When Mary Ann and I entered the ballet room for our first class under Tatiana Alexandrovna (in Russia, we always address elders by their first two names as a sign of respect), the first words I heard her say were: “Are these the two Filipinas?” She was asking Lyala, a classmate who had guided us to the room. During that initial class, I couldn’t remember a single combina- tion she gave. Aside from the fact that I couldn’t understand a word she was saying, I was also spellbound by her grace as she explained and gave each exercise. She was, as my grandmother so aptly put it when she saw my mentor for the first time, “poetry in motion.”
Wow!
I should have said “Ouch!” I had no idea that ballet could be so painful or so complicated until I met her. Her classes were very, very difficult. I struggled through each combination, my muscles seeming to want to do the opposite of what she wanted, though my mind was aiming to please. After the first few classes, my whole body hurt from the strain of trying to cope with an entirely different form of training. Madame Udalenkova was never satisfied. Our legs could always turn out more and extensions could always be higher. Two of the first Russian words that I mastered were trudno (difficult) and bolno (painful). My only respite from the physical and mental pressure were the moments I stood transfixed and mesmerized as Tatiana Alexandrovna demonstrated each combination, her legs and feet in a 180º turnout rotation and her arms fluidly making each transition.
At that point, Tatiana seemed unaware that I could hardly understand her and that even if she just kept quiet and only
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