Philadelphia Ballet offers no-fear dance classes to wary adults

From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know!

Tracy Somani arrived at the Philadelphia Ballet building on North Broad Street wearing a nervous look.

She came to take a class but wasn’t sure where to go. She poked her head into a studio. Somani has been a longtime audience member at ballet performances, but never attempted to dance ballet. It seems really hard.

“I see what makes it beautiful, but I think it would demand a lot for the body and the mind and the rigor and the conditioning,” she said. “I think that’s why my face is cringing.”

Somani came as an Absolute Beginner, a new class offered by the Philadelphia Ballet designed for adults who have never taken ballet before. The class is taught by the Ballet’s executive director, Shelly Power, who – while not a beginner – had hung up her pointe shoes years ago to pursue arts administration.

“Oh goodness gracious, I’m telling my age,” she said. “Many years. Decades.”

“Even though I went on to do administrative work so I could make ballet companies survive and thrive, you never really lose that artistic love,” Power said. “I’ll go in and watch rehearsal just to remember why I do all this administrative work.”

Power is dusting off her dance chops to help adults rediscover their bodies.

“It’s really exercise for your mind,” she said. “When you walk into a ballet class it’s like walking into church or into the library. You forget the world behind you when you have to really focus on your body. All the rest – the fray of the day – goes away.”

Ballet instruction is usually focused on children. Most dance companies and schools will offer some kind of adult class, including the Philadelphia Ballet. But typically beginner courses are populated by grown-ups who want to revisit the form, said Power.

The Absolute Beginner course is meant to be truly ground floor, for people who really really don’t know how to dance and need to learn what a dance class is.

“You want to have the rhythm of the classes,” Power explained. “Where do you stand at the bar? How do you place yourself in the center? Do you stand in front of somebody? People don’t know that protocol.”

Power is trying to eradicate intimidation. The point is not to get it right, but to try. When a student anxiously turns her head away from the bar to ask if she’s doing a move correctly, Power waves her hands over her as though magically erasing fear.

The class teaches the five basic ballet positions and seven fundamental moves. It does not culminate with any kind of recital that might generate performance anxiety.

“I promise you I’m not going to put them on pointe, or put them in a tutu, or have them do a pas de deux. This is really for them to get into their bodies,” Power said. “We’re at computers all day long. How great to get a little bit more aware of what my posture is doing?”

The class, running four consecutive weeks, is an experiment that may or may not become a regular part of the Philadelphia Ballet class rotation. It was only advertised in a newsletter sent to people already on the company’s email list.

Somani hopes learning to do the basics of ballet will make her better at watching the professionals do it on stage.

“As you do it, maybe you can appreciate what they’re doing,” she said. “I already know I’m going to appreciate it because I’m gonna be, like, ‘I cannot get my feet to do that and my arm to do that.”

Another student, Dan Williams, wants to bring ballet into his day job. He is an artist’s model. By learning how to move like a dancer, he hopes to get better at standing still.

“Instead of just winging it, if I can understand a little bit about the structure behind it as I watch the performances, I might understand better how to translate that into a pose,” he said.

Although people often assume Williams is already a dancer, he needed encouragement to take the Absolute Beginner class. He came with backup: his friend Ellen Wert joined him to get over the hump of the first class. She has been dancing ballet for almost 50 years.

“I’m a ringer,” Wert said. “I’m here for moral support for Dan.”