http://www.oursuperadventure.com/comic/21st-february-2017/
(In case you’re wondering, though, my cat sounds like he’s full of doves, not bees, so I assume he’s potentially less explosive.)
Author Archives: asher
Oh, Pinterest!
Wait, I thought that was “developpé,” not “cheesy taco pasta?”
That must be what they call it in Spaghetti technique…
40 More Seconds
After a rough start (I think the weather made us all boisterous), we sketched in 40 more seconds of choreography tonight.
I spent much(1) of the rehearsal standing around in 1st arabesque à terre while we worked two different bits in which I, standing there as such, am the still point.
- The rest of the time was petite allegro, running, more petite allegro, more running, even more petite allegro, demonstrating grand assemblée en tournant, even more petite allegro, and two full runs of all three minutes and ten seconds of the dance. Holy cats, do I need to locate my jump rope. Yea verily, my cardio sucketh.
I think the effect is going to be pretty neat. Following a section with much bourrée-ing, I chassé through and hold the 1st a-à-t whilst eight of the girls 2nd a-à-t, then collect back to a fondu-soutenu-y thing before leaping and flocking away to do pretty things stage right.
Immediately after the first flock departs, the other four girls envelop me (still bravely holding my position) into their flock, and then we do pretty things stage left.
The experience of dancing this bit of my part is rather like getting off of one train, watching as it sails away, then getting drawn into a second train amongst your fellow commuters.
Assuming, of course, that one is in the habit of arabesque-ing on the train platforms (regarding which I think I’d better exercise my right to the fifth amendment).
This was from our second rehearsal, not to mention a different part of the dance, but I really like this moment. Ironically, I’m invisible in this screenshot, except for my hands, which are in dead-bird mode.
One of the things I quite like about this piece is that it is not always the girls leading me or vice-versa. Sometimes they lead me; occasionally I lead them. At other points, I’m just part of the stream. (Evidently of commuters. On the bourré train.)
I’m curious about where we’re going next, as we’ve reached another partnering bit that is, per BG, sort of a little hommage to Apollo. For me, tonight finished on a total cliffhanger as I couru-ed my butt to downstage right and finished in this lovely lunge with arms extended à côté.
Evidently the girls are going to make use of my arms, and I’m burning with curiosity as to what, exactly, that means.
At any rate, I just hope they put them back when they’re done, because I am definitely going to need them, if only to shove food and so forth into my face after the performance, as one does.
Anyway, it’s past my bedtime. I’m taking a rest/cleaning day tomorrow, since both Wednesday and Thursday promise to be long days.
One Weird Trick Again
Class again with JMH (it turns out that his surname does not start with G, something I seem to learn and then immediately unlearn on a weekly basis).
Today he gave us a handy bit of advice for plié that is, in short, One Weird Trick to Improve Your Turnout: focus on the idea of pressing the small-toe side of the foot against the floor.
It might not actually seem do much of anything to your foot (though if you have a habit of letting your arches collapse, it will correct that), but because of the way the posterior chain works, it keeps all the things turned on that need to stay turned on.
In a sense, this is an extension of what BW always says to me (knees back, knees back, knees back) when I’m failing to engage Maximum Turnout Mode . It’s just a different way of approaching the same problem: almost a cheat-code, really, to gain access to the hidden treasure-chest that contains one’s deep rotators. Or, well, to the last few degrees of that treasure-chest.
Honestly, the metaphor kind of breaks down there. It also sort of implies that I’ve got junk in my trunk.
Which, in fact, is more or less true (QV: dancers … got … back).
Prime rump roast on the hoof, y’all.
How do I know it works?
MY BUTT HURTS.
Or, more specifically, all the muscles that click on when you imagine pressing your little toe, and indeed the entire lateral edge of your foot, into the floor. Or, well, technically, they feel tired and grumpy. They’ll hurt tomorrow.
Oh, and my turnout kept happily obliging me with another degree here, another degree there, as class progressed, without me thinking about my knees at all.
