Practically Speaking

As my country cousins would say: That gal is one good toe dancer!

I think it's time to add Toe Dancing to the Elmbrook High School Curriculum. Give the competition something to shoot at!

Kyle's reply: I have never heard of ballet being taught in high school--certainly pointe (toe dancing) would never be taught to the masses. But introductory ballet would be beneficial. It builds stamina, grace, and strength. I've heard football players sometimes take a class to help with flexibility and strength.

Back in my day...(oh-oh, that is always what older people say) we did have a quarter of a year spent on modern dance and another on folk / ballroom dancing in our all girls gym classes. (I don't know what the boys did for that semester.) It was quite fun.

By the way, ballet purists might say her "feet" were not very good and that what she and her partner did was not really "ballet", but one cannot dismiss their unbelievable performance.

I remember at Milwaukee Ballet, there was one choreographer that required a lot of difficult lifts for his piece. The male dancers were all whining about it. Then Torvill and Dean came to town. (For you younger readers, Torvill and Dean were the 1980s Olympic Ice Dancing pair that revolutionized Ice Dancing. They were know for their unusual and difficult choreography.) Any visiting dance troupe would come to the studio and take class with our dancers (a common practice). One bennifit of working at the ballet was that the visiting group would give us free tickets to their performance! So we all went to see Torvill and Dean.  Well, once our dancers saw the very difficult lifts Torvill and Dean did--plus they did it while skating--most of the whining stopped in the studio! I cannot imagine what those dancers would have thought if the Asian pair on the youtube had performed back then. They might have packed up their pointe shoes and gone home!