Scottish Ballet's adult classes are helping older dancers feel young

But this is abysmally wrong. Ballet is a beautiful art form and sport and it can be learned at any age, as Scottish Ballet's Absolute Beginners classes prove.

The country's national dance company has run adult classes for at least 25 years, allowing novices of all levels and experience the chance to slip on their soft leather ballet shoes and move.

Many of us in the classes have either danced since we were small or learned ballet in childhood but fell away from it and now want to return.

For those who have never set foot in a studio before, there is the Absolute Beginners class.

This is where new dancer Emma Donald said she has found her inner child.

READ MORE: Culture is not the preserve of the middle classes

The 30-year-old described just how joyous it is to do something that isn't for a specific purpose at all.

"For me it is about fitness but it's about so much more," she said. "My original intention for the class was to do something fitness-based.

"However that's become so far down on the list of priorities now - the list of benefits is so much more than that.

"I think it's something that perhaps all adults go through, or certainly someone with my type of personality - if it doesn't have a function, I'm not going to do it.

"But with this class I felt like I had found my inner child who just wants to have fun. And we should be allowed to do that."

Ms Donald is a freelance musician and has played violin in the Scottish Ballet orchestra for a variety of performances so she is comfortable in a theatre.

As a child she had a busy schedule of extracurricular activities but never took dance lessons, which she always regretted.

Last February Ms Donald signed up for contemporary classes at a Glasgow dance studio and was thrilled by the experience.

She said: "I was very nervous for the first time that I went there but I had the best time. I came out and I felt like euphoric and I was like, oh, my God, I just had so much fun."

In contemporary class, as in ballet, the teacher started with barre work - a series of exercises executed while holding on to a barre - and Ms Donald quickly found "I basically just wanted to do the barre work the whole time."

Through her orchestra contacts she heard about Scottish Ballet's adult classes, held in the company's headquarters on Albert Drive in Glasgow's Pollokshields, and researched what was on offer.

While nervous, the class teacher in Absolute Beginners put everyone at their ease.

Ms Donald, from Dingwall, said: "I liked the fact that the class was called Absolute Beginners.

"It made me feel at ease, made me feel like it was something that I could do without any prior experience.

"That's basically why I booked the class because it was titled that and it was marketed for people who have never done ballet before."

Progress came quickly and, by week five, Ms Donald found she had stopped staring at the floor and watching her feet and was able to relax, let go and perform a little.

Now, following the end of the 10-week series of classes, she still maintain that barre is her passion and not the centre work.

READ MORE: Lifeline funding package for the UK arts sector must not be too late

She said: "My job is very detail-oriented so I just respond very well to those tiny changes that you have to make when you're at the barre.

"On the floor my brain just starts going, 'Oh my God, what direction are we going in?'"

One of the highlights for dancers at Scottish Ballet classes is the live pianist - several of the pianist used play with the Scottish Ballet orchestra and for the company's classes.

Ms Donald said: "The live pianist is a massive thing.

"It's kind of like playing pretend, right? I'm going back to pretending that I'm a child just being in a ballet class, which is just so nice."

The benefits extend beyond physical enjoyment too, she added.

"It's a way of expressing yourself from an artistic and creative point of view that just so happens to aid your physical health as well," Ms Donald said.

"That's why I wanted to get into dancing because it's a type of exercise that is directly related to music, which is obviously really important to me.

"Ballet is just like a beautiful marriage between those two things and of physical fitness and responding to the music, because she would change she'd change what she played.

"Towards the end of the run, she would play the music from Cinderella, which is just so nice.

"We were pretending that we were involved in the upcoming show.

"I really, I really loved that."

Ms Donald also pointed to the staff at Scottish Ballet and her teacher, Katie, for making the classes inclusive.

Student dancers use the same studios as the professionals and there is occasionally some mingling as the company heads off for the day and the novices come in for evening class.

While ballet is often seen as an exclusive art form, Ms Duncan said that's not the case for Scottish Ballet.

She said: "The Scottish Ballet classes were appealing because you'll be rehearsing in the same place as the professional dancers.

"It is so inclusive because it was never like, 'No, no, no, you can't go in there because that's where the professional dancers are'.

"We use the same studios and that was a way of breaking down that wall a little bit."

There is also no pressure to move up through the various class levels.

She added: "It's not that they've got a grade system or you need to become professional or anything like that.

"I mean, that is obviously not going to happen.

"But you don't need to be good at it, you don't need to progress to any certain level. You can just have fun with it and enjoy it."

Do you plan on trying to work your way up through the different levels of the classes, I ask her.

"Yes," Ms Donald immediately replies. "So completely negating what I've just said.

"But I'm a perfectionist. So I believe that for other people, but not for myself."

Thanks to the encouragement of her teacher, Ms Duncan has signed up for the next level - the Beginners class.

You'll be joining me in the Advanced class before you know it, I joke.

"Oh, but you know, what I think is really nice," Ms Donald replied, "is that I don't care about that.

"Everything else in my life is very much that I want to get to a certain level, but I booked the beginner's class because I want to go into more detail and learn all these different things.

"I felt very comfortable with the pace of the class so it has given me the confidence to go to the next level."