When I was a little girl, I watched Nadia Comaneci score a perfect 10 and win three gold medals in the 1976 Summer Olympics. I enrolled in gymnastics shortly thereafter. I loved the sport. I loved doing back handsprings on the mat, fumbling on the bars and trying to keep my balance on the beam. I competed a bit but was far from fabulous.
Even as a young kid, it didn’t escape me how the small group of boy gymnasts, some younger than me, were chiseled like little Hercules. It wasn’t exactly a sport boys were lining up to do. Football, …read more

That’s what hundreds of New Yorkers are doing in amateur ballet (and jazz, and modern dance, and tap, and…) classes across the city, and one New York Times reporter decided to give it a whirl (no pun intended) to see what all the fuss was about.
An amateur ballerina myself (and I use the term “ballerina loosely”), I knew exactly what Daniel J. Walkin was talking about when he said, “I was to learn all about muscles I never knew I had.”
Whether you live in NYC or somewhere a little less dance-y, there are scads of options for adults who want …read more