Legs aren’t feeling too bad this morning, and I woke up feeling refreshed after 8 hours of pretty sound sleep.
Bonus: was sufficiently tired last night that falling asleep was not a problem.
New modern class today. I’m looking forward to it!
Author Archives: asher
On Technique: Rond de Jambe en L’air, All Cocked Up
Fourth in a series of posts on the details of technique that focuses primarily on steps and aspects of dance that I’m struggling with. Take it with a grain of salt.
I find it helpful to write things out in an effort to get a grip on them. These aren’t so much instructions (though if they work for you, awesome!) as observations.
Today, during barre, I brought my leg to 90 degrees for a rond de jambe en l’air.
I kept it in the hip socket and began to trace an arc: avant, à côte—and then TB called out a general correction about keeping the hips level, and suddenly I realized that I was the joker with his working hip cocked up into his ribcage like a total n00b.
No insult to total n00bs intended, by the way. You spend your first couple of years in the ballet studio basically being a total n00b, hanging in there by the skin of your teeth and learning to feel your body in ways you couldn’t before. Sometimes your working hip is going to go walkabout, and that’s just part of the learning process.
Everyone was a total hip-cocking n00b at one point, including BW and David Hallberg and Misty Copeland. Probably even Balanchine, though we can’t ask him since he’s conveniently no longer among us.
But, really, by the time you’ve stuck it out long enough that they don’t give you side-eye* when you walk into advanced class, that’s a thing you’ve (mostly) learned how to control.
*Like: Fa, a long long way to …go before you’re ready for this class, Buddy.
And, in fact, it’s something I’m usually pretty good at.
So what happened?
Approximately seven weeks of down-time, that’s what.
While I was busy being sick and then on break, my turnout muscles went, “Hallelujah! We don’t have to do all that work any more!” and got busy losing all the strength and refined control I’d just spent the past several months very consciously building(1).
- Muscles are great, but they lack foresight. Every time you take a break, they’re like, “Yeay, no more physical activity forever! Sedentary lifestyle, here we cooommmmme!!!!!” Basically, muscles are lazy little bastidges.
Now, this is a totally normal process.
It even kinda makes sense: conservation of resources, and all. If your body doesn’t have to keep a given set of muscles all super-toned and whatevs, of course it’s not going to waste resources trying to do so. Especially when the muscles in question are really only used that way by the 0.000012%(2) of the world’s population that’s insane enough to devote a jillion hours each week to ballet.
- Ignoble, D. (2017). Pure conjecture. Louisville, KY: Horse Hockey.
This completely-scientific Venn diagram explains everything. There’s a pink pixel in there somewhere.
Likewise, when I raced bikes I learned that it’s good for serious athletes to take an off-season now and then. This doesn’t mean, necessarily, “sit on your butt and eat Cheetos for six months,” but if even Joe Friel says you can take a break now and then, get a little soft around the edges, that’s good enough for me.
However, seven weeks of essentially nothin’ isn’t precisely what the good Mr. Friel has in mind when he suggests taking an off-season, nor is it what your friendly local ballet master would, for example, recommend for dancers on the seasonal layoff after their Nuts are well and truly Cracked.
Anyway, it turns out that after slugging abed(3) for seven weeks, your highly-trained turnout muscles—the very muscles responsible for carrying your leg through rond de jambe en l’air at 90 degrees (or, really, any angle) without cocking a hip—aren’t quite prepared for their job.
- Or a-sofa, or what have you.
This is worth remembering.
Ballet technique is forged from an alloy of refined intellectual knowledge, rich connections in the somatosensory cortex and beyond, and pure raw strength.
Think of it like you might think of baking a cake: you need at bare minimum a given set of ingredients: flour, sugar, eggs, fat, some kind of leavening agent. If one is missing, the end result might be edible, but it’s probably not going to be the cake you had in mind(4).
- If you haven’t encountered Cake Wrecks before, you’re welcome, and also I’m sorry. I’ll see you when you return to the surface.
I have now strayed so far from the familiar waters of ballet culture that I am uncertain I shall ever find my way back.
In short, there might be days that your technique, for one reason or another, doesn’t come together.
If this happens to you, don’t panic. It will (almost certainly) come back soon enough.
Sometimes you need to rebuild strength; sometimes your brain is working so hard mastering a new skill that it can’t keep the existing ones performing as intended; sometimes you’re just tired and your brain and/or body go, “WHYYYYYYYY?”
Meanwhile, if you’re having trouble keeping your hips level, bear in mind that the same muscles that drive your turnout are essential to movements like rond de jambe en l’air, passé/retiré, attitude, and so forth (really, they’re essential to everything in ballet).
