The Green-Eyed Dancer

BY Lyndal Walker

It started so innocently. Just an evening class for exercise – and fun. Then it got competitive with the ‘dance-off’. Then there were more classes. Then there were performances in major arts festivals. What is so appealing about jazz ballet that so many of my friends now spend their evenings in rows, simultaneously moving to music while dressed in lycra? Think Fame, think Flashdance: yes, jazz ballet.

OK, so my ‘issues’ with jazz ballet go back further than last year. One day when I was in grade one, I turned up at school to hear much six-year-old banter about a jazz ballet class the night before. Not only had I not been there, but I had also known nothing of it. I had not noticed the ‘notice’ I must have dutifully taken home to my parents: the same treacherous parents who did not mention jazz ballet or the fact that I would not be attending this most important of suburban inductions to femininity. As I write this, dear reader, I still feel an unresolved anguish as I think of all my little friends in jiffies and pink nylon boleros, and me at home watching The Curiosity Show, oblivious.

Keen to keep the wounds festering, I have resisted adult jazz ballet in some sort of act of resistance. Reclaim the exclusion! As such, I retain my outsider status and can thus offer you journalistic integrity in my reporting of this major cultural phenomenon. Well, actually, like many cultural reporters, I’m not entirely immune to nepotism.

Yoga, squash and jogging are exercise forms that do not generate conversation quite like dance classes. Dance holds a social appeal matched only by its gossip factor. Dinner parties, Facebook feeds and trams were filled with chatter about jazz ballet for the first few months of this local craze. The question of just who excelled at jazz ballet was an intriguing one. Stories of gross lacks of coordination were hysterical. Descriptions of outfits including off the shoulder t-shirts and twisted headbands had me seething with envy.

I took my notepad out into the field and interviewed a few of the dancers prior to the ‘dance-off’. An unidentified ex-housemate stated very clearly that her motivations were as follows: winning, and showing off. It started to add up for me. Showing off, dressing up and socialising: these are things I love. I was beginning to see the appeal.

A popular young man told me that, socially, it was one of the best things he’d ever done. I thought that was a big call. But he said he: a) met new people, and; b) humiliated himself in front of people he already knew, to the extent that their friendships became closer. For many, it seems this process of making a fool of yourself is fun. Oh well, excuse me for maintaining my dignity, my journalistic integrity and the feelings of exclusion I had when I was six.