Click! is the sound of “getting it” — and while there are a few awkward spots today, there were also a lot of click! moments.

I have noticed, in the past month or so, that I feel the small muscles in my hips and throughout my legs far more subtly than I used to.

I suppose this is part of the process of ballet — much like pitch training when you’re learning to sing. As a singer, you often begin by learning to sing pitches and scales: fourths, thirds, and so forth come next, then eventually chromatic scales as you learn to feel your vocal apparatus more subtly.

In ballet, first you are simply happy to get your leg off the ground (or something like that); then you learn, perhaps, lead back with your knee; then you learn to also rotate your heel forward while keeping the knee back; later, your begin to feel all the subtle little goings-on deeper within your leg that allow you to do this cleanly, with maximum turnout, while maintaining freedom of movement. Presumably, down the line somewhere, there’s some even more sublime destination.

Bizarrely, in the midst of learning all of this, I have somehow lost my petit battement (or, well, lost its speed). I assume it will return, in time, better than it was — but I’m glad we didn’t do petit battement today.

What we did do was a really nice combination with assemblés en tournant to one of the really lively bits from Swan Lake. That was fun.

It went:
Chasée
Tournant
Tournant
Tournant
Tombe
Pas de Bourée
Glissade
Assemblée (no change)
… Repeat going the other way.

Doing all chassées, all tournants, or alternating were also options. I did the alternating version once on each side, but I liked the “one chassé; three tournants” version better.

You guys, it felt like flying.

That was our closing combination; the one immediately before it ended with:
Tombe
Pas de bourré-Chassé to fourth
Développé
Fouette to attitude

Which looked and sounded harder than it was, provided you were doing it right. At first, I for some reason thought the second-to-last step was a pique with extension avant. That version was way harder.

We are all getting better; our whole class. It’s very encouraging.

Anyway, that’s it for now. I am writing some thoughts about ballet and my body; I’ll probably get those up here tomorrow-ish.

À Bientôt!