Showing posts with label Ballet. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ballet. Show all posts

Sunday, December 01, 2024

Everything I Know About Wine I learned in Ballet Class ~ A Revision

Well here we are December 1st! Wow, what a year it’s been. For me, it started off with surgery and a knee replacement. And then, like a snowball – on a one-way road down to hell - it just kept accelerating towards chaos. I’d share more about the trials and tribulations of yours truly, but quite frankly, I’m fed up with them. So, I’m going to pivot, now that my leg is much better.

When I was in university, the arts department chairman and his wife, who ran the dance department, “recruited” me to join the ballet class. They “needed” men, and I was low hanging fruit for the picking. I “volunteered” at first reluctantly, and then after I realized I would be in a close setting with 35 women, just them and me sweating to the oldies, I thought again. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea after all.

The epiphany moment I had was when we were doing this “opening of the flower to the sunrise” choreography. I was the “pistil” and the women were the “petals.” They all laid their hands on me and did some movement and their pressure held me in place while I held them up, in a manner of speaking. It was then that I realized that not only was ballet an amazing discipline, both physical and cerebral, but it was a model for things to come in my future life in wine. Yeah, I know, it’s a stretch. But so was the all the stuff I learned about wine from the nuns and Catholic school. So, here goes:

Sunday, February 05, 2023

The Valuable and Unanticipated Lessons Ballet Taught Me About Wine

Ballet troupe performing at San Francisco's Cathedral of St. Mary
This past week, when the outside world was covered in ice, and we were marooned on our little island, I started going through boxes to purge old belongings. Along the way I ran into all my old ballet notes. Ballet, you ask?

Yes, it seemed that the art department in college was a little short on men for the ballet troupe, so I was “volunteered” by the department head to suit up and hit the barre.

I learned a few things along the way, some of them pertinent to wine appreciation.

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