I was back in class today after a hiatus (broken only for Brienne’s Monday class) that I will discuss more fully at a later point, once I get clearance (no worries, dear readers: it was a family emergency thing, but nothing horrible, and it all turned out well in the end).

We had a substitute; the fabulous Jessica, whose teaching style I quite like. I ran through both Essentials and Beginner/Intermediate class today; essentials, because of a timing SNAFU, was all barre, all the time, with the exception of a little adagio at the end, while the beginner/intermediate class was, in Jessica’s words, “Just like the advanced class that I taught this morning, with small modifications.”

I wasn’t exactly on form after what amounted to nearly two weeks with only one class in the middle. I wasn’t exactly awful, either, at least not until the end of the second class, when my Glissade-Assemblé mental block reared its ugly head again (seriously, what the frappé). Oh, and also I almost totally failed to spot my pique turns, because, heck, why not?

This is what happens when I start to feel overconfident. I was like, “Oh, pique turns, I got this!” And then I’m like, “Why is the world still spinning?”

Anyhoo.

So, nerdery.

During my Ballet Hiatus, I got quite cranky and so forth. It turns out that ballet is the best mood stabilizer I have ever tried, ever, hands down (or, really, heels down, shoulders down, hands can float to the top if you’re on your balance…).

This is something I’d really like to pursue as a topic of research: like, we know that Dance-Movement Therapy is a thing (and it’s a thing I’m hoping, some day, to do for a living), and we know that exercise (and especially flow-state producing exercise) as a mood stabilizer is a thing. So what about ballet as a therapeutic device?

I would really, some day, like to be able to look at the neuroscientific underpinnings of all this dance-y goodness — because, frankly, there is so much going for dance as a therapeutic modality (It’s cheap! It’s social! It’s great for you physically as well!), but the research isn’t all there yet to back it up.

The first step (perhaps more of a chassé) in that journey, for me, will be to complete a DMT master’s program. If I really want to do the neuroscience part, probably a doctorate will have to follow.

In other news, I am about 3/4s of the way through choreographing an original story ballet in my head. Now I need a repetiteur with better technique than mine who’s good at translating “Now you do that one thing with the turn-and-the-whatever that goes like this!” to make it all come together.

This could take a while.

That said, I’m planning on using the opening solo bit, which is pure adagio, for an audition piece for various DMT programs.

So yeay. Life moves forward.

In other, other news, I had a really nice ride on the bike after class today. It turns out that you can, in fact, ride home after a couple hours of ballet class (though probably not if they’re both Brienne’s class; I have no legs left after Brienne’s class, ever).

The “Ballet Lessons” series will resume on Friday, barring any further crises, disasters, or calendrical SNAFUs.

Until then, adieu, and keep the up side up 🙂