Today, we had a sub whose name I didn’t catch, but I really enjoyed her class.

Especially the part where she asked us if we wanted to repeat the adagio, and I said, “Yes, because adagio is what I’m worst at.”

… And then did the adagio pretty well, actually, but totally hosed up half of the grand allegro (because I discovered, as we began, that I’d completely blanked on the first two steps of the combination).

Oops.

Oh, well.

I did, in fact, enjoy the class immensely, though.

We did jeté battu, which I did right once or twice and wrong, um, once or twice. Totally had one of those moments in which upon finishing the combination I turned around to trot over to my water bottle and the girl behind me caught my eye and we both kind of made faces and laughed at ourselves. I am going to have to work on jeté battu. It’s really not hard, you just have to convince your “supporting leg” (which is, of course, in the air at the time) to stay still. Only the working leg beats. This is not brisé volé.

This was the first class in a while that I’ve done without Adderall (forgot to take it, because ADHD + depression), and it was really interesting. My mind wanders a lot more without Adderall, which makes it harder to catch combinations when the person giving them talks slowly. Likewise, my language processing seems more likely to take a backseat, which probably doesn’t help.

The final combination joined Sissones and grand allegro, and I was able to remember that there were two “vanilla” Sissones fermées followed by a Sissone changé (AKA the coolest Sissone) to attitude, then tombé, pas de bouree, glissade, pas de chat; then a directional change into tombé, pas de bourée, glissade, saut de chat, but couldn’t for the life of me remember whether it began with Sissone avant or arrière, and I still don’t know. I just flailed my way through, as per SOP.

All of my pas de chats looked good, though, because evidently I am the king of pas de chat.

Also, we all managed to be together on every. single. pas de chat. Which, if you ask me, looks impressive. To be fair, by this time, we were down to three dancers, so not quite as impressive as if we’d still had eight pas-de-chat-ing in perfect synchrony.

But impressive enough. More so because we were also all on the music (my flailings notwithstanding), so we all launched and landed exactly together.

Magic, people — magic!

(Today’s lesson: if you must flail, try to flail on the music, so when you get to the bit you remember, you’ll be ready.)

My turns, on the other hand, were mediocre, including one highly mediocre double (but a double nonetheless). I basically left all my thoughts about Balanchine technique at home.

Incremental gains, I guess.

Dancing always does a great deal to improve my mood, and so it was today. I’m feeling a lot better than I did yesterday.

Also got a new shirt for class, and it’s perfect. w00t.

So that’s it for now.

Keep dancing, dancers.