Elizabeth Whitaker is not like the rest of Rebecca Mala's beginning ballet students.
She's not just a bit older than the typical tyro -- by about 10 times. She's a year older than her teacher. (Whitaker is 40; Mala is 39.)
And she has been blind since birth.
So Whitaker's weekly lessons are also a bit out of the ordinary.
Ballet is a very visual medium. Students generally learn correct form and steps by watching and then imitating their teachers, either directly or in one of a dance studio's ubiquitous mirrors.
For a student who can neither watch nor imitate, Mala had to devise a teaching regimen based entirely on physical touch. She places her hands on Whitaker's arms, legs, torso, even her posterior, to help her develop the positions she needs to execute simple dance moves.
And, says Mala, "Everything has to be explained -- the most basic things. Plie, releve, foot positions, that normally the teacher would do by example."
It's not entirely terra incognita for Whitaker. She spent three or four years doing gymnastics while a student at the Arkansas School for the Blind in Little Rock. "So I have some familiarity because there's a certain amount of dance in gymnastics," she explains. (She says she was a pretty good gymnast, too, primarily in jumping and tumbling events, taking second and third place in inter-school competitions. She even performed on the vaulting horse. "I didn't run," she says with a smile.)
Whitaker grew up in Jacksonville, earned a bachelor's degree in commercial music with an emphasis in music business at the University of Memphis, and helped start a band when she returned to Little Rock.
That's when she decided ballet would help her.
"I always struggled with stage presence, unsure of how to commit to memory visual concepts of natural movement many of my sighted peers take for granted when performing," she says. "I decided to take dance because it promotes natural movement and improves spatial awareness, two essential elements I feel will help my stage presence."
So earlier this year, she put out an ad through the Arkansas Dance Network looking for a private coach. That made sense, Mala says, because it would be much harder for her to learn in a class.
Mala, a Little Rock native, started her training here at Shuffles & Ballet II studio with Traci Presley and Jana Beard, and studied with Melinda Sheldahl (now Tobian) and later with Kirt and Linda Hathaway at Ballet Arkansas.
She has a degree in ballet performance from the University of Oklahoma, has performed with Oklahoma Festival Ballet, Tulsa Ballet Theatre, Ballet Arkansas and Los Angeles Contemporary Ballet, and was the ballet director at Southern California's Revolution Dance Center, where she directed and choreographed for the studio's performance group, Revolution Ballet Company.
Friday-night lessons for Whitaker started in March at Dance Dynamics in west Little Rock, where Mala has been teaching ballet and contemporary dance.
Mala and Whitaker start each lesson with stretches -- first in first position, then second position, to music from a combination player-speaker. (Perhaps it's ironic that one tune is a romantic piano arrangement of the Police's "I'll Be Watching You.") Mala occasionally catches herself illustrating a physical position or move -- tendu, pas de chats, port de bras, chasse -- with gestures that she remembers her student cannot see.
Whitaker occasionally has a problem with balance, and Mala must help her be aware of how close she is to a wall, or to stay in a straight line. But Whitaker learns fast.
"She surprises me a lot," Mala says. "She has beautiful feet and beautiful lines, a core strength, and she understands quickly."
"I am finding it to be a very rewarding experience that is physically challenging, mentally fulfilling and fun," Whitaker says. And she'll keep it up "as long as I'm able to take it, and that it's physically beneficial." (Mala moved to Centerton earlier this month and will begin teaching at a studio in Springdale, while acting as coordinator for a Ballet Arkansas performance at Fayetteville's Walton Arts Center and putting together two casts of children for a touring Vancouver Ballet performance of The Nutcracker in December. Whether she'll be able to give Whitaker lessons on occasional visits to central Arkansas, or whether she'll be able to find another teacher remains up in the air.)
Whitaker, whose day job is as a program coordinator for Services for the Blind under the state Department of Human Services, doesn't see herself performing in an actual ballet any time soon, but "I'm not going to set any limitations."
Style on 09/20/2016