Author Archives: asher

Oh, Adagio.

Jul 9

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Remember how the other day I was all like:

I R SO AWSUM AT ADODGIOH. I PWN ADODGIOH ALLA TAIMZ.

Well, apparently, there are limits.

I should begin by making all the appropriate excuses:

  1. I managed to get to sleep at a reasonable hour (1:30 AM; 7 hours of sleep isn’t great, but it’ll do) only to wake up at 5:00 in the morning.

    Why? Who knows.

    Either way, not great for balance, coordination, the ability to learn rapidly, or … well, basically anything else you need in ballet (though my body was ON today, at least, in terms of sending proprioceptive signals about where its parts were).

  2. Company B was in class. This is normally a good thing. I admire him (okay, so he is totally my current Ballet Crush), and I learn a great deal by watching him. For some reason (probably Excuse #1 above, sleep-dep does not improve my ADHD), though I found this a little distracting today.
  3. Um, did I mention that whole thing where I woke up at 5:30?
  4. Oh, and also Ms. B (who made a guest-appearance as teacher in today’s Advanced Class) said the word “GOOD!” to me not once, but like three or four times, and as many of us who dance know, that is basically a recipe for disaster.

That said, class started out well.

I haz a turnouts, etc. Plies were fine. Tendus were fine. Degage/jetes and piques and frappes were (at least mostly) fine. Even ronds-de-jambe were fine.

Then we fondu-ed, only I basically fondidn’t. I mean, I was more or less doing the movements? And my legs were fondu-ing? Only the rest of me was … ugh. Just, ugh. My eyes were like, “Oh, look, the floor,” and my arms were like, “We’re supposed to stay behind your shoulders, right?” and my clavicles. Oy. Let’s not even talk about my clavicles.

I discovered on the right that I couldn’t seem to hold my core together. I opted for the non-releve approach on the left, which helped a bit, but frankly I was still a mess.

After anxiously faking my way through the battement combination that I kept doing wrong (because See Excuses 1 and 2), we took a quick break and then did adagio.

And mine was turrible.

Basically, the part where I couldn’t balance or keep my core engaged really came home to roost. So I knocked myself over in simple developpes, then again in a tour lent (when my tour lent/promenade is good, it’s good; when it’s bad, it’s baaaad). Then I forgot the end of the combination and did that thing where you’re watching the guy in front of you so you can follow him and that throws your balance off. Side-eye is not the way to ballet, y’all.

I should probably add that I was less horrible on the repeat. But, still.

Let this be a lesson to all of us. In short:

Don’t get cocky there, kid.

Because the Ballet Gods in their hallowed halls (which, I hear, have really excellent floors) will notice and will put you firmly back in your place (apparently by waking you up at 5:30 when you really need, like, three more hours of sleep).

I feel that I kinda-sorta redeemed myself in turns and terre-a-terre, and my petit allegro was less bad than it could have been. Some of it was even good, only once again I totally failed at remembering the combinations, so whatevs.

Anyway, I’m planning to skip out on my usual Thursday activities to take Company B’s class this coming week. The following week, I’ll be in Lexington doing their ballet intensive.

Perhaps before then I’ll manage to assemble my waterfowls in a linear array and actually get some sleep.

 

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For Peace

Jul 8

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Right now my country is in a welter of anger, fear, pain, and (too often) recrimination. I don’t know what words to say about it; as with the Orlando shooting, I think other people have already said what needs to be said better than I could here.

Back in the 13th century, though, Saint Francis of Assissi wrote a prayer that encapsulates a lot of what I’m feeling right now. I first encountered it as a singer, and along with Tich Nhat Hanh’s simple breath-following meditation from Being Peace, it it one of the things that swims into my mind at difficult times like this one.

Even for those whose worldview is entirely secular, it says a great deal about how to be a force for peace in the world — not by giving money to organizations (which is okay, too) or agitating for change (which is also okay), but simply by being in the world. Anyway, here it is.

Saint Francis’ Prayer for Peace

Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Amen.

Posted in balllet, healing, justice, life, mitzvot

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That Feel When #????

