Ballet during quarantine and work life balance

About ballet during quarantine

Ballet has taken a back seat during my time sheltered in place - I now only take one class per week instead of four. Maybe I got worse, or I didn’t make as much progress as I should be, but I am not feeling too guilty. I’ve got other stuff to sort out during this time. Sometimes you need to take a break from your previous busy routine and re-evaluate your priorities, before hitting the road again.

About quarantined in New York

Having not stepped out of my apartment building for two months, I do dearly miss the city I live in.

I miss Friday nights when the city gets buoyant after a week of work, with people gathering cheerfully in the warm lights of bars and restaurants along the sidewalk.

I miss the performers in the Time Square subway station, New Yorkers’ sense of fashion, and the dogs on the street.

I miss the Met, MoMa, the Whitney Museum, Lincoln Center, The Union Square Greenmarket, the Whole Foods in Bryant Park, my neighborhood butcher, Central Park, sunset on my roof, my commute to my ballet class, my ballet studio. The crowds spewing out of the Joyce Theater after a performance - artsy people gathering around discussing the show, the dancer I admired on stage smoking a cigarette on the street, the elegant middle aged couple heading to a bar. And the 15 min walk to the subway along the brownstones on Museum Miles, with the sun setting, brightening up the clouds on Madison Avenue, after an afternoon at the Met.

I miss my friends - the Saturday night board games, the dinner parties, the girls night outs, the brunch dates. Their jokes, their sense of fashion, the good and the bad we shared together.

New York is the city that nurtured me, and I feel lucky I have the privilege to live here in the first few years of my adult life. And my heart warms up everyday at 7pm, when I would hear people open up their windows, scream, clap their hands, whistle, or bang their pots and pans to cheer for the healthcare workers. Even the people who are just standing at their balcony with a phone trying to record all this - that brings a smile to my face.

Glenn Close says it the best below.

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You can't always get what you want

Now we’re entering the second month of quarantine… how’s everyone holding up?

Last Saturday, there was a virtual charity concert held by stars and celebrities around the world. As timeless as Rolling Stones, they once again performed the song “You Can’t Always Get What You Want“. Even though the song was originally about drug and politics in the 1960s, it somehow rings true to the current COVID-19 situation as well.

The lyric goes like this:

You can’t always get what you want

but if you try sometimes, well, you might find

you get what you need!

Isn’t this the story of our lives?

On the therapy that is ballet and other thoughts

in

Hello, happy Valentines! What are you doing to celebrate? I am making the bolognese thats posted on designer Pia Baroncini’s instagram. It’s coming together real lovely ;)

I haven’t been updating for a while, mostly because both weekdays and weekends are very very demanding. I have been trying to take 3 ballet classes a week, read some books along the way, cook a little, learn VBA, watch some performances and hang out in the city!

Below are some thoughts for the recent few weeks

On the therapy that is ballet:

Work wise, things have been very slow lately and I haven’t been super productive, and I’m sometimes frustrated because I’m not learning and growing as fast as I wanted. For example yesterday, I had a very bad day at work, very busy on tight deadlines, but was just doing very manual work. I worked until 6:40pm and went to the ballet dance class on an empty stomach.

However, while I was stretching my body on the floor and listening to the piano, my frustration drove me to use more force while doing the dance moves, which actually made them better. Also, since my day has already been so bad, I was determined to have a good class and make the rest of my night better, so I also put more effort in dancing than usual.

My previous negative energy turned into fuel that made my dances better! Which was then turned into joy from seeing myself do good dance moves and making progress in dancing. Win win win!

From many people’s perspectives, maintaining a hobby as demanding as ballet while working a full time job is taxing. However, it is until then I realized the benefits of myself keep doing that. I now no longer rely only on one pillar, which is my full time job - I now have at least two pillars where I derive my sense of achievement from. If there is a period of time in my full time job where I didn’t see any progress, I can still say I am making a lot of progress in ballet. This doesn’t make me feel so bad more.

I once read that a 70-year-old woman dealt with grief from the death of a beloved one through dancing. It helped her cope with a lot of negative energy and has given her hope. In some way, you do need to cling onto some little hobby that in the short-term seems not so useful, but could be your hope when all your other pillars collapse.

On making progress while you are a little more advanced than an ABSOLUTE beginner:

So… time flies! I have been dancing ballet for half a year. I made some progress! In the first few months while I was constantly updating this blog, I was absorbing all the information on how to make a correct move - how to align your body, etc. Now, I basically know like 70% - 85% of what you should feel while doing the dance moves, and is the time to build enough muscle and execute them.

I find the extra open class I’ve been taking at ballet academy east very helpful - they are very intense - basically you will be doing the equivalent of hundreds of squats at the end of the class, but super helpful in terms of building muscles needed to execute these dance moves the way they should be.

I am always super delighted to find out that the moves I have been wobbly on the previous week are no longer that much of a challenge the week after, thanks to the muscles I’ve built over time. This gives me joy, and is the reason why I am taking a 45 - 50min train ride to upper east side for that class.

et voila, so much for ballet thoughts!

I’ve also learned so much on the theory of all the moves I’ve been learning, I will update them in another blog soon!

So excited to start the next level of ballet - the basic beginner workshop next week!

Best,

Grace

at the end, here is a clip of swan lake. I will be watching swan lake this sunday, super excited :)