This week involves four hours of class in the evening, so I suspect I’ll mostly report in the morning.
Yesterday, after a great class with Ms. T of Advanced Class, I took B out for a celebratory lunch, then dithered around buying the things I had meant to buy already but forgot, then hopped into my trusty Subaru and drove to Lexington.
After a near-miraculous parking space appeared (in which I parallel-parked like a boss), I snagged a tiny salad at a nearby Panera*, crammed it into my face, and wandered back to ArtsPlace, where the Ballet makes its home.
A quick aside: under most circumstances, I wouldn’t recommend “tiny salad” as the ideal energy source for four hours of conditioning and dancing. I was still feeling fairly stuffed after my enormous lunch calzone, which I nearly finished.
As a fueling strategy for this particular schedule, “Huge lunch; light supper” works brilliantly. I think, though, that I will also bring a light snack to eat before rep tonight.
We’re a group of fifteen or twentyish, and I am not The Onliest Boy this time — there are two of us, both fairly well matched in terms of technique and ability, though quite different in build (C is much more Hallbergian than I, and also a head taller).
Class began with an hour of Pilates-based conditioning led by Ms. A1. I spent the hour reflecting on how grateful I am for the conditioning we do at Suspend, without which I might very well have silently wept through most of the hour in question.
After a brief break (and a small wrestling match with my dance belt — I wore the oldest one, which is now slightly too big, which in turn frankly boggles my mind), we proceeded to technique class with Mr. J.
He explained that he’d be giving a fairly basic class so he and Ms. A could get a sense of where we were as dancers.
He kept his word, but it was still a very good class — I enjoyed his barre, centre, and adagio combinations, felt good about turns and terre-a-terre, and the tempo of the petit allegro (simply: glissade – assemblé, glissade – assemblé, glissade – changement – changement -changement) was such that, instead of being an ongoing train wreck, I got to show off some beats here and there.
It was also such that I didn’t crash and burn when I discovered the inevitable slippery spot on the floor.
I enjoyed the heck out of our medium allegro — the famous sauté arabesque/sauté passé that I love so ridiculously – and added cabrioles because everything needs more cabrioles.
Grand allegro was equally pleasant, and for once my saut de chat was fully functional, if a bit Third Reich-ish about the arms at times. Of course, there was also pas de chat, which is, at the moment, the joy of my existence.
After another brief break, we divided by gender for variations/repertory. Mr. J gave the two of us a lively, vigorous dance based on Petipa, with just enough bravura to make it shine but not so much that we won’t be able to master it by Saturday. I’m enjoying it immensely, even though it took me the entire class period to get my head around the fact that I’m supposed to do my first turn more or less backwards.
It should make one heck of an interesting foil to the ladies’ piece — the famous entrance scene from “The Kingdom of the Shades.”
We got to see their piece (which was totally unfair to them, as we didn’t show them ours!) and I was quite impressed with how well they had it down, this being only the first night, and theirs being a much larger group with a much greater range of skill. The moments that always give me chills succeeded in doing exactly that. I can’t wait to see the final performance!
I’m much less stressed-out about rep here than I was in Cinci. First, it’s ballet, which is my “mother tongue,” so it’s simply easier to memorize. Second, it’s a shorter piece than we did, and I don’t think there will be as much adding of a whole new scene on the day before the performance!
I feel like we’ll have our piece not only learned, but well-polished, on Saturday.
Funny little sidebar: in class, I noticed that C was wearing white shoes and I was wearing black ones.
Does that make me the bad guy? 😀
So, I have discovered that, sans Adderall (which I neglected to take this morning), l I am not quite as good at picking up combinations, and less likely to fix myself on the second side.
We had a lovely terre-a-terre that began with two sets of waltz turns, and I kept skipping the second set, which then threw everything else off.
I feel that I should probably take my Adderall before I drive halfway across the state, perhaps. It might be helpful.
Skipped all the jumps this morning in an effort to be tuned up but not tired this evening.
À bientôt!
I’m mostly ready to go for the Lexington Ballet intensive, but still sort of managing the last bits of the to-do list.
Mr. Merkah approves of my dance bag:
Feline supervisor says the dance bag is okay to go!
…Though possibly less so now that it is one again crammed full of dance junk and waiting in my car.
(Of note: my dance bag is really a tool bag that I got on sale for $5 at a local hardware place. It has nifty inside pockets for essential dance things like shoes, VetWrap, a million bandages, a lacrosse ball, etc. Also makes it easy to spot in a lineup of properly dance-specific bags.)