Rather than simply thinking furiously to yourself, KEEP THE HIPS LEVEL, KEEP THE HIPS LEVEL, LEVEL, LLLLLEEEEVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVVEEELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL!, if you’re struggling, consider concentrating on engaging the deep rotators to lift your working leg and move it through whatever radius is required(5). When you’re working on this, don’t worry about the height of your working leg: it’ll come.
- You can, in fact, experiment with this very movement while lying on the floor or whatever. Just, like, don’t try to go further than à la seconde.
If your deep rotators aren’t presently strong enough, the higher you carry your working leg, the greater the likelihood that the large anterior muscles of the leg (especially the quads) and core will take over, causing the hip to pop out of line.
Note, also, that even if your rotators are strong enough, if you extend your beyond your hip socket and allow the pelvis to creep forward on the working side, it will be hard to fully engage the rotators. That situation can also lead to a cocked hip.
So there you have it. And now I’m going to go soak myself in the bath and think about what to eat for dinner tonight.
A Brief Observation On Technique
I’m working on trying to dance with a relaxed upper body.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, relaxing the upper body makes it easier to lift out of the hips and so forth. It also ameliorates, to an extent, my tendency to over-engage the back muscles.
Last night, during barre, I had the weird and ultimately lovely experience of catching BW’s eye in the mirror must by chance. I was watching him (because his grand plié is breathtakingly beautiful and I was using it was a model) and he was watching me (because that’s part of the job when you’re teaching), and then we had this sort of, “Oh, fancy meeting you here!” moment.
We grinned at each-other and I sort of laughed, and rather magically my whole upper body just let go of itself in the best possible way. It didn’t fall apart, it just stopped being stiff.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this made a huge difference to the ease of my technique and the quality of my movement.
If I were to set a principle of movement as a goal for this year, I think it would be “freedom.” Central Casting Troubled Ballet Boy is a very tense individual. Oddly enough, this does not automatically beget free, expressive dance. Who would ever have imagined?
I’m not, however, actually going to nail a movement principle to my mental door. That would be essentially the equivalent of someone shouting, “Try to relax!” right in one’s ear.
On the other hand, I am going to try to be less afraid of lightness and laughter, and especially of meeting the gaze of my teacher or of another dancer(1). This has never yet ended badly for me, so why do I always behave as if it is going to result in some kind of unexpected Battle Ballet Ultimate Smackdown(2)?
- Am I the only one who does this? When The Instructor approaches, there’s like this little voice in my head that desperately mutters, “Eyes straight ahead! Don’t look! Oh, g-dohg-dohg-d…”
- Still pretty sure this is a viable idea for a TV show, though.
Anyway, I’m reminded of a conversation years ago in which a riding instructor described the kind of strength required for horseback riding as “a relaxed strength.” Even though we sometimes use our bodies in very different ways in ballet, the concept transfers well—especially in light of the fact that in both horsemanship and ballet, the upper body must be free and independent of the legs.
I thought about this principle halfway through class on Wednesday (in one of those rare moments when it happened of its own accord). I thought about it again yesterday, while spying on BW’s plié from the corner of my eye.
In other news, I have a student who has the polar opposite of my problem: she is forever dropping her upper body forward (from the hips, oddly enough). If any of you have good visualizations (like Modern L’s “your spine is like a roller-coaster” and, of course, the Summer Intensive classic, “cheetah eyes”) to help with this, I’d love to hear them!
Thursday!
Moderately sucked at modern today. Ballet, on the other hand, was rather good, except for the part in which I misunderestimated my tendency to travel and lame-ducked myself right into the shelf-desk thing on which the music system resides.
Also, salient men’s technique bits: instead of B+, preparatory position for dudes is usually with the back leg straight (notable exceptions: Balanchine et Bournonville(1)); likewise, we generally chassé into hell turns chaînes. I suspect that’s how I learned then as a wee bairn, in fact, because when I do then that way my body suddenly to the, “Oh, you mean these things!” instead of, “ABORT! ABORT!”
- Autocorrupt always tries to make this “Bidonville.” A bidon is a bottle, like an old-fashioned water bottle for bike racing. The idea of the magnificent Erik Bruhn arising from a school founded by someone named “Bottletown” never fails to make me chortle with unrestrained mirth.
BW has a gift for bringing out the best in his students—or at least in me. BB agrees, though. We both love his classes.
In other news, I’ve evolved an alarming tendency to do turns on autopilot, then think I haven’t done them and do extra turns. WTF even if that? I threw in an extra stepover, even.
In other, other news, I forgot my legwarmers, so BW lent me some of his. He described them as “fashion backward,” and we joked about how they look like they were knitted from a 1970s sofa, but they did the job just fine.
