There’s a moment, in the mornings, that I just love, although I’m not sure why. I’m generally miserable in the mornings — tired, cranky, completely out of sorts, needing my own space — and the crowded commuter trains, with everyone jammed up into everyone else’s space and the smells and the awkward jostling, it compounds my misery, makes it petulant and personal. I get off the train with a huge crowd in the heart of downtown and we all stream out towards the escalators, this bobbing crowd of trench coats and umbrellas and briefcases, and suddenly I’m buoyant. I like the way we wordlessly and without pause sort ourselves into right and left on the escalators, standers and walkers, as though these traits are innate (I’m a walker). I like the sound of high heels echoing on the sidewalk after the escalator spits us out into the city. I like the city in the morning, the crazy guy feeding the pigeons, the kids hawking free dailies, the man setting up his flower cart. They’re there every morning and so are we, the nameless hundreds dispersing to glittering office towers. We have our coffees and our lunches and we’re about to go in to do whatever it is we do, but first we have to wait together for the light to change.

I’ve been taking a beginner’s ballet class for adults. This is, in fact, something I’ve dabbled in off and on for a few years now, which you would think would result in some notable improvement or progress towards grace, but no. Ballet is, I suspect, akin to learning a new language: something that, as a kid, you can pick up almost thoughtlessly but, as an adult, you will stutter through awkwardly and, despite the sincerity of your intentions, this awkwardness will likely go on almost interminably. The crux of this — of dancing well or speaking a new language — is the need for abandon, the need to say the wrong thing or take a huge misstep and keep going anyway, possibly with renewed zeal. Abandon, zeal, hunger for learning, these are things kids come by naturally and we ridiculous adults shy away from as though something so delicious and intoxicating must be harmful to the health at its core. Heaven forbid we suffer foolishness after the age of 16!

So of all the beginner’s ballet classes for adults, this latest one is my favourite. Never have you seen a more motley crew of ballerinas: short, tall, chubby, gangling, middle-aged and sagging, knees popping during pliés, arabesques that barely creak themselves off the ground, thighs that jiggle distractingly during piqués. But through it all we’ve a teacher happily urging us on, celebrating with us that one little victory, that one perfect moment where the music lifts itself out of the background and into your body and your arm floats out just so, or your steps glide and skip just as they should.

Last class we took on grand jetés and, well, oh my. Some women lurched grimly across the room, with the set, determined faces that people have when they are getting through some difficult and daunting trial. Others flung themselves across the floor, with flagrant disregard to the music or the teacher’s instructions, and simply jumped with as much gusto as they could muster, seemingly with the hope that enthusiasm could stand in for technique or grace (which I dare say it can). One woman was quite helpless with laughter the whole time and her jetés, which started off well enough, derailed into something that for all the world looked like a particularly spindly pair of scissors being catapulted across the room. And then the biggest, most delightful surprise of all: a rather squat woman who just floated over the floor, leaping high into the air with astonishing grace, seeming to hang, suspended in the air, for a delicious second or two before flitting back down. We all loved that! And, emboldened by her success, we all renewed our own efforts.

This class ended just as every class does, with a proper reverence, in which most of us are sweating, red-faced, and happy as we lilt through our curtsies. And then our teacher turns and says quietly and firmly “Love your body,” and just then we all do.