Today during fondus at the barre, I had an illuminating experience.

I’m much better now at remembering to lift my legs into développé (or straight extension) from behind and beneath, but for some reason on the first développé (in this case, développé avant) my quads decided that they wanted a turn.

The result was a développé that required immense effort and stopped at 90 degrees.

Fortunately, there were multiple développés to each direction in this exercise, and I caught it and fixed it on the next pass.

What a revelation! The next développé was both easier and higher.

(Now, if I can just convince my feet to point reliably when my quads are relaxed 😛 Of late, they tend towards a kind of lazy point — and there is no excuse for that, I have good feet and should, in the grand tradition of ballet, show them off.)

I don’t know that I’ve ever managed this particular self-correction as consciously or effectively as I did today. It was exciting; a real “Eureka!” moment. I guess it made the difference between knowing rationally and really knowing.

Petit allegro, meanwhile, continued to be a disaster — this time because my legs didn’t want to temp de cuisse in the right directions. They kept trying to sproing the wrong way.

Ah, well — that’s ballet for you. It’s like bike touring: you get to the top of the hill only to see that beyond it is … another giant hill.

Anyway. Moar stuff to practice at home.

On the other hand, I got the Sissone combination with arms this time (thanks in no small part to the girl in front of me; thanks, random girl I’ve never met before — she carried her arms with such clarity that I sort of suddenly realized what I was doing wrong with mine :P).

Grand allegro was mostly good, except the part in which I subbed pas de chat for saut de chat on the first side. That’s just my brain for you. I was able to correct it on going left.

The former AD has been observing our class lately and today I felt that I acquitted myself acceptably well.

I’m used to seeing him now; the first couple of times I noticed that he’d appeared at our window I got flustered. At this point, though, he’s seen me dance basically as badly as I’m able to, so now things can only improve.

Also, I only knocked myself off my leg once in adagio today, and that’s because I had the counts wrong on the développé before the penché and thus was late rushed it. Lesson learned: don’t rush into penché.

So that’s it for now. Tomorrow I’m doing an extra class with Company B, so I shall attempt to report back on that.