I banged my toe at PlayThink last Saturday, optimistically assumed that it would be Just Fine by Monday … then Wednesday … then yesterday.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it wasn’t. Today, though, it was okay enough to get through barre, adagio, and a bit of across-the-floor. Claire forbid me to do any work en releve, which was a good call. (I also opted out of jumping.)

You guys, it turns out that when you’re used to having free access to releve, remembering not to use it is, well, disconcerting.

Nonetheless, I barred and adagio-ed and semi-gracefully made my way across the floor, substituting where I could, otherwise just leaving stuff out.

…Okay, and occasionally stumping around like an old-fashioned pirate with a peg-leg, yarrrr (you guys, I don’t think that’s what they meant when they named that one ballet “Le Corsaire”). Because apparently attempting to avoid using that one foot in those specific ways just makes me do weird things sometimes.

Le Cors-arrrrrrrr. (With apologies to Fanny Schertzer (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons)

It was interesting. Some parts were great. Some parts? Frankly awful.

Still, I got to focus on my upper body more than usual, and that was cool.

Today’s primary correction was a refinement of the ever-present “fix your chest” thing. I’ve got the “lift the sternum” bit; now, I’m working on keeping the whole column of my body together.

I’m better at this at some times than I am at other times. When I remember it, my turns are much better.

I couldn’t do turns on the left (supporting) foot today, but I could on the right, and they were good. Also, fun. And I didn’t do any of them the wrong way (though, to be fair, we didn’t do any combinations that involved both turns en dedans and turns en dehors).

The highlight of today, for me, was the work we did on using pique arabesque in combinations more gracefully. That was particularly cool, because it’s a thing I’ve been thinking about and (before I screwed up my foot) working on at home.

I nailed that a couple of times on the right supporting foot; I kept running into a mental block on the left because I had to do it flat.

Today I noticed one more useful thing: I need to stop looking at the freaking mirrors, because I throw myself off. Not all the time, but often enough. I have heard tell of whole companies where they rehearse with drapes over the mirrors for exactly that reason, so at least I’m not alone 😉

That’s it for today. If you have the chance, do some extra balances and turns for me!