On Saturday, I dragged Robert to ballet with me, and he made a respectable effort in Margie’s class. I, too, made a respectable effort, then proceeded on to Brienne’s class.

In Brienne’s class, I … um. Well.

Let me state for the record that it’s been a while since I’ve done two classes back-to-back, and apparently I’m still quite out of shape. Jeez.

Or, well — I may have been coming down with something, as I had a fever and some pretty unpleasant gastric distress stuff on Sunday and Monday. (Today, I’m feeling mostly better, so it’s back to Brienne’s class tomorrow.)

Either way, I had some strength-related issues at barre (sometimes, you fondue; sometimes, you fondon’t), though there were definitely some highlights as well. My balances are improving again.

At center, we did a rather nice bit of slow adagio (which I would have done better if I’d kept my extensions lower; I didn’t have the strength left to really sustain them above about 60 degrees).

Across the floor, Brienne tuned up our balancés — in my case, that was really a good thing, as my balancés have really needed some tuning. It was nice to get them ironed out and flowing.

I’m not sure what was done for allegros petit et grand; I bowed out at that point, as I was simply feeling exhausted by that point and didn’t want to roll the “exhaustion leads to injury” dice.

I hope to acquit myself better in tomorrow’s class.

Saturday’s problem — making it through class — shouldn’t really be too hard to overcome, as I’ll only be doing one class, or possibly two separated by many hours instead of back to back.

Wednesday’s problem — remembering all the combos and not screwing up my ballotés and, heaven help me, sissons (you know, the second easiest jump in the whole world; and as such one that I should pretty much never find difficult?) — well. We’ll see how that goes. Successive approximations, etc.

Those were very much in the Domain of the Baby Giraffe (Wait! Which leg goes where?) last week, so I’ve spent a great deal of time thinking about them, because we all know how much thinking helps in ballet! Mostly, I found myself thinking about how to solve the problem of the bizarre disconnect that sometimes happens between brain and legs.

Like, I know how to sisson, and I knew which way(s) to sisson in last week’s second allegro combo, and yet somehow when it came time to sisson, my legs were all like, “HOLY FRACK HOW DO I EVEN DO THIS?!”

I imagine that it was probably quite funny from the sidelines.

Anyway, tomorrow will almost certainly be better.

So that’s it for now. May your fondues refrain from becoming fondon’ts, and the sissons rise up to meet you, or something like that 🙂