I need to do class with blinders on, you guys.

So I got to do grand allegro today for the first actually third (but who’s counting? #dancermath) time in aaaaaages, and it was awesome (in the sense that it was hella fun, not so much in the sense that it was like, “YES, PARIS OPERA BALLET HERE I COME!!!!!!”).

The combination was simple so we could do it ziggy-zaggy-wise and get in a few reps per side:

sauté arabesque
failli
glissade
assemblé porté[1]
piqué arabesque

failli

Glissade chassée[2]
grand assemblé en tournant

1. AKA not actually my favoritest jump because it’s not super exciting, but I’m actually pretty awesome at it? So it’s one of my favorite jumps.
2. Wow, did I ever write out incorrectly earlier

On the other hand, if you take a look at the screenshot above (from BG’s video), you’ll notice that I am

LOOKING

AT

THE

MIRROR

}:|

>.<

}:O

Also that apparently I am preparing to catch a baseball with my left hand, but meh. That’s no biggie. Better that than the eternal Don Quixote Hand of Doom.

This is actually one of the General Ballet Things I’m working on right now: using my eyes.

First, of course, there’s the performative aspect—you can’t dance the whole ballet with your face frozen en face, or staring at the neck of the dancer in front of you, or whatevs. The audience wants to see your face, amirite?

Second, though, and rather more importantly, there’s a rule in cycling that kind of applies to ballet, too:

The bike goes where your eyes go.

Only, like, in ballet, it’s your body and your balance and stuff instead of a bike.

Like, if you’re doing adagio, and your eyes are pointing the wrong way, it can throw your balance offfffff.

We talked about this with turns, too: apparently, once we’re done looling for spit (if you remember that post, kudos :D), some of us (AHEM: me, but also other people) glance down as we finish our turns and cheat ourselves out of extra rotations.

Legitimately, I got a triple out of this fix today, though my turns working left are still pretty awful.

Anyway, evidently I need to do this in jumps, too, instead of staring at the mirror. Yegads, if ever there was anyone who needed a studio with a curtain over the mirror, I AM THAT PERSON.

Oh, and here’s an annotated version of the screencap so it’s clear exactly what one should and should not do:

E, in front of me, is Doin’ It Rite. I am Doin’ It Wrong. But I OTOH dat booty tho? #danseurbooty

Anyway, there you have it.

Oh, also, TIL that this shirt totally does not stay put when you do grand assemblé en tournant. It corkscrews around you and rides up to, like, mid-chest level, then falls back down. Pretty funny stuff, particularly given that I had NO IDEA that was happening.

PS: My mood is a little better today. Still feeling like AAAACK PEOPLE RUNNNN but class has this nice cushioning effect.

~

PS: I just noticed at E and I were all matchy-matchy-ish, which is hilarious because we were a pair for basically all of the across-the-floor stuff today 😀 Funny when it works out like that!