I almost want to say “I’ve forgotten what inspired this list,” only I haven’t. It’s there in the list. I’ll leave it up to you to figure out which item 😀
You might be a dancer if:
- You go to a gathering where lots of people are barefoot and you think, “Wow, all these people have really flat feet.”
- You can’t stop your hands from twitching when you’re watching a ballet.
- You manage to count every piece of music into phrases of 8.
- When someone says, “Count me in!” you automatically shout, “…Five, six, seven, eight!”
- You find yourself choreographing short modern dance pieces … to the jingles from YouTube ads.
- Ditto TV and radio jingles.
- Let’s not even talk about movie soundtracks.
- You have officially spent so much of your life wearing leotards that normal clothes feel weird.
- You own six pairs of technique shoes, each with different characteristics and applications, that are essentially indistinguishable to normal people.
- And pointe shoes. Let’s not talk about those, either.
- You do rond de jambes. In line. At the supermarket.
- You can intelligently discuss intra-company politics at a ballet company halfway around the world — but you honestly have no idea who your local representative is.
- Your friends arrive at your home for a party only to stand around looking awkward as you hastily stash all the dance belts that were drying in front of the air conditioner vent.
- Your friends don’t even bother to look awkward because you know them all from class.
- But sometimes you don’t recognize them with their clothes on, which *is* totally awkward.

“And then I walked right up to Pierre and introduced myself and he said, ‘Marie … We’ve been partners for six years.’ It was awful.” (Image: Henri Rouen, The Ballet Class, 1875, via Wikimedia.)
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About asher
Me in a nutshell:
Standard uptight ballet boy. Trapeze junkie. Half-baked choreographer. Budding researcher. Transit cyclist. Terrible homemaker. Neuro-atypical. Fabulous. Married to a very patient man.
Bachelor of Science in Psychology (2015).
Proto-foodie, but lazy about it.
Cat owner ... or, should I say, cat own-ee? ... dog lover. Equestrian.
Where the other passengers on the speeding train hang on to things, you turn out and use your cheetah eyes:-)
Ha, yes!
Or when you pass a dancer on the streets of New York and you share a secret smile – strangers, but knowing each other’s soul.
True! It works in Chicago, too 😀
Less subtly, the guy in front of me in the queue to get into the Kusama exhibition in London the other day popped a développé to impress his girlfriend. “Did you just see what I did?”
Girlf was in a neat fifth, not particularly impressed.
Girlfriend sounds like she knows what’s what 🙂