F=ma

In the works.

Dirty work.

All in a day's work.

Working out.

Working hard or hardly working?

All work and no play...

Getting worked up.

Working through it.

Work.

What is it about those four letters that allow them to retain such elusive importance in our lives?

Getting up in the morning may be work for one person whereas another might be able to coast through days and weeks without ever having to commit to working even once.

Work is a mental and physical state of reaction and adaptation to challenges that arise in one's life.

I feel like I am stepping into my workplace when I enter the dance studio prior to ballet class.

Every fiber of my being becomes drawn into the work of processing the variables of ballet technique.

I examine the architecture of my skeleton, using the musculature to adjust the axial and appendicular sections of my frame according to the information I am receiving from the exercises.

Everything in a constant state of renewal and reassessment.

The work entailed in ballet class is not simply the type of quantifiable work dealt with in physics equations where force equals mass multiplied by acceleration.

The true nature and beast of ballet requires that you constantly are working on even the most simple of exercises because once those are no longer work for you, you're either, A: Doing it perfectly, or B: not getting any better.

Considering what we know of ballet it is probably the latter and therefore, work in ballet class is the constant challenge of appreciating every exercises' subtly complex demands and being attentive enough to know how to respond.

-B