Today’s class with John was challenging. He included material that I’m pretty sure I’ve never done  before, ever — item the first: a sauté renversé, which I eventually figured out; item the second, a coupé jeté en tournant, which I managed to do right only once (for some reason, my brain kept deciding that saut de Basque* would be an acceptable substitute and doing it whether I liked it or not).

That said, I’ve been wanting to learn coupé jeté en tournant, but didn’t know what it was called, so that’s excellent. Now I can ask Brian or Brienne to formally teach it to us.

I’ve realized that what I really like about John’s and Brienne’s classes is that they do a really good job building from barre to centre to grand allegro using related movements: for example, we did fouetté at barre, then used it in our adagio, then again in our turns, then used sauté fouetté in our grand allegro.

Ditto renversé, though we didn’t do that at barre, and attitude turns (which we didn’t do at barre, but which feed into both the sauté renversé and the coupé jeté en tournant).

I am coming to really love renversé.

I had a harder-than-usual time remembering the last two combinations today — in part because they were long, in part because I’m partly deaf right now, and in part because, as with coupé jeté, I didn’t know all the steps.

I felt that this required an illustration, so I shamelessly sto… erm … borrowed one from here: Candy01 at Imgflip

In short, I felt like I struggled today, but in a good way.

It’s good to have classes in which you know all the steps and can dance beautifully, and it’s equally good to have classes in which you’re just out of your depth but not so much that you feel like it’s not worth trying.

We’re off for the next two weeks, now, so I’m going to have to devise a way to stay fit over the break. Maybe I’ll spend it teaching myself coupé jeté (but probably not).

So, anyway, that’s all for now. I hope your various classes and Nutcrackers and breaks treat you well.

À bientôt, mes amis!