Jul 7

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That feel when your insides are suddenly like:

RED WARRIOR NEEDS FOOD BADLY! RED WARRIOR IS ABOUT TO DIE!

…but you’re eating ziti and it refuses to cooperate with your fork.

Seriously, who has trouble eating ziti*?

*I guess I do. So, that would be me. Hi.

In other news, I really need to see this movie:

Keiji Ballerino, as reviewed by Notorious Rambler, as suggested in one of WordPress’s “If you liked this post, you’ll love this other post!” boxes.

Basically, I will tell my friends about it, and they will be like, “Oh, so it’s like your life, more or less, if you were a detective, and Japanese?**”

**And if my Mom who taught dance, and if I had won a prestigious dance competition in high school, but whatevs. I can, however, attest to the fact that the “extremely small planet” effect apparent in this story is also fully operational in my life. My world is terrifyingly small, sometimes.

Also, I am reminded of this video:

Which we have all, by now, probably seen a bazillion times, but frankly it never gets old. My friends on facebook and G+ have repeatedly shared this to me with comments like, “This is how I imagine your life!”

And, honestly, I am forced to admit that while my day-to-day wardrobe department has yet to supply me with such an elaborate jacket, I have totally been known to do barre exercises on the El and … you know, basically everything else in this video, except for grand pirouettes a la seconde on the sidewalk because, y’all, I would in fact actually kill myself for reals (and probably some other people).

That said, I have been known to do them in dance clubs. Just, you know, nowhere near as well as Daniil Simkin would. Because I am not that awesome. But, frankly, there are too many clubs in Louisville where nobody dances, and somebody has to.

And then I’m all, “If not me, who? If not now, when?” And I step up and do what I can. For Great Justice, etc.

for-great-justice

Because it’s all about your base, your base your base. All about your base, are belong to us***.

 

***Oh, come on. Somebody had to say it.

In other news, I took El Robertador shopping today because he did not own any proper shorts, and I wound up buying another shirt for ballet classes, a cycling-specific wind vest to replace the wind vest that is now about eleventy sizes too big for me, a pair of cycling gloves to replace one of the pairs I’ve been nursing along forever specifically because I got a great deal on them on clearance, and an actual regular shirt with, like, buttons and everything. Now I can also give away another of the button-y shirts that is now too big.

Because sometimes dancewear actually isn’t the ideal choice, at least not according to other people (but, let’s be honest: they are probably people who don’t actually know any better, and would wear dance clothes everywhere if they did).

I am proud to be able to state that I DID NOT buy any tights. Not even one pair. Because there is NO ROOM in my tights drawer at this point (I know, I know: clearly the answer is to kick Denis’ socks out of his sock drawer and colonize).

Okay, so I almost bought them anyway, but I realized that I only ever wear short tights or stirrup/convertible tights these days, so I put them back.

Even though they had pockets.

TIGHTS WITH POCKETS, YOU GUYS. The innovation that means we might never have to wear normal trousers, ever again.

And I put them back!

 

I am assuming that this lapse in judgment resulted from sleep deprivation, which in turn resulted from a weird series of nightmares about paranormal phenomena, such as a kitchen sink drain suddenly turning into a fearsome gravity well … because ghosts (seriously, WTF?).

For the record, I have no idea what caused the nightmares. My brain is a strange place, sometimes much of the time okay, most of the time.

Oh, and lastly, the other night I actually sat my tuchas down and watched a freaking movie, and that movie was Mao’s Last Dancer, which wasn’t half bad.

To be fair, my standards for ballet movies basically read like this:

  1. Is it yet another movie about Skeezy AD creeping on Insecure, Young Ingenue? *****
    Y/N
  2. If N, is the dancing pretty good?

*****There was a moment at the beginning in which I was like, “Ye gads, this is going to be Skeezy GAY AD creeping on Insecure, Young MALE Ingenue. Wheeeeee. *sadface*” but then it got better. Skeezy Gay AD wasn’t partcularly skeezy and was only a douche canoe for a small portion of the movie, and then only because Main Character’s Dreams and Not-Really-Skeezy Gay AD’s dreams were in conflict.