This did not, by the way, prevent two of us from so convincingly imagining ourselves to be on the wrong leg during an adage that we have now done three weeks in a row(1) that we actually both looked to make sure.
- It’s a really nice one, so I’m glad we’re repeating it.
Neither of us, by the way, actually was on the wrong leg. We were just apparently having some kind of shared delusion.
So I guess I should add a warning label.
CAUTION:
This technique may cause delusions of wrong-leggedness.
Honestly, though, it was just one of those days. I couldn’t seem to wind up on the correct foot after a series of waltz turns, probably because I was busy trying to make them look like, you know, waltz turns, and not like an incompetent ice skater, which is how I often imagine that my waltz turns look.
Bizarre Choreography Advice from a Dream
Today was the third straight day that I woke up at 7, did a few things, decided to read for a few, and promptly zonked out for two hours. Considering that I can usually only nap if I’ve been awake for two days straight that’s bizarre enough.
However, today’s nap featured a dream in which BG offered the following advice for creating dances:
- Make sure the floor is clean. (Okay, that’s not so weird.)
- If you’re choreographing a dance for your little sister, use a combination of dish soap and Windex so she can see the reflection of her arm in the floor, but only if it’s a wooden floor (…oookay).
- Never leave rotting fruit on top of the piano unless you’re using it as part of the choreography. (Wat.I mean, obvs, but WAT. Also, why?!)
- And even then, only bananas.
I wish I could remember more of it.
It was all so sincere! BG in the dream was totally offering this in the vein of choreographic mentorship, as if these were basic questions central to the art of choreography that any budding choreographer might encounter.
…And yet, at the same time, it was all so bizarre(1).
All of this suggests that my unconscious mind is, at present, deeply concerned with matters of choreography and cleanliness (which, yes, but I didn’t need weird choreographic cleaning advice from a dream to figure that out).
So, in short, remember:
Never leave rotting fruit on top of the piano unless you’re using it as part of the choreography. And even then, only bananas.
- I should probably admit that this dream also involved a “pee machine,” which was a kind of elaborate Japanese urinal-and-holding tank that was supposed to allow people of any sex to pee modestly at outdoor festivals (apparently Dream Japan has never heard of the standard Port-o-Potty). In fact, it was so badly designed that even a bog-standard cismale with no intersex stuff going on would wind up pissing all over everything within the area of a meter and a half. Oy to the vey. I was cleaning that, too. I spritzed it with bleach, which caused crackling noises, which caused me to say, “I love chemical reactions!” What. The. Hell.
La danse est fini!
…Essentially.
“Knocking,” that is, not the ballet one.
The second-to-last missing piece was The Lift, which we hadn’t gotten around to really trying. Today it was just ABM and me, since AMS has a tech run for another thing tonight, so we took the time to firm that up.
The one we’re using is a simple modern-dance lift that involves wrapping yourself around your partner as she wraps herself around your middle, lifting her, turning in place, and then releasing her back into the wild.
Of course, that all happens as one smooth movement. In this case, it follows a series of washing-machine chaînés, which makes spotting the turns essential if you want to maintain a spotless record as someone who doesn’t drop his partners.
Getting the lift down also solved another problem I was having, which was an Awkward Classical Ballet Moment. I replaced it with a Contemporary Ballet Moment that hooks into the surrounding steps, et voilà, it all hangs together.
The really-last remaining piece is just a little moment that each of of us has individually right before the last sequence, and I’m confident that we’ll all come to the next rehearsal with something.
So, basically, the whole thing is thinged.
ABM told me she’s proud of me for stepping out of my classical ballet box and creating something much more contemporary. I’m pretty pleased with that as well—I feel like I left the dance go where it needed to instead of fighting it. That’s kind of a breakthrough for me, too be honest.
Our performance date, meanwhile, has moved to April 1st, which is totally fine by me. It gives us time to really polish the dance, and I think the end result will be nice.
Meanwhile, our Rep group is swinging right along. We’ve made really good progress this week! I’m still enjoying that piece immensely.
That’s it for today. Everything is tired, but I have really good chili and an evening and a day day to stay home and recharge.
