About Annie

My name is Annie and this is my ballet blog.  In 2009, I returned to ballet classes and started this blog as a way to track the painfully slow, but exhilarating progress from the barre, up.  Here, I’ll chronicle the one step forwards and the two steps back, each demi plié and dégagé at at time.   In doing so, I expect to confront the oft-repeated truism: that a commitment is doing the thing I said I would do, long after the mood I said it in, has left me.  After just a few classes back, my calves feel like the weight of bowling balls and my hips are cracking.  I definitely don’t remember barre work requiring this much concentration.  But I have a feeling that my two favourite motivators - accountability and incremental improvement - will make the pain worth the pursuit.

Since I am a ballet superfan, more than just class notes will live here. I’ll also include regular performance and book reviews, funny lessons learned and a culmination of the who, what, where and when in the ballet world.

Currently, my most legitimate ballet qualification is enthusiasm.  I have happily volunteered with 3 different ballet companies and Rudolph Nureyev is my favourite dancer of all time.  I find it hard to believe that there will ever be a ballet better than Swan Lake.  I am 28 years old, I live in Toronto, and I take ballet lessons at Canada’s National Ballet School.