La Clase de Balet: Tales from the Dancing Feet

This Tuesday, I will be teaching the Jiu Valley’s 4th ballet class! Little would I have imagined when training for years in the States that my abiding love for dance would eventually find expression in post-Communist Romania. I know many of you have been praying specifically for the little feet that would come to this hopeful ballet class, and have the little feet come indeed! I had 6 children my first class, 9 my second class, and 12 this past Tuesday! For Lupeni and the Jiu Valley, this is simply incredible. Because of the high levels of distrust and suspicion among these mothers, the increase of children every week has been an unfolding miracle.

Most of you know that the possibility for this class arose when Brandi (Dana Bates' wife who partnered with him in founding New Horizons) realized I was a dancer and asked if I would be willing to teach her 4-year-old aspiring ballerina Briana and any other little Romanian girls who might be interested. Of course, I was completely astonished and elated. As I had wrestled through the discernment process of coming back to Romania, the unexpected opening of a space to share dance was like God icing the edges of His calling.

In my first couple weeks here, Briana was ready to do ballet every time she saw me and would say, “Lindsay, let’s do ballet now!” She taught me her “magic jumps” that involved a complicated twirl in the air with one leg and both arms thrown up and told me she had been dancing for 50 years. Her enthusiasm was so affecting! The week before our first class, she also proudly gave me a formal invitation to la clase de balet, complete with an image of tutu-bedecked mice dancing en pointe.

Brandi did so much to spread the word for our hopeful class and even acquired many pairs of ballet shoes that a friend of hers collected and brought over from the States. As I walked to our class building that first Tuesday morning and pondered Brandi saying that anywhere from 2 to 6 girls might come, I felt that all 6 would be there. And -- with little feet stretching, all mothers watching, and Andreea from Uricani translating, I began my first ballet class in Romania...with 6 students! Daria, Briana, Adela, Alina, Andreea, and Rebecca were so darling, imitating my every move before Andreea could even finished translating.

The first class seemed a wonderful success to Brandi and I, but we knew that the following week would tell. As I rushed to the next class with a loaf of hot paine cu piersici (peach bread) that I'd just pulled out of the oven for snack, increase was the word on my heart. That day, children and their mothers seemed to pour through the door all at once -- and there were 9, even one boy! The grandmother of one of the girls told me her Claudia had been asking about ballet class since 7am that morning, as she did not want to be late! “Domnisoara Lindsay!” little Claudia would call to me while putting her leg up in arabesque. Another older girl who came for the first time, Diana, had been taking a modern class somewhere in Lupeni but decided to quit that class and come only to mine. It was such joy to see kids twirling, hopping, and giggling in balletic glee and to glimpse the smiles on the faces of the mothers. The class ended up having quite an audience, as Dana and two Americans visiting from Northwestern College stopped by as well. Who knew the possibilities for building social capital could be so diverse?

This past Tuesday, twelve children took the floor! 12! I've been integrating formal ballet training with all kinds of creativity and energy to make class fun and exciting. We sprinkle fairy dust on our toes when we stretch; imagine someone in the ceiling pulling on the string attached to our heads so that we stand up very tall in first position; blow a big bubble into our arms to practice ballet arms; dance phrenetically to the Nutcracker before striking first, second, or third position when the music stops; practice plies and tendus from lines in the centre; and turn en releve on ballerina toes, among many other things. We have no barre, no mirror, and no wooden floor -- yet for now, we have what we need.

This is so unique in the Jiu Valley, as no sort of ballet is available here. For these little girls, it’s the highlight of their week, and as Brandi has said for her and Briana, it has brought such life to them. My prayer since the first day has been increase – increase of joy, of life, of trust, of freedom, of children. I've been amazed and humbled to see God already working this increase, and though I do not know His purposes for our class, I just pray that His name would be lifted up by these dancing little toes.

Beyond this, I have a personal vision for beginning a dance program for adolescent Romanian girls in the Jiu Valley, and though I’d need to stay in Romania for several more years to actually get such a program off the ground, opening the Lupeni School of Ballet within the first month of being here is quite a beginning!