This time I’ve remembered to pack bandages and cloth tape just in case I somehow wind up with a blister. I’ll be AirBnB-ing it the first three nights, then spending the last two at an inexpensive hotel with a pool (hope it has a hot tub!).
Today while I was demonstrating assemblé, Aerial A said, “Just like that, only without the beats.”
Didn’t realize that I had been doing assemblé battu, heh. It may have been an artifact of practicing cabrioles avant before class.
In other news, this picture about sums up how I feel right now:
Someone please get me a blanket?
After dinner, I am planning on a long soak in the tub followed by an early bedtime.
Tomorrow, we dance.
(And then we drive halfway across the state, and then we dance again.)
We had a guest instructor, E, today; a dancer who is one of my longstanding favorites. He gave us a challenging class, and as a group I think we really rose to the occasion quite well*.
*Okay, except maybe for the part where I kept doing glissade-assemblé instead of glissade changée – glissade changée at the beginning of one combination (fixed it on the repeat).
And the other part where I did a single tour at the end of our medium allegro and forgot to change my feet because I don’t even know why; I did it right on the first side. No idea what was going on, there. #ThanksObama, I guess?)
His policy, it turns out, is to teach to the most advanced student in class and let everyone else catch up. I really like that approach; it forces me to work outside my comfort zone. The most advanced student in class today was one of the new guys from the company, and he was freaking beautiful, so the barre was pretty high indeed.
The end result of this was this amazing moment at the end of class in which B said to me, in the midst of a conversation, “…And your double attitude turn!”
And I replied, “Oh! I’m so glad that really happened. I was afraid I imagined it.”
Seriously, I really did wonder about it, because since when** do I have a double attitude turn?
**Apparently, since today (#ThanksObama for reals? :D)?
Our adagio involved attitude turns (which I lurve; attitude is my best balance, for whatever reason, followed by various arabesques, passé/retiré, and finally coupé), and I remember thinking, “Huh, that felt like a double,” and just going on because otherwise I would’ve been late and it was too pretty an enchaînement to mess up by being late.
Guessing I pretty much looked like this for the rest of the combination, though.
So apparently it felt like a double because it was a double***, and I suspect that happened because E had us all seriously tuned up and on our legs. He also demonstrated the arms really clearly when giving each combination, which helped immensely.
***Dangit, why couldn’t someone have been video-ing this?!
In other news, I was not a squid today even for a moment, which is still a bleeding miracle if you ask me, because our combinations were very, very dance-y. In short, they looked like something you’d see on stage with fancy tutus and stuff … so, in short, there were lots of arms. And heads. And épaulement all over the place. And “make sure the audience can see both your shoulders and both your hips!”
What does this guy think we are? Dancers?
Oh, right.
On the downside, my petit allegro is STILL FREAKING SLOW. Which I guess it will be for a while; it’s improving slowly. Which, I suppose, is how such things improve.
On the other hand, I seem to have regained my petit battement, possibly through sheer intimidation.
A quick note on Company B’s nickname: it says nothing about his ability has a dancer. He’s good; very, very good, in fact. It just so happens that he dances for the company and his name begins with B, and I know too many people whose names begin with B, and it amuses me to think of him having his very own boogie-woogie bugle boy, so voilà — “Company B” he is, until I come up with something better.
Moving right along!
Tonight I decided to skip out on acro and sub in an extra ballet class in the interest of being well tuned-up for next week’s intensive.
Company B teaches a very basic class on Thursday evenings, and although he was worried that B and I would probably be bored out of our skulls, I am firmly of the opinion that as long as the instruction is good, no class is too simple.
In short, the basics are the foundations of technique, and everyone can always stand to improve them. That’s the great thing about ballet (okay, also the terrible thing) — since perfection is essentially impossible, you can work on everything forever.
As such, I was quite happy to work on pretty basic material, because it gave me time to really fastidiously apply all the updates I’ve been working on installing, so to speak — tight at the upper thighs in sous-sus; working the outer limits of my turnout consistently; really getting the knees back in frappé avant; doing stupid things with my arms as rarely as possible; using my épaulement; actually looking at the audience (or, in this case, the mirror). The idea was to use this time to refine my technique.
I’d like to say I acquitted myself quite nicely, in fact. Company B gave me a couple of notes on my épaulement that I applied with success. You guys, it is really nice to experience unequivocal success in ballet.
