Classic

Athena has been begging for ballet classes for a couple of years now. And I've looked around town at several dance studios. What I found for her age group was "dance" classes that cost an arm and a leg and teach all forms of dance in a class (hip hop, jazz, tap) ballet being just one of them. And then typically after two or so eight-week sessions, you are required to shell out an additional $75 for a hideous and inappropriate bejeweled costume and sit through a "recital" that looks something like this:

Seriously, have you seen "Dance Moms"? Yea, we're so not doing that.

Finally, after much internet research I found a studio that starts little ballerinas at the age of six. The studio has no website, just a phone number listed online and many, many great user reviews calling it "a classic ballet studio." I called at the beginning of the summer and reserved Athena's place to start in September.

The studio director took my information and informed me that a "packet" of information would be sent closer to the start date of the class. The packet consisted of one page of instruction, with a required dress code ("arrive dressed like a dancer"), where to buy the proper ballet shoes and various instructions about parking and payment plus a handwritten note on pink stationary confirming Athena's enrollment in Class One, held on Tuesday and Thursdays from 4:00 to 5:15.

We arrived on the first day not really knowing what to expect. What we found was a grand studio in the old downtown area of Bakersfield, with big windows, floor to ceiling mirrors, gleaming wood floors, and eight little six year olds as eager to start ballet as Athena.

The studio director is Mrs. Martha Knight, she has been teaching children ballet in the Bakersfield area for more than 40 years. Her classes extend through high school, but she has other teachers instructing the advanced classes, she reserves the little ones for herself. Mrs. Knight has got to be nearing 80, but smart and funny, with a voice and manner of speaking like Ethel Merman and fantastic dancer's legs.

It was like walking into the past when we entered her studio. All the signs and calendars on the walls were handwritten and the framed posters all look like they from the 70s. I was actually surprised when she pulled out a remote control to turn on a CD of music, half expecting a record player to be trotted out. Many of the Moms bringing their daughters had studied dance with Mrs. Knight themselves as little girls.

Mrs. Knight prefers that her six year olds have had no other dance training. She teaches them true ballet, but also tempo, music, posture. She is kind and funny but demands the girls focus and by all means, no fidgeting.

It's difficult to be there two times a week for an hour fifteen.

But so far, Athena loves it and so it is absolutely worth it.

Although I don't have any information about it a recital yet, it seems like the little dancers may have bit parts in the studio's annual ballet. This is their last year's production of the Emperor's New Clothes:

Swoon, right?