Each Spring, sofherds guide the half-wild flocks down from the hills, where they’re shorn of their thick winter coats before returning to the range (via Pinterest).
I remembered to give them back after class. It feels weird, somehow, to hand someone a sweaty ball of legwarmers, though—which is in itself weird, as exchanging sweat-soaked hugs with other dancers seems perfectly normal. Maybe it’s the, “Oh, here, have some sweat to take home” angle that feels so weird.
Anyway, this is one of of the nice things about taking a tiny class taught by a friend. If you forget your legwarmers because your brain is full, your teacher can lend you his without making everyone else who forgot theirs feel unloved or whatevs.
Anyway, I’m quite tired and looking forward to my rest day tomorrow.
Killer Class: In Which It Comes Back Bit By Bit
Also, it is not easy to eat your lunch with 16 pounds of cat in your lap. At least not when your lunch is ziti with red sauce and the cat insists on interfering with your working arm(1). Just saying.
- You might be a dancer if the best way you can think of to describe your arms in the act of dining is as “working arm” and “supporting arm”…
Anyway, I felt stronger and better than last week, though still a bit chaotic. On the other hand, the part of my brain that perceives what’s happening deep in my hips came back online in the midst of doing frappés on relevé. Since I was doing them en relevé very much in hopes that such a miracle might occur, it was quite satisfying.
Also, my coupé balances were boss.
I forgot to mention that my brain re-engaged with my turnouts yesterday thanks to modern class. That, the work I’ve been doing on balances, and the input Killer B gave me last week all coalesced to allow long, steady coupé balances avant and arrière on both sides.
That actually surprised me.
My turns, on the other hand, were basically a roving disaster (or, they were during terre-a-terre). Too much attack, not enough preparation, and I kept panicking because I had assembled the combination in the wrong order in my brain (today was not a great day for remembering combinations, for me). In short, there was a thing where you piqué soutenu turn into sus-sous, pick up the front leg directly into extension, give it a breath, and tombé onto it. It was lovely, but I couldn’t remember to which of the two piqué soutenu turns in the combination it was attached, and consequently kept getting myself muddled.
As such, I did the first side twice; once in the first group (nobody else stepped up, so I went even though I knew that I didn’t know the combination), then once in the last group.
New Boy came back, and he now has a name, which begins with F. I can’t remember his surname, but I suppose he can be New Boy until he’s come back to class one more time. After that, I’ll have to figure something else out. Perhaps that will be my new rule for naming people. They can be New Person until they establish themselves as regulars by attending at least three Killer Classes without dying.
I wound up unintentionally attached to New Boy’s group as a function of having repeated the first side of the terre-a-terre. I just basically stayed there afterwards—partly because it seemed weird to run back around to the front of the group, and partly because it gave me time to watch the combination a million times.
I still did it incorrectly at least once more, but that was a function of the fact that learning by doing is, for me, more powerful than learning by watching (also figured out that one of the things I’d been doing was turning too far on the first piqué soutenu and facing the wrong corner of the “box” (basically, turning to effacé instead of croisé).
At least petit allegro went surprisingly well today, though, so there’s that? We did a little combination that went sisson simple-sisson simple-tombé coupé-assemblé, changement-changement-echappé, changement-changement-changement-entrechat quatre.
I may have too many changements in that last little phrase, come to think of it.
For once, my legs not only grokked sisson simple, but also grokked tombé coupé-assemblé. I forgot the echappé once on each side, though, because…I don’t even know why, actually.
It’s not like I can’t normally do those steps, by the way. I’m just not great at doing them cleanly and at speed. As such, this is progress, particularly since I haven’t been doing anything speed-work wise.
Ran into BW after class. I’m looking forward to his class (and modern) tomorrow. After that, I’m looking forward to sitting on my behind on Friday 😛
Modern M….uesday
Modern class began at my primary studio today.
I think I might have mentioned that the instructor dances in Modern T’s company? Anyway, she does, and it turns out that I actually know her(1). We were like, “Oh! It’s you!”
- This is no longer surprising; the dance world is ridiculously tiny and intimate: it’s like 2.23 degrees of separation up in here. If that. It was extra-unsurprising this time, since I knew that the instructor was part of Moving Collective, but still neat.
Anyway, I was not just the Onliest Boy, but the Onliest Student—another Ambush Private Class! 😀
This was great for me, of course. We took it slowly today, and this and the student:teacher ratio of 1:1 gave LF a chance to really drill in and sort some of the details of my modern technique.
Like, for example, I have apparently never had the faintest idea how to release my neck. I never realized that. Sometimes it would happen on its own, and I would think, “Oh, modern feels good today!” without really understanding why.