I also finally managed to de-tangle my waltz turns. I think maybe I’ve been doing them right for a while, but I didn’t understand the difference between the right version and the wrong version. Possibly I was putting the brush in the wrong spot, before?
Anyway, Company B was introducing the waltz turn tonight, so he explained them very thoroughly, à la Mr. Beastmode’s explanation of balancé. This got my legs sufficiently de-tangled that I could think about making my arms do nice things, which was great.
We had some nice combinations — simple, but musical, like:
From B+ with Working Leg Back –
Step through – Chasse
Pas de Bourree to Fifth
En Dehors Pirouette*
Fourth allongé
Repeat first phrase two more times
Pivot/detourne to Fourth
Soutenu turn
Soutenu turn straight into sous-sus
Sous-sus balance (with expressive arms, because seriously, it’s not that hard)
*The girl who went with in the front of the first group me had doubles as well, so we both tossed them in. I didn’t try for triples because that just seemed like show-boating, which is just obnoxious in a beginners’ class.
I kept wanting to put in an en dedans turn from fourth after the pivot, since that’s basically a defining trait of Louisville Ballet’s choreography and we do it allllla taimz in class, but I managed not to do that and not to wind up behind the music in my efforts to prevent it. I did wind up pointing to the wrong corner at one point, so I just sort of added a rond de jambe into the first soutenu and basically acted like nothing happened 😛
Company B seemed quite happy with my interpretation and musicality and particularly seemed pleased with my execution of the balance from a performance aspect. I was, in turn, quite happy about that, since he’s one of the instructors who’s aware of my goals concerning dance.
After class he said he was glad to have us in class, hoped we weren’t completely bored (we weren’t!), and mentioned that it was good for the rest of the students to have people in class who could show them how things were supposed to look 😀
That felt like a nice vote of confidence, especially coming from a danseur who I admire immensely. Seriously, the first time he came to Saturday class with us, my insides were all like:
Shamelessly stolen … erm, borrowed … from JazzWax.com.
Meanwhile, my outsides were all like:
The fact that this picture was just out there on the internets and also already a meme just makes me go, “LOLwut?” Nonetheless, seems apropos.
Since then, though, I have discovered that, in addition to being a really fabulously amazing dancer (seriously, this was the guy whose pas de deux I described as “a masterclass in partnering”) and disgustingly good-looking, Company B is also a really lovely, sweet, humble human being.
Doesn’t hurt, either, that he’s one of those dancers who love dancing and he really seems to enjoy helping other dancers learn how to dance better.
So that was tonight’s class. We closed with a little saute-arabesque/saute-passe combination, which I enjoyed immensely. I doubt I will ever, ever tire of that combination, even though it’s really simple.
So, there you have it. I will definitely hit up Company B’s class again any time my schedule allows for it.
G’night, everybody.
I almost want to say “I’ve forgotten what inspired this list,” only I haven’t. It’s there in the list. I’ll leave it up to you to figure out which item 😀
You might be a dancer if:
“And then I walked right up to Pierre and introduced myself and he said, ‘Marie … We’ve been partners for six years.’ It was awful.” (Image: Henri Rouen, The Ballet Class, 1875, via Wikimedia.)
Today during fondus at the barre, I had an illuminating experience.
I’m much better now at remembering to lift my legs into développé (or straight extension) from behind and beneath, but for some reason on the first développé (in this case, développé avant) my quads decided that they wanted a turn.
The result was a développé that required immense effort and stopped at 90 degrees.
Fortunately, there were multiple développés to each direction in this exercise, and I caught it and fixed it on the next pass.
What a revelation! The next développé was both easier and higher.
(Now, if I can just convince my feet to point reliably when my quads are relaxed 😛 Of late, they tend towards a kind of lazy point — and there is no excuse for that, I have good feet and should, in the grand tradition of ballet, show them off.)
I don’t know that I’ve ever managed this particular self-correction as consciously or effectively as I did today. It was exciting; a real “Eureka!” moment. I guess it made the difference between knowing rationally and really knowing.
Petit allegro, meanwhile, continued to be a disaster — this time because my legs didn’t want to temp de cuisse in the right directions. They kept trying to sproing the wrong way.
Ah, well — that’s ballet for you. It’s like bike touring: you get to the top of the hill only to see that beyond it is … another giant hill.
Anyway. Moar stuff to practice at home.
