In second year university, I lived in Alumni House with Kate.  Within a month of living together, we were eating the same foods, pulling the same pranks and chasing the same boys.  Same music, same movies, same clothes.  As a testimate to our insular friendship, we had developed a coded language and at one point, were convinced that nobody else had heard of Coldplay but us.  By the end of second year, our kitchen wall was plastered with Post-It Notes, each one with a quote of something one of us had said.  We thought we were so funny, that our jokes had to be documented and displayed.

In the summer of 2001, Kate made me a birthday card that chronicled the preceding school year.  Beside the Coldplay lyrics and the pictures of Jared Leto was a half-page section dedicated to “Annie White’s Return to Dance.”  Kate was referring to the ballet lessons I began taking in university.  When I met Kate, I was a year into the classes and still, as she would say, “debuting.”  Though she was supportive and curious, it wasn’t long before Kate was doing imitations of ballerinas around our dorm, comparing and contrasting to Billy Elliot.  That my birthday card displayed a greater emphasis on ballet, rather than Jared Leto, is indicative of how influential it had become.

After the summer of ‘01 Kate and I moved in together again.  My ballet lessons continued.  Kate and I did not.  Four months after moving in together we were no longer speaking to each other

Last August, I moved to Toronto.  It was my third move here and this time, my apartment was located close to, and equidistant from, the National Ballet School and the Walter Carson Center.  I knew that I would be in Toronto long enough to take advantage of the city’s wonderful ballet resources and couldn’t wait to get started.  Using my better judgment, I decided to start northwards at the NBS, not south with the professionals.  In November, I enrolled.

One month later, Kate and I reunited, after 6 years apart.  What led us back together was a series of unlikely and unrelated events, too obvious to ignore.  The night before we met up, I was rummaging through a box of old papers and found that hilarious card she made me years ago.  Such a timely reappearance of the “Return to Dance” birthday card!   Exactly one month after seeing Kate again, ballet classes indeed, returned.  It has been more than a year since my last class and the reunion has been less entertaining than that with Kate.

She’s still as funny as I remember her being, Kate that is.  Ballet is as painful as I remember her being.  Welcome back you two.

This entry was posted Tuesday, January 6th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Looking Backwards, Personal. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.