By Risa E. Sanders

Nearly everything I've needed to know in life I learned in a dance studio. You see, a lifetime ago I was a dancer. It was my identity as incontestably as being a girl, or blue-eyed, was. It defined me. At 3, I pestered my mother for dance lessons, and once I started, virtually nothing else existed in my universe. My closest friendships were forged in a studio that drew kids from vastly different backgrounds: trust-fund babies and the mailman's daughter; fundamentalists and liberals; Jewish and anti-Semitic. But we were all one in the pursuit of a triple pirouette and the longest sustained balance en pointe. It didn't matter what homes we returned to. The theater was our temple and dancers were my fellow congregants.

I can see our piano player (yes, we had live accompanists in those days). He was rail-thin, smoked like a chimney, had a hacking cough and stained fingernails. I was struck that, despite no air conditioning, he always wore a dress shirt and tie and never missed a class. In the 15 years I danced at that studio, he didn't speak a word to me or look me in the eye. He just stared ahead at that aging, brown upright piano, mesmerized by God-knows-what memories that sustained him. I imagined that he had been destined for a great career as a jazz musician and here he was . . . stuck playing waltzes for a gaggle of 9-year-old girls.

The Florida heat was stifling and there wasn't a drinking fountain in our studio, either. But we didn't care. The soda shop across the street made gigantic cherry limeades with genuine Key limes that were deliciously tart and came in enormous cups that lasted for hours. We twirled on counter stools with our hot dogs and limeades, gossiping after school. In the nick of time, we'd dash across the street to change for class. I see the harlequin-patterned dressing room floor, covered with huge dust balls that rolled under the benches like tumbleweed, and costumes hanging like fairies above our heads. The air was thick as we wriggled into our regulation pink tights and black leotards. Hair pulled into slick, tight, high ponytails or buns.

The mirrored studio where I spent my childhood was a large, bare room, save for the ballet barres, a rosin box, the piano and a bench where Miss Mervyn held court. She was a flaming redhead who had grown plump in middle age but was blessed with beautiful green eyes to match her Cadillac, plus porcelain skin, delicate features and the ability to make my heart soar with one of her rarely dispensed compliments. I watched myself in that mirror 25 hours a week. Head high, stomach in, hips out, seat under, stomach in, elbows rounded, knees straight, feet pointed, stomach in. The mantra of ballet. I am embarrassed to admit that to this day, I cannot pass a mirror without checking myself. "Head, stomach, seat . . . check, check, check." Other old habits die hard as well. My son complains that I move my hands too much when I speak, and my husband is vexed that I step in or bump into things because I don't look down. Of course I don't. I look out -- beyond the footlights.

Performances looked effortless onstage, so graceful and ethereal, but the view backstage was raucous, crude at times, rough and athletic. Bleeding toes, layers of body warmers, bandages, and delicate-looking dancers stretching in the most inelegant poses. I loved the process of preparation: the smell of Aqua Net in the dressing room, the creamy pancake makeup, the warmth of the stage lights and being blinded by footlights, the hush of the audience during the opening notes of music, and the whooshing ripple of the heavy velvety curtain as it went up. Mostly, I craved that feeling of being unreachable onstage and moving without thought, transported by the music.

My plans to move to New York to dance professionally evaporated immediately after my high school graduation. Family illness coupled with my own injuries and the dawning realization of life alone in the big city brought my plans to an end. I reasoned that, despite talent, I didn't have the height for the Rockettes, lacked the voice for Broadway and was too busty for ballet. So I turned off the light, left for college and quit dancing. I eventually earned a PhD and convinced myself that I had made a solid, logical, mature decision. I simply ignored the fact that I cried whenever I watched a dance performance.

Fast-forward 25 years. I retire from my practice as a clinical psychologist and joyfully become a late-in-life mother. My own mother dies a precious few years later and I am suffused with loneliness for her. As if by instinct, I return to my childhood home, the dance studio. Something slides into place that I have been unwilling to admit has been dislocated and paining me all these years.

Although it never became my career, dance provided me with a broad set of life tools that helped me survive my father's harrowing illness, graduate school and countless other challenges. Dance taught me to endure, to deal with physical discomfort and outright pain. To delay gratification and accept criticism gracefully. To maintain composure and never let them see you sweat. It taught me that nothing worth having comes without effort and even if you are the best, never take success for granted because there's always someone waiting in the wings. Ultimately, I learned, you're out there on your own and you better know your part.

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