Today, I chat with Harmony, who recently achieved her goal of her first pair of pointe shoes before her upcoming 50th birthday!

We talk about her absolute undying love of ballet, what it was like for her to take her very first ballet class a little over a year ago, and why she thinks anyone with dreams of ballet should just get started and hop in with us!

Follow Harmony’s story on instagram @ballet_harmony.

Enjoy!

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Julie: Welcome to the show, Harmony. I'm so excited to have you on this week to talk about your story with ballet. Thanks for being here!

Harmony: I'm thrilled to be here with you. Thank you so much for asking me. This will be fun.

Julie: So we met… I mean, I don't know how long I've been following you on Instagram, probably since the beginning of your ballet journey because you post such fun stuff. And then we really got to know each other over this lockdown situation when you were dancing all the time and we share a love for peloton… we share a love for the peloton instructors and the whole peloton family. And now you got en pointe with me for the first time, we got your first pair of pointe shoes now you're all up en pointe, doing all this fun stuff. So we really came to get to know each other this year. I'm excited to actually get to hear your story and sit down and actually listen to how it all started.

Harmony: Okay, where do you want me to start?

Julie: Okay, let's start with ballet. So you started ballet very recently. Is that true?

Harmony: I started last year. Let's see in the spring, I guess I did like stumbled upon adult ballet videos. And I was just like, wow, how long has this been a thing. Because I was one of those little girls who was just obsessed with ballet with like seeing ballerinas and male ballet dancers and just thinking they were all the most gorgeous things I'd ever seen. I love… I remember even loving their athleticism, that you that you could see their muscles, their costumes, of course, tiaras and tutus, and all that stuff. But I never had a chance to take ballet.

And honestly, I was thinking about this earlier, because I thought you'd ask. I don't even remember knowing that little girls took ballet like that, that just wasn't in my universe growing up. So I didn't do that. But I stumbled upon videos last year, early 2019. And started gently, taking some classes and I'm sure there were a million of your videos that I followed as well during that time. And I was trying to get the nerve up to take a live ballet class. And that's super intimidating, because you can fake some things. But you cannot fake going to your first ballet class. Because, I didn't know anything. I didn't know if you walked in and you were assigned to place at the barre or anything. So anyway, we were on a trip to Alaska, my husband and I to celebrate our 10 year anniversary, and we stopped in Vancouver afterwards. And looking back that was one of the greatest things because we met my mom and stepdad in Vancouver for a couple days. It was Canada Day Weekend and there was this… they have a wonderful ballet studio there. It's called ballet lounge. And that was my first… I finagle that so we would take ballet together my husband and me… my very first ballet class in person, June 30, 2019. And it was super fun. Love … I just loved everything about it, and came back to Sarasota and finally got the nerve up to go to Sarasota Ballet, the Sarasota Ballet’s Ballet School in their adult program. So, yeah, that's how it all started.

Julie: I have so many questions. What is there not to ask about that? So first of all, you took your first ballet class on vacation. And second of all, you brought your husband to it. You made your husband take ballet with you.

Harmony: Yeah.

Julie: Oh, my goodness.

Harmony: Well, okay, I have the kind of husband who is game for anything. He's fantastic. He's super supportive. So he didn't even bat an eyelash. And I was trying to tell him like, there'll be other guys there. You know, there will be other people our age there …. not really…. Vancouver is a very young city. So it was all females and almost everybody looked like they were in their 20s. And some of them were really good. You know how it is when you go to adult ballet classes, you're gonna get a whole range.

But yeah, it was it was really fun. And on our cruise, I practiced every day in the cabin, on our cruise ship, and I wanted to be ready.

And this is how little I knew when I got there: the check-in lady looked at my ballet slippers. And she was like, I guess those will do. They were huge on me. I didn't even know how they were supposed to fit. But you know, I had a bun in and I had a black leotard, and I was like, I'm ready. Let's do this. I have not locked back.

Julie: Okay, so you, you show up in a ballet class with perhaps clown sized ballet slippers and your husband? And does he know anything about ballet at this point? Has he been practicing at this point?

Harmony: No, he knew nothing.

Julie: You didn't even give him a crash course you prepared and then threw him into the deep end.

Harmony: And like I was exposed to ballet as a child. It was actually in pop culture a lot. There were some famous ballet dancers on TV. I think somewhere on the Muppet Show once in a while, you know, there were there was ballet movies. He really had not been exposed to ballet much at all. And now I have a barre and a dance floor, but I didn't have anything like that. So no, he went in with no no understanding of it at all.

He's almost six foot eight. And it was looking back, I'm sure people were like, “Oh, my God get a load of these two, They're like, they don't know what they're doing.” But we tried and we had a great time, you know, and that's the thing about ballet. If you can relax into it, you can feel like you're expressing yourself in the music, you know, even in the most simple exercises.

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“That’s the thing about ballet. If you can relax into it, you can feel like you’re expressing yourself in the music, even in the most simple exercises.”

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So I think secretly he really really enjoyed it. But it was a fun day. And it was nice to have him there because he took pictures like it was documented. I have pictures. My very first family pictures on my Instagram are of that day. It's nice that we have it so. So anyway, that's how it started a year ago, about a year and a half ago was my first class.

Julie: Oh my gosh, this is um, this is amazing. Is this. Okay, so you did? You posted on Instagram that you guys did my 500 rélevé challenge together? Is that why he has ballet slippers?

Harmony: He has ballet slippers because he doesn't do a little valley with me nowadays, once in a while Oh god. I don't want to make it sound like it's even regular. But once in a while, like if I'm doing an exercise and some music has a good beat. And it's an easy tendu to exercise. Or like we do Madame Olga’s dégagé and Swan arms exercise together. So we do that together. So yeah, once in a while he does do some exercises with me. And if you do any ballet ever, it's better to have ballet slippers than anything else. So you know, when I saw they were in his eyes, I was like, yep, click buy.

Julie: You guys are amazing. That's just That's hilarious. And and also, I mean, I think ballet is great for everyone. And he's a runner too. So it's great for me. It's great for anyone to develop that level of muscle control and body awareness and everything you learned in ballet. So that's awesome.

Harmony: Yeah. And he has great respect for it, too. He's a very strong, ultra athlete. But he looks at what I do, and he's like, holy cow. How do you guys do that? Like, ballet dancers are amazing. But you know where he respects everything we do, which is nice.

Julie: So you took that first class have you just basically been going ever since then?

Harmony: So okay, I started last summer in Sarasota so summer 2019. And I was working and the pandemic has changed a lot. The biggest change for me is that I'm not working. For the last five years before the pandemic started, and we will never go back to this, but my husband and I worked would work frequently, regularly 17, 18, 19, 20 days in a row. That's just not healthy. But there are times in your life when you want to do that, for whatever reason.

So anyway, that's over. But I was working so much that I really only got to the studio once or twice a week, maybe once in a blue moon three times a week. And I was taking like absolute beginner, level one, and I would dip my toe into level two once in a while, once th