a brilliant dance career were dashed on that day. I was humiliated beyond belief... but it was not the humiliation of someone who didn't want to be there. I DID want to be there-- of course, I did, but it wasn't handled correctly.

In retrospect, I realize now, that the training at these thunder-thigh-dolly-dingle schools totally sucked...

God was looking out for me. The timing just wasn't right.

In the meantime, I had discovered gymnastics because my best friend, Shari wanted to become a cheer leader and therefore, so did I. So, I started an acrobatic gymnastic class at 12 at a third dance studio called Sylvia's Studio of Dance and was pretty good at some things, but I wouldn't say great, but I practiced all the time.  When it was warm, I practiced outside where I would occasionally get a handful of my dog's shit all over me, haha and then when it was night-time or cold, I would push aside the furniture in the living room to do forward handsprings round-offs and cartwheels for days!!!

I know... very cute and I had pigtails too!

I did hand stands everywhere... Every wall with a minimum of two feet of free space was an opportunity for me to stand on my hands with me feet pointed against the wall for support. My obsessive nature has always been in place.

When I was 13, I auditioned for the cheer leading squad for the basket team at school and I made it-- along with Shari! hahaha!!! I know that might come as quite a shocker. Now, please be clear that I didn't give a rat's ass about basketball, (which in Indiana is akin to treason!) but I was fiercely loyal to my beloved school and besides... my grade school crush was on the team! ;) Oh how I used to love to see him dribbling the ball down the court... his straight brown hair flying in the wake of his sure-footed mastery of the game. (BTW... I saw him 24 years later at what would've been my high school reunion and well... He was paunchy, round-shouldered, bald and a nephrologist!)

It was  the eighth grade, the last year before high school. My home life was a nightmare, (and I don't say that lightly) but my life outside of home was my respite and my escape... School, track, swimming, my friends, gymnastics, cheer leading... were my salvation... The details of those days are not important right now... except to move the story along... I wasn't dancing, but I was extremely athletic and building strength and flexibility.

One day in February, shortly after I turned 14, my mother woke up one morning and I heard a voice I had never heard from a human being before, but it was coming from my mother. It had certainly been building up-- for years...

Years and years of pent up frustration/hurt/anger/FEAR came vomiting out of her throat in glass shattering frequency... She had found her voice- BIG TIME and was throwing my sicko, psycho, homicidal father out of the house, for good. (thank God!)

And he never came back.