Mao’s Last Dancer suffered from a few plotline glitches (basically, clumsy handling of some of the more touching bits of the story, so nothing any worse than your average Halmark Channel movie, and there’s a lot more ballet in this one!), and does this one thing where Wife #1 goes, “You Have Your Career! But I Have To Think About Mine! I’m Moving To Seattle!” (I think it was Seattle?) and then in the next scene it’s five years later and our winsome protagonist is, like, totally married to some other lady.

To be fair, there was totally like 10 seconds of foreshadowing when said Other Lady was first introduced — it’s just that the particular bit of Li Cunxin’s life in which they, like, get MARRIED didn’t quite make it into the budget/allocated time.

In honesty, though, as ballet movies go, I rather liked this one (probably because it was actually based on real life).

So, like, I totally recommend giving Mao’s Last Dancer a watch if you stumble upon it on Netflix or Amazon or whatevs.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go balance people and balance on people and so forth.

Posted in balllet, life, movies

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Improve Your Ballet: Take Modern

Jul 6

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Today, I had a lot of opportunity to think about how taking modern has improved my ballet.

Specifically, B and I were working on a basic partnering exercise in which the girl (or boy, or otherly-gendered individual; doesn’t matter — I’m devolving upon the conventions of the genre, but that doesn’t mean I think that’s the only valid approach; not by a long shot) rises up to sous-sus en pointe and the boy (see above) gently tilts her to the front, the right, and the left*.

*I actually tend to do front – right – front – left (avant – a droigt – avant – a gauche) thus far. This gives B a chance to re-center herself between tilts, since she’s still working on keeping her core engaged.

The whole purpose of this exercise is to establish some of the key underpinnings of the partnering relationship: first, trust (as in, “Don’t worry, I won’t drop you!”); second, core engagement.

It turns out that, in partnering work, it is immensely important that both partners keep their cores together**.

If the girl lets her core go, she makes the boy’s job a bazillion times harder (seriously, you try partnering an uncooperative dolphin some time).

If the boy lets his core go, he is liable to fall over (ask me how I know) and that can lead to the ultimate sin in partnering, which is dropping your partner. Also possibly falling on her, which is probably a good way to get asked not to return to the studio, heh.

**Imagine that, right?!

Fortunately, I am still 0/whatever in that department. I have yet to drop anybody.

So what, you might be wondering, does this have to do with how modern dance can improve your ballet***?

***A reasonable question, all things considered.

Well, it turns out that nothing, bar nothing, is as good at teaching you to find and engage your core muscles as good ol’ modern dance.

Why? Because contractions (also because successive movement, and all of that rolling-around-on-the-floor that doesn’t seem to make much sense until you start doing modern, and then you’re always like OMG LET’S ROLL ON THE FLOOR RIGHT NOW!, because it’s actually kind of awesome … and, I suppose, while we’re at it, also good for learning to engage you core).

Basically, a solid head-tail contraction doesn’t just make you really great at being the letter “C” in every Human Alphabet photo ever. It also illuminates the secret workings of all those muscles in your core that you already thought you were using correctly, but weren’t (at least, that’s what happened for me).

In partnering work, that’s like magic.

Also tends to be good for the turns. And the balances.

Which brings me to the other thing we did about a million times a day in Cinci: you get into a relevé (or élevé) balance in first, second, fourth, sous-sus, whatevs, bring your arms to third/fifth (seriously, I’m just going to start calling this “thirty-fifth” … or I could just say “en haut,” but what fun would that be?^****). Get your core together; then notice how your scapulae are just, like, hanging from your arms.

****Plus, that would violate a centuries-long tradition of obfuscation. Ballet has been trolling n00bs some n00bs were, erm, n00.

And then DROP THEM.

Your arms, that is.

Just, boom. From 0 to “Spaghetti arms!” in .6 seconds.

