Tulle Skirt and Fond Memories

I’ve had this skirt for quite a while, but I was much too skinny for it when I bought it. I was really excited when I put it on today and it fit me perfectly. My bestie Tegan has had dibs on taking photos of me in this one since I bought it over a year ago, but alas I have gone behind her back today. She’s a total photophile (light lover) so she’s now jealous on two counts here because we took photos in this skirt without her and we had amazing light.

Last year when I was in a new town with very few friends and I was finding my feet, I worked a shift with a beautiful lady called Sarah Louie. I noticed her doing some ballet moves and I asked her about it. We chatted for a while about ballet and I told her I would love to do classes and that I had looked into them when I first moved to Perth. She said she would go with me so I found us a school to attend and we signed up together.

The classes were just as awesome as I thought they would be. Our teacher, Ben, was loads of fun and had an excellent attention to detail and quality of technique. It was really difficult to think of everything at first, just like when I first started martial arts. I would tuck my hips in, only to notice I’d lost focus of my feet, so I would fix that to notice I was hunching my shoulders. Having Sarah in the class with me was amazing. She’s an experienced dancer so I could look at her at any time to know what I was actually meant to be doing and copy her.

At the time it didn’t seem like such a big deal. Classes were challenging but we had fun. We’d talk about technique afterwards (I always started classes feeling like a gawky elephant but acquired some level of grace by the end). We went and bought gear together and ended up with matching leotards. It was brilliant. Ballet is an amazing physical art form. There is a complex mix of precision, control, discipline, strength, and emotion. Emotion comes last, and seems to be the sum total of all the other elements. That is a level that I have never reached, I am always too busy thinking about the positioning of my body. I’m sure I’ll get there one day, Sarah was amazing at it. Anyway, looking back now just writing this makes me realise just how isolated I was, and how much those ballet classes meant to me. Thanks Sarah!

Putting my interest in ballet on Instagram during those classes also helped me connect with my Instagram bestie: Mona. She’s an amazing woman and we have since become pen pals. We share heaps of interests like Harry Potter and Doctor Who. Speaking of Harry Potter, I’m pretty sure if Hogwarts taught dance, Ravenclaw would learn ballet.

I fell in love with this skirt because of a chest-of-drawers I grew up with. I think one of my uncles made it for my mum. When we were little it was white and had old prints of ballet dancers on it. The dancers wore big, full tulle skirts like this one. It’s always been such a romantic image for me. When I saw the skirt online, I guess I got captured by that nostalgia. I still have the chest-of-drawers, but it has been through a few remakes since then and it no longer has pictures of dancers on it. It’s now full to the brim with my letter writing stationery.

See my tattoo there? It’s of my sister’s name. In 2006 she and her unborn son died from an Amniotic Fluid Embolism. It was so unheard of that even medical practitioners dealing with the case were learning about it. Yet, AFE is the number one cause of maternal deaths in Australia. Today, as I publish this post, it is AFE awareness day, so please have a read to learn a little more and donate if you can. http://afe.donorpages.com/AFEAwareness2015/Maja/