To be quite disgruntled that it seems I haven't grown up to be a ballerina.

[Slubberdegullion]

I just think it's quite unfair really.

I did ballet for like 4 or 5 years when I was quite small. Good toes, naughty toes etc etc.

I really REALLY wanted hard to be a ballerina, and I still do, so imagine my shock and dismay when I realise last night that some lovely, bendy, pointy-toes Russian lady is dancing Giselle partnered by Carlos Acosta at the Royal Opera House and I'm just WATCHING her do it at the cinema in Ellesmere Port.

Who can I complain to about this please? There's just no ballet justice in this world

I can't get my head round the fact that I'm actually NOT a rock star. I mean, the mind boggles, I was definitely meant to be one. It crazy.

Damn right Slubber.

I will say this though, the early dancing gave me a fearsome advantage over the many many trainee ninja males. I was much more nimble and able to make my body do what I wanted it to do.

still would quite like to try on "willowy" for a day

I share your disappointment, but feel that the real victim here is my mother who schlepped me back and forth to ballet and modern classes, spent ages creating costumes for various performances (including once sticking shiny 'scales' to a pair of tights atop my head in order that I could be a sort of fishy thing in knickerbockers!) and sat through what must have been THE most tedious productions in the world all for me to grow up to be the shape of a teapot and almost pathologically clumsy.
Noel Streathfield has a lot to answer for...

the Russians are all very well but look at this and tell me it's not the most sublime thing ever. If it's all a bit black and white and 1950's-ish for you, just forward to 1:16 and watch something unimaginably breathtaking

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yspK-XpQF5Q

A fish in knickerbockers...now there's an image

It's as if she's floating nigella, that is astonishing.

oh yes. The Fonteyn clip is just wonderful, thank you Nigellas.

I was expecting to find a horse...an arab on a shipwrecked desert island, or in the highlands, or a whole herd of much prettier than they are in real life brumbies.

To be honest I still half expect to - and find a way to keep them, even though I have nowhere logical to put them and haven't found a neighbour who used to be some sort of big shot riding person who can teach me to ride properly and not like the out of practise ameteur that I am.

I fear though, that realistically I might be a bit old now :(

Twinkly pointe shoes

RedPencils I also entirely blame my dad's refusal to buy me a pony for my failure to become a race jockey (see name...). The fact that I never actually had any riding lessons has nothing to do with it.

I was going to be ballet dancer but then decided on gymnastics. Unfortunately the local village hall (unlike ballet) failed to provide any classes in it.

I had to learn the splits and backwards walkovers all by myself.
Will still do the splits for anyone who asks in the pub (but nearly broke my back attempting the walkover).

You would have made it as a prima ballerina Slubber if only you'd read a few more Lorna Hill books.

(I remember Sibley when she used to serve the tea and cakes at her Mum's cafe!)

I did! I did read the Lorna Hill books! DAMMIT.

Now am lost in a sea of YouTube ballet clips all mocking my lack of ballerina status.

yes! the twinkly pointe shoes are magical even though it's in black and white. It's dreamy - I watch that clip over & over. The Stravinsky is sublime.

I love Margot - those bourrees are to die for

I agree did ballet from 3-16 on points and everything grades 1-7 then I ripped all the ligaments in my leg but by then my dreams had been crushed as I'm 5 10 and was at 14 so my ballet teacher told me I would never be good enough as I was too tall. in my dreams I am a prima ballerina at the Moscow state ballet

I went to ballet classes from the age of 5, when my mother took me to the church hall to get me out of the house, to 12, when she got fed up of making the costumes.

I always regretted giving it up and started it again at 42. I now have a lovely time pretending I can do it really, with all my ballet friends. We have lovely music, and visit the ROH together.

It is never too late to be a ballerina

Wait what? We're grown up? Well that's a bugger, as I'm still trying to decide what I want to be when I grow up... I'm filling in the time as a structural engineer while I decide between champion show jumper and dinner lady my ambition when I was 6 apparently

My ballet career ended when I heard my mum and dad sniggering uncontrollably at my attempts at a dying swan.

I was in the living room prancing about in my leotard and ballet pumps, and thought I was on my own. My parents had been about to walk into the living room when they caught sight of what I was up to and watched quietly, unseen by me.

I did not have the physique of a ballerina, even at the age of 7, in fact I looked more like 2 or 3 ballerinas wedged into one leotard, and I had all the grace of a 3 legged donkey. I heard a sort of snuffly-snort behind me, turned around and found my parents standing in the doorway, weeping. They did their best to praise me but I suspected that the tears were not wrought from emotion at the beauty of my performance, in fact they looked a lot more like the tears all the grown ups cried when grandad fell asleep and snored loudly in church. And I know I heard one of them mutter, "Dying duck" even though they now swear they didn't.

That sounds like the plot of one of the comic stories in Mandy, Harriet. There was always a ballet/show biz/young girl oppressed in her attempts to be a dancer story.

I also gave up Saturday morning ballet aged 7, but in my case it was because I preferred to stay at home eating Frosties and watching Swap Shop.

Oh Lorna Hill! How I dreamed of dancing at Sadler's Wells - sadly curtailed by damaging my leg in my teens, but tbh the rot set in at 11 when I realised that I wasn't ever going to make it to the Royal Ballet School It was all downhill after that.

Now I have a baby DD I wonder whether I'll make it to see anything at the ROH within the next, ooh, fifteen years or so? I'll have to enrol her in toddler ballet lessons and live vicariously through her as a Ballet Mum

I remember very clearly the moment I realised that all the ballet dancers on the stage were significantly younger than me and I could no longer dream about what I wanted to be when I grew up as I was grown up already

I propose a MN ballet school for us. Think St. Trinians to music wearing pink tights. I was never allowed to do ballet cos we was proper poor n all that. I did perfect a bloody lovely Olga Corbett routine on our front wall until the unfortunate slip and fanjo injury. I would have been a smashing ballerina or gymnast if we hadn't been poor. My much wanted adaptive parents would have sent me to ballet and bought me nice socks for school, not the nasty ones from Ethel Austin's. But no, my actual parents thought they were doing me a favour by hanging on to me.

DD wanted to be a ballerina, but like a pp grew to be more useful than ornamental.

Useful in this context means being able to lift me off the floor and run a mile in 6 minutes carrying a rifle.

The only skill she kept was to stand on one leg and lick her foot.

I was a clumsy child with two left feet. I wasn't allowed ballet lessons.

And I grew far too tall

me too, just because I am quite tall and had some knee operations as a teen, but what has that to do with pre-destination?