Most of the time, though, my neck just didn’t release—and I didn’t know it wasn’t releasing. Then, in floor work, either my neck was always straining away, refusing to cooperate with the process, or I just shoved my head down onto (2) the floor rather than letting my neck melt.
- Note that I wrote onto and not into, here. To get into the floor, you really have to release. You have to feel gravity working on your body.
In case you hadn’t guessed, I’m your stereotypical flexible-but-very-tense Ballet Boy (another way in which I am, ridiculously and laughably, Central Casting Ballet Boy). I think this is one of the reasons that modern is so good for my ballet technique: it helps me relax and soften my upper body, which not only makes my dancing look better, but actually makes my dancing better.
Classical ballet technique—especially the Russian approach, perhaps—demands lightness and freedom in the upper body. In my experience, the funny thing is that once your upper body figures out “light and free” (while remaining engaged and disciplined), the lower body part actually gets easier.
The essence of classical ballet technique, via Pintrest
The hard part for me, though, is keeping the upper body light and free, instead of tight and bound(3). This is where modern comes in.
- Okay, so really, keeping any part of my body light and free, instead of tight and bound, is hard for me. Remind me to get back into meditation practice…
Floor work doesn’t, well, work if you’re tight and bound. Release technique doesn’t work if you don’t know how to release. When I’m not doing modern class on a regular basis, I forget how to relax and release.
This is the second time in my life I’ve had a private modern class, if I remember correctly. I feel like it was exactly the right way to jump (or, more accurately, ooze :D) back into Modern. It helped me figure out where some of my weak points in modern are (not just the “can’t relax” thing, but also the thing where I’m afraid of falling over sideways).
We touched on quite a few other things, many of which fit neatly into the “move like a human” concept that Monika discusses over at The Dance Training Project.
So I feel like I learned a lot today, and also like my body is coming back online.
That’s a good feeling. As dancers, we live in our bodies so much, and when we feel separated from them, it’s really uncomfortable—or, well, that’s my experience.
My fitness is starting to return, which is great.
Anyway, LT is a fantastic teacher, and she comes up with really amazing analogies that do a fantastic job conveying concepts central to modern technique and, really, to just moving effectively as a human being (which we Central Casting Ballet Weirdos don’t always do very well). She also described my legs as a long and powerful, which never hurts 😀
Anyway, that’s it for now. I’m really looking forward to Thursday’s class … and, of course, to Killer Class tomorrow!
Monday Madness: In Which I Am Amazed
All my choreography worked today. Regarding which:
YAAAAAAAASSSSSSSSSS!
My upcoming grown-ass semi-professional dance piece is a ballet/modern hybrid piece to Antony and the Johnsons’ cover of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” and the opening looks exactly as I visualized it—and it’s beautiful.
I was surprised by that. Maybe I shouldn’t be, but sometimes you suddenly make something beautiful, and it catches you off guard.
The rest is coming along nicely. The opening 35 seconds set a high bar(re).
Speaking of high barres, my coupé balances in class tonight were surprisingly good, though even the top barres in the studio where Monday class takes place are lower than is ideal for me. I think I’ve been over-correcting.
This class is at the school location in one of the two two larger studios. I’m guessing the top barre is optimized for students between 5′ and 5’3″. At 5’8″ with short arms, I have to do funky things to reach the barre when I’m on relèvé. The portable barres are even lower, though. The bottom barre, meanwhile, is optimized for cracking your knees when doing turns.
Speaking of turns, mine were meh today. I don’t actually have the faintest idea why, either.
Anyway, I’m cooked, so to bed with me.
Eventually you’ll get to see my “Heaven’s Door” dance, but probably not ’til it’s complete.
It’s Taimz for Crazy Taimz
As of today, my schedule officially begins its trek through the land of:
This means rehearsals that end at 10:30 on Monday nights, a whole lotta class(1), extra conditioning for an upcoming audition, Dance Team, preparation for our annual Meeting With The Accountant, and work on the next iteration of the website for D’s business*.
- This is different than a Whole Latte class, in which baristas would presumably learn the art of making ethically-sourced organic coffee drinks, or perhaps simply how to make an entire latte and not just part of one(2).
- If you forget the milk, for example, it’s just coffee!
In the interest of retaining some shred of sanity, I’m keeping Modern Mondays off the calendar until March, at least. My primary studio just added modern on Tuesdays and Thursdays, though, so I’ll be doing at least one of those, depending.
I’m trying to keep Tuesday unscheduled, but since tomorrow is the first class, I’m going to go.
