I know I still have entries on our Engagement Encounter pending, but I thought I would write a post I've been meaning to write for a while now as a follow-up to my review of Giselle.
As an undergraduate, I read a lot of Aristotle. I'd like to think that The Nicomachean Ethics and The Politics have played a large and important role in making me who and what I am today. In The Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle brings readers to two important conclusions which I always try to keep in mind. First, the end of human life is happiness. Second, humans become happy by becoming good.
Of course, as anyone who has ever made a resolution knows, we can't merely choose to be good. Choices don't work like that. Every action is really a chance to choose what's good. We become good by choosing the good again and again and again. This process, the habituation to virtue, is the path to happiness in life.
If you've looked at the title of this post, you may ask yourself what this has to do with ballet. I'd never considered the connection either. I started dancing about a year ago, purely on a whim conjured up by one of my favorite animes. I knew Adam and I were headed in the direction of marriage, and I wanted to get in shape. Ballet is a wonderful way to build muscle tone without (if I avoided the anorexic that often plagues professional dances) losing the feminine curves I love in the way I look.
I started dancing and slowly grew to love it. For the first time ever, I could see the changes exercise was bringing about on my body and on my mind. Plus, it's a lot of fun turning your first successful pirouette. Then, sitting in on a rehearsal of the English National Ballet last fall, I realized ballet's real virtue.
Before that rehearsal, I'd never known that every company, no matter how professional, begins every day with a class. And every dancer, no matter how talented, fills each class with the same basic techniques, albeit at greater or lesser levels of difficulty. Every single dancer begins his or her days with plies, simple bendings of the knees. That's it. Ballet teaches by repetition, developing muscle and skill by performing the same movements over and over again.
Viola! Aristotelian exercise. By habituating my body to physical virtue, I found myself suddenly liberated physically in a way I never have before. I'd started this regime to look better for Adam. Now, I find myself stronger, more flexible, and happier about my body and its abilities than I've ever been before.
I think Adam felt challenged and inspired by how happy I was with ballet and decided that was something he wanted for himself, and to share with me. Although ballet isn't so much of an ideal exercise for a 6'6" man with a fused spine, he has found his own ways to build muscle and flexibility. When I saw him a few weeks ago, it was the first time in almost six years of knowing him that he's seemed pleased by what his body can do. It was a real treat to see the joy in his face at overcoming some of the physical limitations which have challenged him since his back surgery almost eight years ago. He's giving such a wonderful gift to me: a strong, healthy body with a better chance of lasting the lifetime I want to spend with him.
Dancing has turned out to be a joy and blessing I never expected. I feel stronger, lighter, healthier, and happier with myself than I ever thought I would. And those things are all gifts I'm excited to give to Adam. So ballet has turned out to be the ideal Aristotelian exercise, leading me to a kind of virtue and through that virtue toward happiness.
If you're in the Oxford area and interested in ballet, I'd like to invite you to our upcoming ballet performance on Friday and Saturday of fifth week. Please e-mail me if you have any questions or would like to purchase a ticket.
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