On the other hand, I got the Sissone combination with arms this time (thanks in no small part to the girl in front of me; thanks, random girl I’ve never met before — she carried her arms with such clarity that I sort of suddenly realized what I was doing wrong with mine :P).
Grand allegro was mostly good, except the part in which I subbed pas de chat for saut de chat on the first side. That’s just my brain for you. I was able to correct it on going left.
The former AD has been observing our class lately and today I felt that I acquitted myself acceptably well.
I’m used to seeing him now; the first couple of times I noticed that he’d appeared at our window I got flustered. At this point, though, he’s seen me dance basically as badly as I’m able to, so now things can only improve.
Also, I only knocked myself off my leg once in adagio today, and that’s because I had the counts wrong on the développé before the penché and thus was late rushed it. Lesson learned: don’t rush into penché.
So that’s it for now. Tomorrow I’m doing an extra class with Company B, so I shall attempt to report back on that.
In addition to submitting my audition registration forms, today I:
This was one heck of a good day, people. Now I’m going to bed so I’ll be well rested for class tomorrow 🙂
So I just submitted my audition registration materials for audition #1 for the 2016 – 2017 season.
Part of me is all like, “Don’t worry, it’s cool; we’ve got this.”
Another part of me is totally like:
Shamelessly stolen from QuickMeme, because that is how the internet rolls.
My goal was to get that stuff sent out before I go to Lexington next week.
I figured that if I didn’t go ahead and make myself do it now, I’d just keep procrastinating and attempting to further perfect my 100-word-or-less dancer biography until my head caught fire.
Sometimes good enough has to be good enough.
Remember this?
Anyway, I shall now spend the next three weeks and change occasionally alternating between having mild heart attacks over the upcoming audition and, like, basically feeling like I WILL OWN THIS THING because that’s what my personality is like when I’m not freaking out. I can rock that whole “wildly overconfident” thing like I was born for it.
Okay, I will also spend at least some time worrying that I’ve somehow screwed up my submission and that the registration forms will come through blank (even though I understand how desperately unlikely that is) and that my resume makes me sound either desperate or like an overweening ass and that my headshot is … I guess, just wrong in one way or another.
As such, I hereby submit the following arguments against my own obsessive anxieties:
Ultimately, I realize that I’m only anxious about this because I really, really want to do this — which is, of course, bad Buddhism, but I plan to harness the little bits of Zen practice I’ve kinda-sorta learned how to use to counteract that tendency.
In other news, I will try to get some video shot in the next couple of weeks. A friend of mine (going to nickname her Modern A, I guess?) and I just started work on a random choreography project together, so I got to see some video of myself dancing that we shot last night. My response was:
“Wow, that felt way worse than it looks!” (In fact, I am forced to admit that some of the moments in the videos actually look pretty good.)
We were creating phrases, and I was tired and kind of marked and flailed my way through a couple of quick recordings so I wouldn’t forget mine, and it looked quite a bit better than I expected a bunch of marking and flailing to look.
I figure that if I can feel that okay about my half-baked modern choreography efforts shot late in the evening after a full day of busting butt, I can probably feel okay about actual dancing shot when I’m actually awake 🙂
Class went well today.
I arrived early, and Dr. K (who made my week last time we were in class together) and I chatted for a while. Apparently she did very much intend to compare me to Nureyev, so I am now even more flattered — evidently I remind her of Nureyev both in build and in the way I dance — my attack, jumps, expressivité, plastique, and movement style. Um. Wow?*
She added, “And you have that beautiful arabesque. His wasn’t as high as yours.”
o_______O’
I told her how helpful her comment had been. It has really helped change how I think about my limitations as a dancer — Nureyev had similar limitations, and he was one of the greatest dancers ever. The thing is to accept one’s limitations and work to ameliorate them while making the most of one’s strengths.
Anyway.
Barre today looked fairly good. There were a couple of moments that I reverted to a similar combination from Saturday’s class, but I caught myself (and laughed at myself, as Dorky Dancing reminds us to do, instead of getting mad).
Adagio was iffy on the first side because I was confused about the counts, but fine thereafter. My penché is improving again; in tour lent (AKA promenade; it’s promenade in partnered work) coming out of penché, I need to remember to carry my opposite shoulder more.
Basically, in order to hold the body together, the opposite shoulder spirals toward the working leg. This is exactly the same as it is in arabesque (and everything else), but it takes a little more actual doing. Of late, my body wants to spiral over as if in a modern-dance-y slow fouetté, so I need to really watch that.
