Not knowing when to applaud is like bad Pilates

Torture that makes you want to run...

Look, I’ll admit it – since I changed the way I work and live, my step count may have gone to 3, plus I have zero ‘core’. Clear basket case.

So, Pilates I thought. Clinical Pilates. How bad could it be?

First 2 classes – excellent. Teacher kind. Classmates kind. No judgement. Made progress. Zero death wish, felt great next day. Result.

Class 3 – different class. different teacher. First interaction - 

Teacher: Are you Alison?

Me: Yes

Teacher: Who told you you could come to this class?

Me outside: err Reception and your website and your booking system....

Me inside: “I am voting no, why aren’t I leaving right now,  Oh yes I’ve paid for this.”

Teacher pushes the in-crowd classmates like crazy – that’s the whole idea of this class. This was unknown to me when I booked.

I’m shamed by all of it (I have lingering school sport issues). I’m doing my best, but it's just awful. The sheer not fitting in in any way of it all.

I am ignored while alternatively being pushed to the brink. I stagger out, having lost the will to live. Takes 3 days for the pain to go. I am never going back to that class. I never do go back to that class.

Lightbulb - this is what it is like going to classical music when you are a newbie. When a newbie meets what Holly Mulcahy calls a veteran in the audience.

Embarrassment, uncertainty and a lot of sneering thinly disguised as camaraderie.

And then veterans wonder why "nobody" wants to share their passion, why people don’t attend.  Why classical music is dying (side order of YOUNG people, that’s all your fault) while never even thinking about their own contribution to that. 

Don't get me wrong - I am not blaming the audience, I'm genuinely asking.

Classical music people can write all the “what to wear” things we like, we can talk about the customs of clapping. We can do so much (and we absolutely should). And yet...

Here’s my challenge – 

If you’re a regular, what do you do when someone does the ‘wrong’ thing? Like clapping in the ’wrong’ place?