This year I turned 40, and I started ballet.
For the first time in my life.
That goes for both.
Starting ballet has made me feel challenged and vulnerable, but also curious, inspired, and at times slightly proud.
And this week I’m celebrating that I’m being moved up a level.
I have spent a lot of my life believing “I don’t belong in this room.” Not because I didn’t want to be there, but because I felt like I didn’t quite fit in. This was true in school, in offices when entrusted to lead teams, and onstage at conferences.
I distinctly remember the feeling I had backstage at my first music conference, having to go on after Mark Ronson. “Who am I? What was I thinking accepting this invitation? Why would anyone listen to me? I haven’t even graduated yet!” I felt I would implode.
Over the years, those feelings have dissipated. In some cases they’ve completely disappeared. Sometimes they still show up unexpectedly. And sometimes they’re as loud as ever. Even while people say things like “it comes so natural to you.” Oh no, it doesn’t.
A few years ago, I decided to start working out a bit more. I started going to HIIT classes and struggled to coordinate my jumping jacks. My arms and legs somehow went out of sync. I had wild hair and a beer belly, and felt most at home in bars, clubs, and concert venues. I smoked, too, when out in Berlin’s smoky venues. I felt completely out of place in fitness studios.
After a few weeks, the discomfort faded. I could see that I wasn’t the only person who felt uncomfortable or struggled with seemingly basic things. It was most of us.
I pushed ahead and started going to spinning classes. The same thing happened. Then a pilates studio opened next door, and I ventured out of my comfort zone again. I was ten years older than most people and usually the only guy in the room. But I got used to that too. I became fitter and stronger. My body grew more capable, and I became more comfortable in it.
I pushed on.
I started taking dance classes. Absolutely terrifying.
What do you mean, move around in a bright room with a giant mirror, where everyone can see me, while completely sober? I wrote about this last year:
But somehow, I became more comfortable.
I actually realised how important dance was to me. When I was young, I was always told that I was a “brain person,” not a physical person. It made me give up on things before I had the chance to discover whether I enjoyed them.
I also grew up in an environment where dance classes were seen as “for girls.” As a boy, you would have been bullied if you took dance seriously. In fact, where I grew up you’d be bullied for being interested in anything other than football (this type: ⚽️).
I liked to think I wasn’t scared to stand out or do things my own way, but I realised those messages had affected me anyway. Had I been socialised differently, there is a version of my life in which I could have become devoted to dance from a young age.
By my late thirties, I gave a bit less of a shit. I couldn’t care less whether people thought my hobbies were feminine, or believed they said something about who I might be attracted to. Who I’m attracted to is nobody’s business anyway, except for the people I choose to share it with.
A ballet-loving friend upped the ante by inviting me to a barre class. I felt uncomfortable again, for all the reasons I’ve mentioned, but I went. It was challenging, but it also gave me something I had been missing in dance and pilates.
The dance classes I attended focused on choreography or improvisation, and lacked a training element. Pilates offered that discipline, but not the connection to music that I found in barre.
Curious, and I don’t quite recall what finally pushed me, I decided to check out a ballet class some time. Discomfort level: final boss.
There I was at 40, one of the least graceful people in almost every room and often the only man, being corrected in front of a room full of women in their twenties. Many of them were returning to ballet after practising it as children.
But ballet offered so much in return. There was the connection to music, and the connection to history. What fascinates me about classical music is that it has to be performed to exist as an artwork. Unlike, say, a painting. People have to come together to recreate it. Ballet is the same.
It is mentally and intellectually fascinating. It is physically demanding, but that demand improves my posture, the way I hold myself, and the way I move. Through simple repetition, it is even changing the shape of my body.
Eventually, and I don’t remember when exactly, I began to feel that I belonged in that room. Once I felt more comfortable, I could see more clearly that everyone struggled in their own way.
Now that I’m being moved up a level, I’m looking forward to the discomfort. To feeling overwhelmed. To feeling that I don’t belong. I’ve learned that the story that feeling tells me isn’t true. If I stay with it, it can transform into growth.
In my case, that growth has brought positive changes that extend far beyond the gym or dance studio. Along the way, I quit smoking and drinking. Not mentally framed as a break and without much effort. This time, it felt easy. The habits, even if infrequent, simply no longer fit with what I want to do with my time, my body, or my life.
The strangest thing about this is how new people in my life see me.
They meet the version of me who does ballet, meditates, lifts, rarely uses streaming services or social media, and mostly listens to calm music.
But not long ago, and for a much longer period of my life, I spent many evenings flirting with hangovers. I ordered food and barely used my kitchen, brain dumped on Instagram Stories relentlessly, and found my focus through some of the most intense music you can imagine.
So when people meet me now, it’s strange to realise that they see me differently from how I see myself. I’m still that old person. I just make different choices now.
And in a way, I was always this ‘new’ person too. I just wasn’t making choices in that direction.
This way of thinking owes something to the Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh, whom I should credit for part of my transformation. He wrote and spoke at length about watering wholesome seeds, such as joy, peace, and love, rather than unwholesome ones, such as anger, fear, and hate.
So I’ve come to see my actions, words, and thoughts as nourishment for what I want and don’t want more of in my life, which helps find the right motivation for things. I often put off tidying, but when I remind myself it waters seeds of calm and joy, because I can sit in a beautiful tidy space, it becomes easy to start and might even make the process feel joyful.
Looking back, that’s what ballet means to me.
It means bringing beauty, challenge, inspiration, and joy into my life. It means committing to those things, despite whatever discomfort may arise.
For much of my life, I believed I was simply not the kind of person who belonged in certain rooms. I was wrong about myself.
Ballet is what happened when I let all that go.
ᕱᕱ For your ears ᕱᕱ
When thinking of techno, you may think of rather “full-on” club music. Exhale by Batu & Donato Dozzy is different. It’s a beautiful 47-minute collection which is often subtle, adventurous, hypnotic, but never lacking energy.