Camilla Parker Bowles Injured Herself During Her "Silver Swans" Ballet Class

• Camilla Parker Bowles (opens in new tab) is a big fan of ballet, and takes "Silver Swans" classes with her friends.
• The Duchess of Cornwall (opens in new tab) revealed that she injured her back during a recent class, forcing her to take a break from dancing.
• "I managed to obviously do something wrong, did something to my back so I've laid off it for a bit, but I can't wait to get back to it again—you feel so well afterwards," she said during an appearance on a British radio show last week. 

Camilla Parker Bowles is a longterm ballet aficionado—and recently, she took up dancing herself, as HELLO! reports (opens in new tab). Appearing on the Emma Barnett Show on British station BBC Radio 5 Live, she revealed her inspiration: the (excellent) "Silver Swans" initiative for older dancers, launched by the Royal Academy of Dance. The Duchess of Cornwall saw a class in action during a 2018 visit to the Academy, accompanied by initiative ambassador Angela Rippon; despite her initial misgivings upon learning about the scheme, she discovered that the senior dancers were "completely brilliant." As a result, the Duchess of Cornwall founded a dance cohort of her own.

"I gathered together a group of likely candidates in the form of friends, same age as me, and I said, "Look, you know, we're going to be Silver Swans,'" Camilla recalled. "They all howled with laughter and said, 'You must be joking.'"

"We all arrived in our black leggings and T-shirts ready for the dance," she said. "We did think we'd be getting complete hysterics but we all had to concentrate, we concentrated so hard you don't dare look to the left or right."

Alas, Camilla's enthusiasm resulted in injury, though that hasn't dissuaded her : "I managed to obviously do something wrong, did something to my back so I've laid off it for a bit," she explained. "But I can't wait to get back to it again—you feel so well afterwards."

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