I tried to write a post this morning.

In fact, I wrote a post this morning. Like, 1,500 words’ worth of post.

And it was, honestly, probably a little boring.

I mean, it was exciting to me. I wrote about the fact that I seem to be getting over this sinus thing now (huzzah!). I wrote about last night’s class (great correction for my arms: elbows in front of shoulders; fixes things a lot, w00t!). I wrote about last night’s rehearsal (BG set more of our dance! I get a cool solo bit!).

I wrote about this weird ballet dream I … actually, there’s no way I’m going to compress Post-Apocolyptic Warehouse Summer Intensive and the ensuing Dance Belt Crisis into a parenthetical phrase. I think that’s probably an entire post in and of itself, but I’m not writing that one right now.

See, I realized that I really wanted to get around to writing about some BOSU videos, and my earlier draft was just WAY TOO LONG, even for me. So it will very possibly languish in my Drafts box forever, and in its stead, here’s the post I promised you with some BOSU arabesques.

This video begins with a very slow rise at coupé.

It’s not terrible: my elbows could stand to be a little more lifted, and my chin is drawn back a little—in short, I’m drawing back into myself as I fight for my balance instead of drawing up and forward.

If you give it a pause at 0:16, you can see this. I’ve just started to sort of get with the program, press forward, and lift the back of my neck a little bit, but my my jaw is still drawn back.

I’m lifting my arms, here, in a way that draws my shoulders forward, which pushes my sternum back. There’s definitely room for this particular movement pathway—but it’s in modern dance, rather than in ballet, and you use it when you want to contract rather than lifting.

Because my weight is distributed in a kind of weird, snaky pattern, I can’t bring my free leg up slowly and with control.

This costs me when I begin to unfold around 0:22. Between 0:22 and 0:24 I’m forced to redistribute my weight rather abruptly. As such, this phase takes about half as long as it should: I kind of throw my leg and catch it, instead of carrying it smoothly. My arms can’t keep up without unbalancing me, so they’re late to the party, sweeping through to first arabesque when the free leg has, in effect, already arrived.

At 0:26 – 0:28, however, I sort myself out fairly substantially. My right arm is a bit far back and a bit high, but I manage to carry my sternum forward, untuck my chin, lift the crown of my head, and the free leg floats up just above 90 degrees.

The interesting thing about this recovery is how effectively it restores control. I’m able to recover my weight evenly and return to and hold a the first arabesque at 45 degrees on relevé. As I reach to allongé, though, I lift my gaze by lifting my head back, which unbalances me. It doesn’t exactly knock me off my leg, but I do think the close and dismount could have been better-controlled had I lifted my gaze up and forward instead.

This all illustrates one of the really important points L’Ancien frequently mentions: your head is one of the heaviest parts of your body. Its placement matters immensely to the success of your balances.

There’s more wiggle room, so to speak, in first arabesque at 90 degrees because of the way your weight is distributed. In fact, it can be helpful to pull the upper body back a bit when you’re working at 90 degrees en relevé. This particular arabesque is successful because I’m drawing my back and my leg towards one another, allowing the leg and body to pivot freely around the hip of the supporting leg.

This is the result:

A nice, stable arabesque a little above 90 degrees. Two quibbles: my releve could be stronger, and I’d still need to get my back a little higher to carry this into a deep penche.

Progress from here on arabesques will depend, for me, largely on figuring out how to engage my core and back in such a way as to allow more freedom to lift my sternum.

Progress on balances in general—especially those that aren’t counter-balanced—will require me to keep working on carriage of my head, arms, and chest.

This second video is shot from a slightly different angle and involves a different approach: I step into coupé derièrre, then immediately begin to rise to retiré.

My placement looks a little better here: if you watch my arms, you can see that I begin by rotating the humerus—in other words, lifting the elbow—without disengaging my lats. My neck, sternum, and back remain lifted and open. After 6 seconds floating in retiré, I begin to extend.

This is where things fall apart a bit. I start to carry my knee back, but then I lose control of my turnout and the knee briefly dips.

If you pause the video at 0:20, you can see part of the cause of the problem: my right shoulder is no longer connected to my left hip, so to speak. Instead, I’m extended along a long diagonal that begins to pull my weight towards the outside of my supporting leg. The free leg scoops downwards, then lifts again, in an attempt to compensate.

The resulting balance (though it’s really pretty) is really looks more like the middle of a reversé: I suspect that if I drew my knee in to attitude, the balance would be forced to pivot.

On the other hand, that releve looks pretty nice.

On the upside, I’ve done a much better job keeping my back up, here, Partly, that’s because I was “warmer” in this video; but it’s partly also the result of experience. I’d been experimenting with these for roughly half an hour when I shot this, as opposed to maybe five or ten minutes when I shot the first one.

Because of the angle of my back, the arabesque in this video looks a prettier than the one in the first video. That said, I’m not entirely sure it’s actually a better balance. I thought it was until I sat down and really looked at these in depth.

Now, I’ve concluded that the first one, though it’s more awkward at the outset and never quite matches this one in terms of beauty, is probably technically better: in short, my control is better through the latter half of the exercise.

So there you have it: my nitpicky examination of a couple of BOSU arabesque videos. What did I say I’d do next, fondus?