Because Two Posts In One Day Aren’t Enough
I took Monday evening class today because Ms. B (of Killer Class) was teaching. Also because I figured some ballet might help my mood (it did; I’m not all sunshine and roses, here, but I’m … Eh. Less awful?).
I’m glad I did. I struggled in my last two morning classes due to circadian rhythm disasters, but tonight I was on it (except I still don’t have my triple turns back, and for some reason my right leg didn’t want to coupé-balloné at the start of our medium allegro.
I got a lot of notes at the barre — detail work, now, refining port de bras and épaulement, mostly, and a “Nice, Asher!” during adagio.
Barre adage was good, too: working at relevé, I managed to finally lift my legs with the right muscles, and it was like, Boom! Effortless extensions at 90 degrees and above. This was a spectacular development, as I’ve been fighting with my à la seconde to a wildly unreasonable degree. My gluteus medius usually thinks it’s supposed to do, like, all the work, so it blocks several degrees of extension and then cramps. Tonight it was just like, “Oh, I’ll be over here, just call if you need me,” and the rest of the muscles were like, “Thank you. OMG, thank goodness that guy got outta the way.” And there was my leg, extended just above 90 from dèveloppé, and nothing cramped or strained or anything.
I continue to be surprised that I’m sorta, kinda becoming good at adagio. Also that I like it. As a kid, I thought adagio was boooooooring. Now I don’t — it has become a lovely opportunity for expression, not to mention a chance (in class, anyway), to check in with my body and pull everything together.
Speaking of which, my turns were sloppy at first, and then I realized that I was doing them with my “Cheetah eyes” turned off and my core all kinds of disengaged. Fixed that, and things got so, so much better.
After class, Ms. B said I look good! That’s a huge thing — I feel like I came back from Mam-Luft&Co a much better dancer; more so than I would ever have expected. That’s what I’m working for, so it’s good.
I’ve also been surprised by the conviction I feel about dancing: the audition I’m looking towards will mean, if successful, skipping Burning Man and returning early from Florida. I would do either of those in a heartbeat to be able to do this thing.
I guess that’s how you know you’re doing what you really want to do, though. All those decisions become essentially effortless.
Posted on 2016/06/27, in auditions, balllet, class notes, life. Bookmark the permalink. 3 Comments.
danseur ignoble 
So we went across last night. And…well, I got a pretty savage review from my girlfriend, who’s been temporarily possessed by the shade of Vaganova. In some ways it went pretty well; my technique was OK and I didn’t forget anything, the photos look pretty decent, I didn’t even look fat. But we left the performance in the studio a bit – we did everything so much better half an hour before, to the extent that the tap class waiting for their call applauded.
This idea of Lisa’s that we’d go across the first two variations (the floorwork one and the Shecter release one) together with the Wednesday night gang didn’t work at all well, no doubt because we’d never danced either of them with the whole group. This screwed up our spacing, so the floor piece was incredibly crowded, and also they were ahead of the count.
On the release piece, we had much the same problem and I don’t remember being able to hear the music. I actually cut a couple of steps deliberately to catch up. This is annoying because we did it so much better before.
The third (Forsythe inspired, discussed here before) worked so much better – that was the only one we did without anyone else, and I think that was why. I’m kind of pleased with that because it was pretty technical, especially the developpé/passé/arabesque/demi pointe bit at the end where you only get four counts in each step.
so “karate girl” and the other obvious ringer and I got together for the crash investigation. we’re…not happy about the weird decision to perform with a load of people we didn’t rehearse with, in a space we never rehearsed in. Also, I don’t remember seeing a foldback speaker anywhere, which might explain why I couldn’t hear a damn thing.
Here’s a photo.
Yeah, it sounds like all the extra people, coupled with unfamiliar space, hamstrung the first two pieces! It’s hard enough to cope with sudden spacing changes with a group that’s been rehearsing together; the addition of a bunch of timing-challenged interlopers sounds like a recipe for struggle stew.
I’m glad the Forsythe-inspired piece went better — it helps to finish strongly; likewise, I imagine that I’d feel somewhat vindicated!
Good point also about difficulty hearing the music — I ran into a similar problem with our trapeze performance; I thought the music had been started a few beats into the track, but they’re there on the video, so it turns out that I just couldn’t hear the opening bar (which is basically pianissimo) properly. I wonder if the Wednesday night gang was suffering from a similar problem.
Congrats! I look forward to seeing the picture (for some reason, my phone gets screwy about displaying fb links from wp, so I’ll have to check it out when I get home tonight).
Gah. Hoped that linking up on the facebarge would let me finally see the picture, but I’m still getting a “link is broken” message.
Clearly, there’s a leak somewhere in the Inner Tubes.