Ballet, much like anything else worthwhile, takes a lot of work. Unfortunately, the work doesn’t always show immediately. So as much as I would love to talk about how much everyone has improved and how excited I am for the show, I’m afraid that that would not necessarily be the truth.

Progress in the corps pieces has been shaky at best this year. Part of this is due to the increase in corps members (more people always means more of a chance for chaos), but part of it is also due to the shift in who makes up the corps. Prior to this year, we had a number of older and more experienced girls to pad the corps with, which held the group together. However, we lost two of these girls to professional companies, one to college and one to musical theater, which means that our group is comprised mostly of girls under the age of 14. This lack of experience shows, with a lot of uncertain movements and panicked expressions. The girls are so afraid of messing up that they won’t even do anything a lot of the time.

Something our director has said many times in the past, and many more times recently, is, “Doing something wrong is better than doing nothing at all.” In ballet, it is easier to correct a step than to try to get someone to actually do something. Our problem right now is that we can’t bring ourselves to push hard enough. Hopefully, we will be able to find the proper drive soon, so that we can be good enough come show time.