The turnouts seem to be slowly returning to life.

Class today was incrementally better. I was able to feel the turnout muscles without training my entire mind upon them like the Eye of Sauron hunting the One Ring.

As a giant nerd … erm, I mean, as a serious ballet student, I felt that this point required illustration (stolen from Independent.co.uk via Teh Googs). Also, it really bothers me that I didn’t quite manage to center my caption

The result of this was that I actually got a compliment on my passé in Killer Class. It came attached to a minor correction for the placement of my arm, but it still totally counts, mmmkay? (The funny part is that I think I got the same correction from BW last week. Derp!)

This is approximate, of course, but you know … close enough.

I also tried to apply the principle I’ve been exploring in modern class—for me, stretch isn’t a good indicator of placement. This did much for the appearance of my adagio and for the effectiveness of my turns.

Right after terre-a-terre, though, I inhaled a roving dust bunny, which proceeded to stick to my uvula and cause me to cough my brains out Stupid dust bunny. Stupid uvula.

I used about 6,000,000 tissues while Killer B gave us the combination for the warm-up jumps, but still managed to recover in time to do them.

We then did a tiny petit allegro that went:

sisson simple avant
petit assemblé
sisson simple arrière
petit assemblé
changement (x4 I think?)
echappé
entrechat quatre
entrechat quatre

Or something along those lines I may have the number of changements and echappés wrong. Regardless, it ended with a pair of entrechats quatre.

My beats were still mostly messy, which is annoying. They’ll get better as I regain all the strengths.

Grand allegro, on the other hand, was less than optimal, because I kept forgetting that there was supposed to be an assemblé after a glissade, and thus getting off the music and being like, WTF, OH NO, INCOMING, ABORT ABORT!!!

…Because, of course, this was a combination that changed directions in the middle, so if you were ahead (or behind), things were going to get weird in your little individual flock.

On the balance, though, class was pretty good, and definitely indicates that I’m on my way back.

In other news, my Dance Team small group is gamely doing some hard stuff, and also my quads are currently on fire, which indicates that I’m still using them too much (read: not yet using the turnouts enough).

Anyway, time to go dangle from the ceiling, after which I am probably going to borrow a corner of the floor during Open Fly and video what the choreography for the small group’s dance is supposed to look like.

Tomorrow I have to call UPS and hound them about the location of a pair of ballet shoes that I ordered, since they were supposedly delivered to my mailbox on Tuesday. Since there has been no sign of ballet shoes in my mailbox, or indeed of a UPS truck, I’m guessing they may have been delivered to the wrong address.

Needless to say, I’m feeling a little peeved, as the new shoes are Blochs, and I was eager to try them out and see whether I like them at least as much as my favorite Sanshas (assuming, of course, that I’ve ordered the correct size).

I may just go buy a pair at the brick-n-mortar shop, as I need to pick up another dance belt anyway, and also I have no patience. But either way I am going to hound UPS about my shoes.