Danseur Ignoble: Saturday Essentials Class With New, Improved Arms!
I love ballet for any number of reasons, not least the magical thing that happens when all the wiring you’ve been installing suddenly fires to life and, holy cow, you get it (thanks, neuroplasticity!).
Today was one of those days: in Essentials, everything was easy, and my arms were fluid and graceful and coordinated.
Margie asked me to demonstrate the sauté (arabesque) – chassee combo going across the floor, and I was able to do it on both legs. I kept it low and easy, though, and I’m sure Denis would appreciate that.
We had a new student who said she hasn’t danced in about 20 years, but she must have had excellent training. Her arms were lovely and she followed all the barre and center combinations like a champ. I hope she’ll come back!
No specific corrections today (except a note about making sure to get back to sauté-ing instead of Sissone-ing when my leg is done healing; I am still favoring that leg a bit, so often I do little Sissones instead of proper sautés) and a reminder (rather than a correction) to get my heels down between jumps.
Posted on 2015/02/28, in balllet, class notes and tagged ballet class notes. Bookmark the permalink. 2 Comments.
danseur ignoble 
It’s always a plus when you can remember the arms and the head. Muscle memory kicks in for me during some steps and combinations, but others, it’s not nearly as easy. I don’t think many people realize ballet is not just about what you do with your legs and feet.
Truth! As a kid, I definitely considered the arms an afterthought. I got that I needed to learn how to just then, but not why, I guess (Margie really brought this home: she pointed out that when you compare two dancers of equal technical merit, the one who uses the head and arms best just always looks better). Where I dance now, our teachers really stress port de bras and epaulement and stuff, which I have really come to appreciate it … but actually doing it is still subject to is own learning curve 🙂