Sunday Class: Grand Allegro Pyrotechnics
This has to be brief, as I still have a boatload of stuff I need to finish today, but JMG gave us a really lovely, long grand allegro today, and I apparently tossed out one hell of a nice tour-jeté.
It was edifying to hear that it was nice, because I put All The Efforts into that run, including the tour-jeté (which I spring-loaded as if BW was there to remind me to jump higher) and couldn’t catch my breath because stupid allergies are stupid, so after we finished I had to sit down so I wouldn’t puke.
I don’t think that the left side was quite as nice, but it was still pretty nice, with the added bonus that there was no fear of barfing after finishing the run.
I think this is probably the first time I’ve managed to cram grand assemblé, tour jeté, saut de chat, pas de chat, Bournonville jeté, and a tour into a combination in class 😛
Oh, and today I did triple turns on command. Bad triples—one was pretty decent, the others were like, turn, turn … FECKING TURN ALREADY AIGHT, one with the Hoppity-Hops of Shame—but triples nonetheless. Both sides. Like four of them. So that’s a thing now, I guess?
I remember when bad doubles on command were the only doubles-on-command that I had, so I’m taking this as progress.
Any now, back to restoring all the freaking financial data via manual data entry because apparently I have severely, severely offended the Demi-urge of Bookkeeping.
Posted on 2017/02/19, in balllet, class notes and tagged almost all the big leaps in one combination you guys!, good class today, so many grand allegro, triple pirouettes, yassssssss. Bookmark the permalink. 5 Comments.
danseur ignoble 
At moments like these I can only respond by wanting to yell “Get in!!” thanks to football, so….GET IN! MY SON.
w00t!
So we got to do something quite pyro. Thanks to Nina Nitroglycerin appropriately enough. Your combination, if you choose to accept it:
5th, arms 2nd
Grande battement devant, arms to 4th
Close 5th
Passé dévéloppé to your left, reverse the 4th
Close 4th
Passé dévéloppé behind, reverse the arms again, transition to arabesque
Close 5th
Plié rélévé, balance, arms into allongé
Demi plié…and WIGGLE YOUR BUTT. DO IT.
Repeat other side 8x in all
Now…
Instead of closing 5th out of the arabesque, you will close parallel and do a weird hybrid balancé arms/Graham contraction thing while pliéing a bit, first to one diagonal then the other.
That done, 4th, crack a huge dev devant, piqué it down, and do the most exaggerated ballet walk ever to get 5th, repeat ’til you run out of space.
Notes: this is all about showing off. All the devs and battes are one count. In fact pretty much everything is but the wiggle and you’re not going to get away with that with less than total conviction, are you? So attack the fuck out of everything. And yes, the second canon looks like the fucking Rockettes. Own it or get out of the studio….
On timing, you want to follow the vocal. Every time Kathy Sledge comes in….hit it and do something monstrous.
This sounds amazing, and full points for the description! Good to see a combination that is intentionally all about conviction and showing off—I feel I’m forever yanking my inner show-off back, and as such I rather cherish the chance to really let fly; for the less-confident dancers, this looks like a good way to drag them into dancing with conviction.
And the butt-wiggle is just pure gold.
Meanwhile, in rehearsal last night I ran aground on a simple little:
tombé-coupé-balloné
sus-sous
tombé-coupé-balloné
sus-sous
…because my brain refused to accept the existence of the sus-sous in the mix. Took me basically all the repeats to get it. Fortunately it’s followed by a run of nice little jumps, so I didn’t have time to feel all butt-hurt about it.
The hardest thing to get right was being in parallel for the weird bit, not changing or turning out. That and the sheer speeed. Still, I can’t think of it without grinning.