Ballet Grace Meets Culinary Delight
by Elenora Morris, contributing writer
Time to get in costume, the manager says. I button the white chore coat up to my neck, bobby pin my bangs back, slide a pen and notebook into my pocket, and feel a delicious wave of adrenaline course through my body. I haven’t performed much recently—not since I took my final curtain call, two Septembers ago, after a decade working as a professional ballet dancer. But donning this uniform is like taking a bite of food and realizing you had been famished. My appetite is whetted, and I shift happily into performance mode once again.
The stage is set: six tables glisten with polished wine glasses. The napkins are folded, the tablecloths ironed, the candles lit. The chilled wines stand in a row on the bar, its white marble shining like a clean, yet-unwritten page. Behind a curtain, the kitchen stands at attention, with pots and pans poised over the range—one small flick of the wrist away from bursting into flame. Ready to dance.
I hadn’t planned to work in the fine food industry when I moved to New York—it just sort of happened, as things seem to do in this never-sleeping city. Pointe shoes change out for plates of food, and the line begins to blur between life and art.
Ding! A bell strikes. The first patrons have taken their seats in the auditorium, and the initial orders are in. This could be the stage manager giving the signal for curtain up, but in this case, it’s the kitchen calling for “hands.” I hurry to the pass, receive an ensemble of gold-fried farinata and earth-toned globes of olives bathed in glossy oil, and I’m off spinning.
In this ballet, the chef is the choreographer, the sous and line cooks are the stagehands, and the other servers and I, dodging and flitting around the space, are something like the dancers. But the food—this is the music itself. The audience doesn’t just get to observe the performance: they quite literally ingest it and carry it home within themselves; changed and nourished from the inside out.
I admire the plates as they pass over my hands in a waltz of colors, textures, and scents. Sous-vide yellowfin tuna with heirloom beans, sage and fresh horseradish: pas de basque. Grilled pork loin with Japanese scallions, pine nuts, currants and saba: grand jeté.
Sometimes, on nights off, I walk to the jazz bar down the street from my apartment and watch the musicians improvise. Musical notes sway back and forth, and I imagine life itself, flowing from the same unpredictable impulse. The interweaving of bodies on a crowded sidewalk. The soloist busking in the middle of Central Park. It’s not just inside the restaurant or on the stage: the more I look, the more I realize that the dance is everywhere around me.
During the crescendo of the feeding frenzy, I lose time. But by the final curtain call of soiled napkins and drained glasses, my feet hurt and my stomach rumbles. Around midnight, the last diners finally don their coats and climb aboard their Ubers, and I walk to the bus stop, eating a protein bar and swooning under the cool expanse of space. The chilled, buttery, indigo night is spiced with streetlights and the whooshing of passing cars. Above my head, a full moon shines down like a perfect plate. I am fed.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Ellie grew up in Pittsburgh and performed abroad as a ballet dancer for a decade. She left the Royal Danish Ballet in 2022 to spend a year working on organic farms. She currently lives in Brooklyn where she teaches, attends music and dance jams, works with food and occasionally writes on Substack. She also runs the dance department at the annual Equinox Festival in Copenhagen. She recharges by going swimming or snuggling up with a good book and her cat, Phoebe.