Saturday, we’re going to see Human Abstract, which is exciting. I’m glad I take 9:00 class, though, because we opted for the mâtinée.
Never Again The Typing Times!
The Great Data Restoration of 2017 is complete at last.
Bout freaking time.
I Need A “Don’t Go All Out” Setting
It was chilly in the studio last night and I didn’t take class before rehearsal, and I’m regretting it today.
Never mind that BG told us a million times, “Don’t go all out; we don’t need to tonight,” my brain kept being like, Meh, none of the jumps are big.
Ah, well. I’m surprisingly sore this morning. (I also forgot that the floor in that particular studio is haaaaaard.)
My brain snagged on a tombé-coupé, balloné, sus-sous, repeat sequence: it just didn’t want the sus-sous to be there.
In the video, you can see me thinking, even though I’m way across the studio.
I did get it, though, and we’re up to 2:20 now.
A Quick Break So My Head Doesn’t Asplode
Still working on the Great Data Restoration of 2017.
I wish I knew what our desktop PC had done with its backup files, because Jiminy Cricket, this is ridonculous.
From now on, I’m going to upload backups of our backups to The Great Cloud In The Æthers so this will NEVER HAPPEN EVER AGAIN.
Anyway, I’m still working on this. I expect to finish it by … I’m not sure. Tomorrow morning at the latest. It would be tonight, but rehearsal. THE SHOW MUST GO ON, amiright?
In the process of doing this relentless desk-bound and detail-oriented job, I have discovered that I will do almost anything to avoid sitting at a desk and futzing about with financial datas, including cleaning the house. “Oop, can’t enter the datas right now, our friend who’s in massage therapy school is coming over to work on us!” (Speaking of which: OMG. You guys. Evidently I have needed a legit massage for like 17 years or something.)
Anyway, one of my Avoidance Strategies this morning was to come up with a set of cards for an improv game that I’m going to try with our Dance Team, which is divided into Kids Who Grok Improve and Kids Who Are Like, “Wait, What Steps Am I Supposed To Improv?”
There are three sets of cards, as such:
Animal
- cheetah
- elephant
- falcon
- lion
- snail
- trout
Movement
- crawl
- glide
- run
- skip
- stand (yes: in dance, standing is a movement)
- walk
Feeling
- angry
- bored
- confused
- joyful
- sad
- thoughtful
The idea is to give the kids something a little more concrete around which to improvise movements.
Here’s how it works:
- Choose an Animal card (these are orange in my set). Think about how that animal is shaped and how it moves. Think about how it might feel to be that animal. Are you heavy or light? Are you relaxed or focused? Do you live on the land or in the water, and can you fly? If you live in the water, do you live in lakes, rivers, or oceans? If you live on land, do you live on the plains, the mountains, or the forest? Is it hot there? Cold? It’s okay to start out moving in ways that look like the animal in question, but ultimately you should try to move your body in ways that feel like the animal in question. Explore this for at least one minute; at most, five minutes.
- Choose a Movement card (these are green in my set). If you draw “Elephant” and “Glide,” think about how a glide would look and feel if an elephant were doing it. Try to capture that movement with your body. Is there more than one way an Elephant can Glide? How would a Falcon Skip if it were by itself? What about five Falcons together? Explore this for at least one minute; at most, five minutes.
- Choose a Feeling card (these are blue in my set). We tend to associate certain movements with certain feelings, but we can mix them up. What would an Elephant Angrily Gliding look and feel like? What would a Snail Joyfully Standing look and feel like? Is there a difference between one Cheetah Thoughtfully Walking and three Cheetahs Thoughtfully Walking? Explore this for five minutes, to give yourself time to connect all the parts.
I plan to couple this with the classic North, South, East, West flocking exercise. I’ll run them through the flocking exercise first, though, so they get a sense of how flocking works before adding weird stuff.
Next time, I might add in “vegetable” and “mineral” categories. How might sad seaweed skip? How might a confused granite cliff-face crawl?
And now, back to our regularly scheduled strugglecast day.
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.
danseur ignoble 