For the time being, on Mondays, it makes more sense to take an evening ballet class instead of a morning modern class. That keeps my mornings free for goofing off on the Innertubes household stuff and groups all the dance things into a nice block from 2:45 — 10:30. (There’s a dinner break in there, don’t worry.)
This is one of the things I’m trying to do differently this year. Instead of saying, “Oh, cool, I only have three things on the schedule for Mondays!”, I’m accounting for things like transit time and the fact that I don’t change gears well, so it’s foolish to assume I’ll get even one task done if I have a couple of hours between engagements.
Thus, while I seem to have once again stacked a lot onto my plate, I’m trying to be sensible about how I approach it.
The thing I’ve learned about pursuing dance seriously is that you’re either up to your eyeballs in alligators—wait, let’s call them crocodiles because it will be funnier later—or you’re on break. The challenge is learning to Arrange Your Crocodiles In A Linear Array. Which is to say:
Get your crocs in a row! (Shamelessly ganked from Chris Booth over at Expatior)
Arranging my waterfauna is really not my forté, but I’m learning. Sort of.
The frenzy of class and rehearsal is worth it to have the chance to make art and do the thing that it feels like I was made to do(3).
- The cat disagrees. He believes I was made to serve as a cat bed and play-bot.
I fully expect to arrive home exhausted at 11 PM tonight. Needless to say, I’m glad Tuesday isn’t Killer Class day.
If it was, I’d make it work. It would be worth it.
Right now I feel weirdly like my dreams are rushing towards me at terminal velocity.
All things considered, that’s a pretty cool feeling.
Though, really—ask me again in March how I feel about my schedule 😉
Here’s a detailed explanation of how my current schedule happened:
Adult Dance Intensives, 2017
You guys! David King of A Ballet Education may be doing a summer program open to dancers ages 11-adult!
I’ve found his writings on technique to be helpful, and I think this could be a great opportunity. Click on over for more information.
Sadly, I probably won’t be going this year because I’ll be at Pilobolus’ summer program. …Unless, of course, one of you could lend me a Time-Turner and a private jet? 😉
Anyway, Monsieur King has me thinking about summer programs, so here are some options for adult dancers looking for intensives for this year. Because, at heart, ballet is my jam, I tend to focus on ballet programs and programs with strong ballet components, but the final version of this list will probably include some strictly modern options as well.
I’m not going to itemize all the individual Sun King options. There are a lot of them, they span the summer, and they have their own website for that! Besides, everyone knows about Sun King. That said, everyone always seems to have a blast at their intensives, so consider them duly linked 😉
For your planning pleasure, I’m organizing these by date. Here we go!
As always, if you know of a great summer program for adult dancers—anywhere in the world—and you’d like me to list it here, please drop the info in the comments!
Summer Intensives for Grown-Ass Adults, 2017
April
- Dates: 29th – 30th April
- Ages: 18+
- Location: London, England, UK
- Idiom: Ballet
- Notes: This one has a LIVE PIANIST, you guys! Also, they feed you. The instruction sounds quite good, too. David Paul Kearce is from Australia, where apparently ballet is huge and adult ballet students are taken pretty seriously.
- Honestly, the order of these attributes says a lot about how I’m feeling today: LIVE ACCOMPANIMENT OMG !!!!!111oneone, FOOOOOOD!!!, oh and they teach you ballet as well…
June
- Dates: 1-4 June; 8-11 June
- Ages: 18+, I think?
- Location: San Francisco, CA, USA
- Idiom: Ballet, Modern
- Notes: LINES’ Intensive is very on my radar for next year. If I had the funds and didn’t have a performance immediately after, I’d drop everything and go. BW takes class at LINES he visits his family in CA, and he speaks very highly of their classes … And he’s BW, so that’s saying that. And, I mean, it’s freaking LINES, is much dance-for-dancers. Please, somebody —go! And blog about so I can live vicariously through your words.
Mam-Luft & Co Summer Modern Dance Workshop/Intensive for Adults (note: registration isn’t open yet)
- Dates: June 5 – 9
- Ages: 18+
- Location: Cincinnati, OH
- Idiom: Modern & Ballet
- Notes: The full-day program is incredibly intense and incredibly worth it. Last year, it also functioned as a company audition (by choice; they weren’t like AUDITION OR GO HOME). I’m not 100% sure, but I think that’s their usual approach to auditions.
University of Utah SaltDanceFest
- Dates: June 5 – 16
- Ages: 18+
- Idiom: Modern & Ballet
- Location: Salt Lake City, UT
- Notes: This program has a ballet and yoga foundation and actually sounds pretty awesome. I will have to choose between this and Mam-Luft. Based on some of the class descriptions, here, that’s going to be a difficult decision.
