Today’s ballet workout was, simply put, so good.

I had made some improvements after my last class. It turns out the bun you twist your long hair into either needs to be high up on your head or it needs to be flatter, coiled elegantly against the back, most likely secured with pins (not too skilled in this area and might get overwhelmed by a YouTube tutorial).

I made these logical conclusions all on my own after not being able to lay my head down properly when we did exercises from the back. As a result you end up feverishly sticking your hair up in a sloppy scramble, while trying to stretch your legs up in the air and pay attention to when you’re supposed to be breathing in and out. Today I came with a side braid! Problem solved! So what if some of it comes out behind my ears. I’m a primadonna and there’s no stopping me.

I also ordered a pair of ballet slip-ons on Amazon, after seeing them on other women in the group. The product info lists a tip suggesting I order a size larger, so I do. As soon as they arrive, nude-colored and with extra leather pads sewn on the soles, and I put them on, I understand. While stretchy and bendy, they sit snugly on the foot and my own size would definitely have been too tight a fit. As I walk out of the changing rooms to wait until the gym opens, I see some of the participants in socks glancing at my footwear the way I did during my first ballet workout. Look and learn!

The shoes are a better solution for me than socks and, to me, my stretched out feet look better in the mirror, further inflaming my romanticized ballerina fantasies, which is, of course, why I picked a ballet workout in the first place.

The trainer from my first class appears, red lipstick, bright smile, neatly coiled hair and black exercise clothes. SHE does everything in socks, but then she also bends forward from a sitting position three times further than I do, while giving us instructions on how to breathe and what to do. The by now more familiar French terms sprinkle the workout session and it feels good to stretch properls. Bits from Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker and Sleeping Beauty play, the sparkling beauty of the music mixing with the sound of all of us breathing in and blowing out.

Slight crunching sounds accompany our almost in-sync pliés and we are told to not go deeper than we can. There are more participants this time and I can’t quite see our instructor, so I end up copying the movements of a girl I recognize from my first ballet workout, the one in serious-looking rehearsing-dancer-inspired gear. She’s clearly good at this, and it also turns out she has a friendly face.

I mess up the minor choreography in the end again – how do you switch between the tendus properly? But I love all the arm movements accompanying the sequence. I am a star, I AM the ballet, I’m… Oh, class is over. We clap. Just like at the end of any good performance.