Doing turns terre-a-terre, I managed a triple; should’ve aimed for more, but chickened out. Next time. The combination was:
Tombé
Pas de Bourré
Fourth
En Dehors
Repeat Twice
Detourné
Prepare Fourth
En Dedans
Pique Turn x4
It fit about 1.75 times across the floor — on the second set, the piques could either run down the side of the room or we could just leave them out. For some reason, we all kept forgetting to spot on the second set. Weird.
Petite allegro was half fine, half awful.
My little jumps were actually beautiful — light, fast, high, and quiet — though I couldn’t get my arms to cooperate.
The combination went, simply, from fifth:
First
Second
Third
Fourth
Fifth
Changement
Changement
Changement
Other side.
The arms went:
First
Second
Opposite Third!
Bring working-side arm up for Fourth
Fifth/Thirty-Fifth/En Haut
Open and return to en bas/préparé smoothly over the the changements.
I tried to get the arms on the first set, then just left them in first in the second (which is hard in its own way — there’s so much existing motor programming that not moving them not that much easier).
None of us could do it at speed without hosing up the arms, though we could all mark through slowly with success. I’ll be practicing this one.
Our next combination was simple:
Glissade, assemblé
Glissade, assemblé
Glissade, jeté, jeté, jeté —
Both sides, then reverse of both sides.
The tempo was wickedly fast, however, and my assemblé was simply too slow. I’ll be working on that this week as well.
Edit: forgot about the Sissones! I am to have regained the motor pattern for Sissones finally. I have no idea where it was for the past few months, but my brain must have defragged or something last night, because it’s back now. The challenge is simply to NOT FREAKING THINK. Thinking + Sissones = Disaster.
Grand allegro was lovely, even though it took me a little while to nail down my own little variation. We soloed this, because we were in the tiny studio and there were only three of us today, all fairly advanced students.
The combination went:
Tombé
Pas de Bourrée
Glissade
Temps levée retiré
Tombé
Pas de Bourrée
Glissade
Pas de Chat (yay!)
Pique Arabesque
Chassé
Tour jeté (land in balance)
Failli-tombé
Pas de Bourré
Glissade
Saut de chat
… And then we got several bars for our own variation.
I initially tried:
Pique arabesque (low)
Tombe
Pas de Bourré
Glissade
Bournonville Jeté
But it turned out that there wasn’t enough room for that, and I kept doing very half-baked Bournonvilles so I wouldn’t crash into either the wall or the piano. One turned into something else entirely (Edit: a Blooperville Jeté, perhaps?).
On the repeat, I subbed in:
Pique arabesque
Turn
Chassé
Tour Jeté to Arabesque Balance
Chassé
Tour Jeté
Glissade
Pas de Chat Italien
Land in Balance à la Second
This happened when I decided to stop thinking and just dance (hence the title of this post!). To be fair, tour jetés tend to happen whenever I just let myself dance, because I love them.
Dr. K commented that she was really impressed with my ability to stick a landing and go straight into a balance 😀
The funny part is that I find it easiest to hold a balance if I jump into it — my dynamic balance is really exceptionally good, while my static balance is only pretty good (read: quite a bit better than average compared to people without formal dance training, but probably only average for those with serious dance training).
Ms. E kept calling out, “BIIIIIG tour jeté! … Yesss!” on my runs. Apparently people have noticed that this white boy can in fact jump, so now they routinely ask me for big, lofty jumps.
As for me, I’m simply glad to have my big jumps back. It took a while to regain the power and coordination to get the kind of elevation and ballon I had as a kid, which I got partially through luck (genetics ftw) and partially through setting up and jumping ever-higher backyard hurdles (at one point, 42″) which I jumped in a style that in no way resembled proper track-and-field hurdling technique. It was more like Russian Pas de Chat over fences.
Anyway, it’s time to eat food (I have been bad about that lately — last night I turned into an absolutely horrible creature because hypoglycemia for the fail). Tonight we have fitness & flexibility, silks, and then I’m going to work on choreography with a friend of mine.
Edit: Oh, and in a bit I shall add my here are my ridiculous pictures from this week’s submission to Suspend’s Splits Challenge, just for the halibut.
As you can see, we were feeling goofy, even giddy, perhaps.
YouTube: BOSU Balance Series
danseur ignoble 