Mark Morris Dance Group Summer Intensive (OMG, you guys, I might have to audition for this, you guys. If not, it’s on the radar for next year. Because MARK MORRIS OMG OMG OMG)
- Dates: June 12-23 (dancers may attend first week only or both weeks)
- Ages: 16+
- Location: Brooklyn, NY
- Idiom: Modern & Ballet
- Notes: Admission to MMDG Summer Intensive is by audition.
- Dates: June 19-23 (Beginner/Elementary); June 26-30 (Intermediate)
- Ages: 18+? (specifically billed as an adult intensive)
- Location: Toronto, ON!!! W00t!
- Idiom: Ballet
- Notes: Oh, Canada! DanceTeq specialies in teaching older teens and adults. Their regular program includes advanced class five days per week, developmental pointe classes, and a rep class for beginners. Their Intermediate intensive sounds very tempting… ^-^
Repertory Dance Theater SummerDance 2017
- Dates: June26-30
- Ages: 18+?
- Location: Salt Lake City, UT
- Idiom: Limon Technique
- Notes: One of three … THREE!!! … workshops in SLC this summer, which are working together to bring the dance. Good on ya, SLC.
July
Lexington Ballet Adult Summer Intensive (note: at the time of this writing, the 2016 info is still up, but the Adult Intensive is on the calendar sidebar)
- Dates: July, TBA
- Ages: 18+; IIRC students 16 – 17 can participate with permission of parent or guardian
- Location: Lexington, KY
- Idiom: JUST THE BALLETS
- Notes: I loved this intensive last year. It sounds like it’s aimed specifically at beginners, but don’t let that fool you. They’ll meet you where you are as a dancer.
Pilobolus Summer Workshop Series
- Dates: July 17 – August 4
- Ages: 18+
- Location: Bethlehem, CT
- Idiom: Pilobolus!
- Notes: Pilobolus is about as far from ballet as it gets—but the two workshops I’ve taken with Pilobolus haven’t just made me a better dancer, they’ve made me a better ballet dancer. If you feel like you have room for growth in body-awareness and partnering (hint: you do; everyone does), Pilobolus’ technique can help you grow.
Ririe-Woodbury Dance Company Professional Workshop
- Dates: July 25 – August 4
- Ages: 18+?
- Location: Salt Lake City, UT
- Idiom: Modern & Ballet
- Notes: This isn’t specifically a ballet intensive, but it’s built around a daily 1.5-hour ballet class.
August
- 26 – 28 August
- Ages: 18+
- Location: London, England, UK
- Idiom: Ballet
- Notes: As with the Ballet Retreat, London, this one has a LIVE PIANIST and they feed you. Likewise, David Paul Kearce is in the house. If I wasn’t broke, I’d go.
At the moment, it looks like my summer intensive schedule will probably look like this:
- June 5-9: Mam-Luft & Co
- July ????: Lexington Ballet Adult Intensive
- July 22: Pilobolus Pedagogy Workshop
- July 24-28: Pilobolus Summer Workshop
I’m applying for a scholarship for Pilobolus. If I make the cut, I might be able to do more than one week.
Depending on the cost of attendance and a couple other factors, I’d love to hit DanceTeq’s Intermediate intensive.
I’d still love to do SunKing, because from what I’ve heard they usually have enough men to make men’s class and pas de deux really awesome, but it’s the most expensive of the summer program options out there for adult dancers, and probably still not really on the radar for this year.
Things No One Ever Told Me, Part 1
But first, Cabrogal over at Neurodrooling turned me on to this really insightful post(1) about how maybe there’s a different lens through which we could possibly view bipolar, which hooked in rather directly to a lot of other stuff D and I have been talking about a lot lately.
- Potential content warning: it deals with with the with the idea that perhaps mental illness isn’t really even the right model. Some readers might feel like this invalidates their struggle, and that is a totally okay way to feel. There was definitely a time not too long ago when I would’ve felt that way. If you’re there right now, you might want to skip this particular link for now.
Okay, moving right along.
I’ve been at this adulting thing for a while. I’m slowly getting, like, less bad at it—much more slowly, I am forced to admit, than I expected, and also more slowly in some ways than seems to be typical.
I’m pretty pretty sure that’s okay, though.
We all live in our own timelines and on our own time scales. I come from a family of people who mostly live a really long time and often seem to take a while to figure things out. I’m also pretty sure that dealing with some major trauma (or, more accurately, not dealing with it for a long time) set the clock on the process of reaching a kind of functional maturity back by ten years or so for me. For a long time, I was stuck being 14 and severely traumatized.
Yesterday I wrote a G+ post about how I’ve learned to deal with D’s dietary preferences. Backstory on this: historically, he has been pretty into Southern “comfort foods”and sweets and not at all into veggies, and since I can’t eat that way and stay healthy and I’m morally opposed to cooking two separate meals all the time, I’ve had to find a middle way.
