Back to ballet, but no more lace tutus

Flash… flash… Not long ago, I suddenly remembered how my daughter Josephine tied the shoelaces of Liia’s shoes as little girls.  That made me recall ballet classes and tying the ribbons of my pink toe shoes. My mother made me take them as a child of five. Holding my hand, we walked to the studio. With intent eyes, she watched my every movement as Ricardo Cassell taught me and I was guaranteed dire consequences when I didn’t do well. She was a moving spirit for an only daughter. Mr. Cassell was a strict teacher, training us, I could say, in a most unusual way. For instance, in perfecting the arabesques, he would put a lighted cigarette under our extended legs so we wouldn’t put them down… a technique that seemed torturous even though we knew he wouldn’t really burn us. It’s a pity then that Catholic schools — and Maryknoll was no exception — frowned at ballet altogether and prohibited students from taking up dancing for the same reason that girls must never exhibit their bodies publicly by wearing bathing suits. But my love for the dance was so tremendous that I secretly continued going to class. I had daily classes that began with warm-up exercises at the barre we held for support. We were taught to focus on a single point on the wall as we pirouetted. On my first ballet recital, I was in a red and black lace tutu, my hair pulled in a bun. This was held in Far Eastern University so long ago. Their auditorium was the only one and the best. It had the biggest stage with evenly laid flooring. I remember being the lady from Spain at 12 years old. With the energy of a youngster, having memorized each step I looked high up, never on the floor below, performing turns and leaps, holding my black and red fan. I saw Pacita Madrigal Warns dancing. I danced with Mrs. Herbert Zipper whose husband was an outstanding conductor.  Having accomplished that, it was back to regular dancing and training. After each ballet lesson, I went home, my mother still clutching my small hands, with either a smile of fulfillment on my lips or the fear of punishment.

The rewards of ballet are plentiful. Because all motion flows from the dancer’s upright axis, one’s body parts must be correctly centered to permit ease and stability. Ballet gave me better, more upright posture. As dancing requires body coordination, it enhances grace and fluidity of movement. By the way, we also got a little tap as a threat from Mr. Ricardo Casell who held a stick. A mistake in our posture, stance, feet and hands… oops, there went the stick’s tap. I learned to focus and concentrate on the sequence of my dance steps, commanding discipline. In the latter years, my ballet teacher was Yvonne delos Reyes, my aunt when Ricardo Cassell left the Philippines.

Now I am back to adult ballet class on and off with Tony Gonzales Garcia. My mother no longer holds my hand each time I go to class. No more lace tutus. No more lighted cigarette under my legs. No fear of castigation if I miss a pirouette. What is still there is the eagerness to be among would-be professional dancers in a ballet studio. Now more than ever, I appreciate ballet as an outlet to heal an aching spirit and straighten up one’s back, to feel my heart throb… I am single, young again with my parents and my two obedient brothers, Ramon and Martin.

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High school memories seep into my consciousness, I don’t even realize they’re still there: love letters confiscated by teachers, high school students running through corridors with the reprimand, “Don’t make noise as you run. Run like gazelles…” And then baseball games. What’s the meaning of this burst from yesterday?  To assess my life? Is it a consequence of age increasing? Maybe that’s it. 

So it’s time then to be grateful to grandparents who doted over me. I must credit my grandparents for many of my inherent traits, graciousness born out of education, elegance. My grandmothers were both very dignified-looking women. They had an eye for fashion and jewelry to match and an accessorizing talent that was passed on to me. One day, Dada — the term of endearment for my mother’s mother which I coined as a baby — said as we were in the car, on our way to Escolta: “When I die, all my jewelry will be yours.” I asked her, “When will you die?” She lived to be 93.

Many of my cherished childhood memories are again of my grandparents. Lolo Moy gave me the assurance I was beautiful. He sang old songs I sing till today — Be My Love and Spanish Eyes. Lola Gloring gathered jasmine flowers from her garden to put in my drawer with my underwear and handkerchief until I was aged 18.  Every week, she gave me a bottle of butong pakwan painstakingly peeled by her for me with a knife. She never ever opened it with her teeth. I remember her watering her plants at 4 a.m. and spending Sundays cleaning the bathroom for us until water seeped into the walk-in closet. I’m also a stickler for clean, immaculate bathrooms, so that during our fieldwork and out-of-town sojourns, my cousins Raul and Ricky Manzano dash to the bathroom after I clean it. Lola filled a Johnson’s Powder container with coins every weekend for my weekly allowance to add to that my grandpa gave me to buy the prohibited dirty ice cream. I never ate it then but now I’m the boss: I’m free to taste the keso whenever I like. No other language could be spoken in the house except Spanish and English.

Bits and pieces of what has passed throughout the years appear: my grandmother touching the table to feel the dust, I’m doing that now. Lola Gloring hated dust and wore a bandana inside her Cadillac to protect her hair, that time there were no air conditioners in cars. I was exasperated with the dust in Tarlac with uncemented road in the ‘60s, we sped on every time I crowned town queens with Ninoy. After all that dust and shower, my beauty regimen then was alcohol and powder. Now my children do that to their children. Although my children tease me about it, powder has been a common cure for all sicknesses — virus, bacteria, perspiration, fever, bad tummy. Really, the saying “He who laughs first, laughs last” abounds in my family.

I believe my unrelenting spirit came from both sides of the genes I inherited. Our families are go-getters, resolute, stubborn, persistent and… persistent, period. He who knows his past will surely reap the fruits of the present and prepare for a better future.  That’s us! We have our weaknesses too, but that I am going to keep secret.