What a genius idea! I love this combination of grace and firepower.

Bullets and ballerinas: First they dance, then they shoot

  

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After a morning of ballet at The Dance Spot in Fullerton, some of the class headed to Triple B Clays in South El Monte for a shooting lesson. Cindi Hubbard, who has studied ballet for 22 years and is also a champion shooter, demonstrates proper stance and gun mount to the women.

JEBB HARRIS, THE ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

The art of ballet and breaking clay birds with a shotgun might not seem to have much in common, but Cindi Hubbard doesn’t see it that way.

Hubbard, 54, of Yorba Linda, has been studying ballet for 22 years at The Dance Spot in Fullerton. She also is the top women’s sporting clays shooter in the Western United States. Think of sporting clays as golf with a shotgun. Shooters tour a course with stations where clay targets zip by, away and in at a dizzying array of angles.

Over the years, Hubbard has gotten close to the women in her ballet class, especially teacher Deidre Madrigal. Hubbard came up with a plan she calls “Ballet to Bullets.” After ballet lessons, they would pack off to a sporting clays course and learn to shoot a shotgun, many for the first time.

The lilting piano notes and dance commands of “glissade, echappe and jete” are replaced a few hours later by the command “pull” and the crack of a 12-gauge shotgun.

At first, there was fear and nervousness. Hubbard understands.

“I was totally afraid to touch a gun until I was over 40. I was raised in an anti-gun family,” she says.

Read the rest of the article here:

https://www.ocregister.com/articles/hubbard-348070-women-ballet.html

And check out their slide show:

https://www.ocregister.com/articles/hubbard-348070-women-ballet.html?pic=2