The analogy that came to mind was that our life together isn’t a tandem bike ride; it’s just a regular bike ride. Sometimes I get up the hills faster than he does because I like climbing on the bike. That’s okay. He still gets up the hills at his own pace, and I am okay waiting for him at the top(2).
- In real life, I used to do a lot of riding ahead, then descending back to my friends, then riding ahead, until I figured out that too much of that makes you look like an annoying show-off.
Sometimes we even take a different route, either because he doesn’t feel like climbing or just for fun. That’s okay, too. At the end of the day, he rides his bike and I ride mine. I can influence the route we ride, but can’t ride his bike for him, and the funny thing is that we both enjoy the ride more when I don’t try to ride his bike for him.
Anyway, I’m slowly realizing that same analogy applies to other things, like adulting.
Just because I like to climb out of the saddle, that doesn’t mean you have to. (Does help, though, if your hubs are actually in the middle of your wheels o_O’)
Maybe I’m not getting up the climbs as fast as other people—hell, tons of people my age have responsible, well-established careers—but I’m still on the road, pedaling along.
I’m way behind the group I started with because an asshole threw a stick into my spokes early on, and I had to scrape myself off the tarmac, and then I got lost for a while when looking for a shop to help me fix my wheel.
That’s okay, too. I’m back on the road now; the one I want to ride. And, honestly, if it hadn’t been for for the asshole who broke my wheel, I don’t know that I would’ve ridden my own road. Having lived through something that really shattered my whole life early on has made me both unable and unwilling to struggle through a life that doesn’t fit(3).
- No judgment implied, by the way, towards the folks out there doing exactly that. Sometimes you have to live the wrong life in order to get to the right place—just like road work happens and sometimes you have to take some crazy-ass detour to reach a treasured destination. I admire people who have the strength to do that.
Anyway, so yeah. I feel like I’m learning things now that, in retrospect, should have been obvious—things maybe other people learned way earlier.
One of them is that being a grown-ass married adult doesn’t stop you from developing intense and enduring crushes on people you admire.
Not that I subscribe to the philosophy which dictates that marriage should make you blind or you’re doing it wrong. Honestly, part of being human is admiring other people—ideally, people who are worthy of admiration, and not giant self-aggrandizing dicks. Sometimes those people will also be hot and kind and insufficiently whatever-it-is-that-prevents-crushes-for-you(4).
- For me, it’s a certain flavor of authority: I have never had a crush on a boss or an academic teacher or advisor; that feels too much like crushing on a parent. It’s like, “Squick, and also, no.”
Sometimes, you will develop an uncomfortable and enduring crush on someone with whom pursuing a relationship would be a Bad Idea For Reasons even if you were single, or if you were poly and sure they were fine with poly relationships.
Sometimes, regardless of your best efforts, you will go on crushing on said Amazing Person no matter what. It will be weird, but you’ll stick it out, because regardless of the fact that the person in question “makes (your) heart kinda flutter; makes (your) eyes kinda blur,” it it is really good to have them in your life anyway.
…Even though it’s gonna feel a lot like this sometimes.
Nobody ever told me that, so I’m passing it along.
It is also possible that living with such a crush might sometimes be as wildly uncomfortable as, say, crushing on your best friend or lab partner or Lofty McPerfecthair was in high school.
Part of you might still desperately want to lay your absurd crush at their feet in hope of (chaste) validation; in hope that they will say, “No, if things were different, we would totally happen, and it would would be awesome because you’re amazing and also really hot.”
Part of you might desperately hope they never find out, because it would wreck you at least a little bit if they were like, “LolWut?” and a lot if they were like, “Yeah, um, this feels too weird. I’m outies,” and even more if they told all the cool kids your peers or colleagues about you and your ridiculous crush(5).
- Which, of course, leads to the feeling best identified as, “If s/he ever finds out, I’ll never be able to set foot in the coffee shop/studio/office/chemistry lab again! I will have to move. TO ANOTHER PLANET.“
So you endure, trying to figure out how to make yourself stop having a crush, because it would totally be super weird for everyone involved if Awesome McDreamyface ever learned The Awful Truth(6).
- By the way, this is powerfully amplified by the conditions of dance and circus arts, wherein we interact at close quarters in our fancy underwear and touch each-other a lot. Perversely, these exact conditions, coupled with the inevitable admiration and hero worship involved in doing difficult things with other humans, all but guarantee that dance and cirque are first-rate Crush Incubators.
Nobody told me that, either.
Like many socially-challenged people, I’ve learned a great deal about How to Human from fiction.
In fiction, though, conflicts kind of have to resolve. Nobody(7), to my knowledge, actually writes about the poor, happily-coupled schmuck who goes on having an awkward crush and never speaking of it and not even being a total creeper about it(8).
- Maybe I should? This seems like a topic that Anne Tyler might handle well, so maybe I should just send her an anonymous note suggesting it?
- Creepers be like: “I punched him in the face because he never should have said that purple isn’t your color! He doesn’t deserve you! You deserve someone better!!!” *suffers in deafening silence* “Also I made you this scarf. I knitted it from from my own hair.” Silently, to self: …Which I have shorn, mourning the great love between us that can never be. Oh, why will you never see how much I love you?!
Come to think of it, “Making peace with yourself; learning to go on being friends happily in spite of The Most Awkward Crush,” probably is a valid resolution, so maybe I’ve just missed that book, but if it’s out there I haven’t heard of it. Maybe if I’d read more in the “Written Rom-Coms” or “Touching Stories of Friendship” genres, I’d have encountered this idea earlier.
Anyway, I’m filing this with Things That Don’t Automatigally Fix Themselves When You Turn 18 (0r 21, or when you graduate from university, or possibly ever). If I come up with a solution, I’ll let you know. If you have any suggestions, please please please for the love of of all that is holy feel free to leave them in the comments. If you’ve had similar experiences and want to to leave those in the comments, that’s awesome too (even if you, too, are right this very moment in the throes of The Most Awkward Crush and haven’t the faintest idea how to deal).
The other one that’s grinding my gears right now is the thing about being afraid that the other kids in your class project group your colleagues, with whom you’re working on a group project dance that you’ve choreographed, secretly would rather do something else and wish you would stop bothering them and are only working with you because your English teacher is forcing them to out of pity.
I kept feeling weird about inviting dancers to work on my piece, and then feeling weird again when trying to schedule rehearsals—like I was imposing upon them or something.
I finally figured out, as a by-product of realizing that I was afraid that no one would come if I threw a party, that I am still convinced in some level that people just kind of tolerate me because they have to, but aren’t willing to tell me.
Basically, it seems that I’m still convinced that, once people realize how much I suck, it will be just like middle and high school again. No one will want to hang out with me or participate in my projects, because I don’t really know How To Human.
I think, though, that maybe grown people—some grown people, anyway—figure out how to get along with the socially awkward weirdos of the world and how to be more comfortable with their own Inner Weirdos. And I hope that they learn to say no instead of agreeing to work on the project and then fervently hoping they really won’t have to.
So after the difficult and awkward Nobody Told Me That…,there’s this one. Nobody told me that I’d still feel just as certain of rejection now as I did in middle school. The upside of this one is that I think I know how to approach it, now.
For me, the best way to deal with something scary is to run right towards it. Sometimes I can’t yet, but I think I’m ready to run straight towards this piece of of this problem. The work I’m trying do as (I guess?) an artist isn’t going to get done any other way. It doesn’t matter how great my ideas are if they stay locked in my head as I sit here doing doing the equivalent of waiting for Prince Charming to trip over me and decide to marry me on the spot(9).
- My inner cynic is picturing Prince Charming saying,”Well, now we’re lying here on the ground together, so I guess we had better get married, because people will talk.”
Given my past and the fact that I’m both shy and still a little fragile in the self-worth department, I’m not going to say Go Out There And Grab Your Dreams By The Balls!
… Because, let’s be honest, that’s not what I’m doing at all.
Nope, instead, here’s what I’m trying, and maybe what I recommend if you’ve got big dreams and you’re afraid they’re gonna kick you in the face, hard:
Get out there use binoculars to spy on your dreams. And then when you start to get a feel for their habits, maybe get a little closer. Then a little closer still.
And then kind of follow them around, so you maybe just seem like a particularly persistent tumbleweed or some other part of of their normal environment.
And then integrate yourself into the herd of dreams, and over time get a little closer and a little closer until you’re standing around next to your dream, pretending to graze (because you definitely don’t want it to suspect anything).
And then eventually lean on your dream and later maybe skritch that one spot right behind its ears, to make friends.
And then sort of wriggle yourself up on its back a little, like you’re just another dream and just cuddling.
And then when it doesn’t even worry about that, just kinda slide up and throw a leg over, and hope that it’ll just just be just be like, “Oh, no problem.”
And then stay up there and ride.
Then if you do fall off and get kicked hard in the face, it’s 100% cool to lie there and lick your wounds for a while.
I guess what I’m saying is that, even where dreams are concerned, you’ll get up the hill when you get up the hill.
And that’s okay.
danseur ignoble 