You will immediately know if your core is together, because if it’s not, dropping your arms will knock you off your leg(s), and you will bourée like a corps dancer in Swan Lake who has suddenly been struck with choreographic amnesia and can’t do anything but desperately try to stay in line. (I bet that, in their mind’s ears, my ballet peeps are all totally hearing the sound of pointes desperately bourée-ing right now. Dog knows I am.)

This exercise is immensely useful and works in both turnout and parallel. It has, in fact, done more for freeing my arms, neck, and head in balances that any number of repetitions of “Sous-sus, arms float to thirty-fifth, change focus stage right, change focus stage left, focus center, détourné.” (Though that’s still a great exercise, and is useful for improving your spot.)

I worked in a few of these exercises today, and by then end of our brief practice session, B was able to keep her core sufficiently engaged to take a low à la seconde balance to each side.

I, meanwhile, was busy working on figuring out how much to engage at what point in order to counter-balance without appearing to do anything other that standing there and looking princely. I managed the counter-balancing part well enough, but I suspect that I liked more constipated than princely.

Alas, for my “thinking face” is far from regal.

So I’ll work on that.

Anyway, it’s now waaaaaay past my bedtime, so I’m going to close here. I’ll add these exercises to the list of videos I’ll probably remember to make someday. I think I’m also going to re-do my balancé video in some place with decent lighting, no carpet, and fewer helpful cats (but mostly because my balancé looks soooooooo much better than it did back in whenever that was).

Good night, everybody, and try not to drop your partners.

Posted in balllet, class notes, modern

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Live Broadcast from a Sinkhole?

Jul 3

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Today I was going to write about choreography, but instead I’m going to write about depression again.

In fact, I have an entire post about choreography almost ready to go, but I don’t feel up to finishing it.

So here we are.

This morning I woke up, which is to say that I finally and begrudgingly relinquished my grasp on a 10-hour sleep marathon, in a bad way.

Not that I’ve exactly been in a great way, so to speak — though I keep sorta faking it on facebook and in other areas of my life where it doesn’t make sense to let the depression leak on too many things, as one does.

It’s just that the sheer calibre of this particular depression has shot from “fairly mild” to “crushing” overnight.

By way of analogy, it reminds me of a thing that happened a couple of years ago. One day I was riding my bike up to the Highlands for one reason or another and was flabbergasted to discover that, literally overnight, an enormous sinkhole had swallowed someone’s front yard, a mature full-sized tree, and about a quarter of a fairly large intersection. (Fortunately, no one was hurt.)

Needless to say, it was a shock. I had ridden past the same spot the day before, and everything was normal. This happens here, from time to time, thanks to a highly-porous limestone substrate and lots of underground water.

That’s kind of how this thing is going for me. Like the forces of whatever have been gnawing away at me from underneath, silent and unseen, and at last the surface has given way. So now I just wait it out, I guess.

The upside is that I wouldn’t say that it’s quite reached the “crippling” point. I am still capable of getting up and going to class and dancing. I thought I was supposed to teach today, but it turns out we didn’t have class because my co-teacher is in Massachusetts (should’ve known that; didn’t think to offer to teach class by myself — that’s probably okay).

I spent this morning at Open Fly making dances: one to Adele’s “Hello,” one to Jeff Buckley’s stellar cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” one of the few covers that I like better than the original artist’s version or, in this case, versions. The dance-making went well (if less modern and more ballet-influenced than I intended). I could move. I could balance. I could create. I could write stuff down, which I did a bit at the end. For a little while, I felt rather more … I don’t know, alive?

It’s weird how that works. The depression makes my body not want to move (which, btw, is the way you can tell when something is really, definitely, seriously wrong with me). Even speaking is hard right now. Dancing brings the body back to life for a while.

It’s like depression rolls a thick slab of glass across my experience of the world, and dancing pushes it back. As long as I dance, the glass stays gone. When I stop, it returns.

To be clear, though, dancing doesn’t eliminate the haze of pain that is forefront in my emotional experience. It’s just that I’ve learned that you can dance from the heart of pain the same way you can dance from the heart of joy.

And then, perhaps, sometimes you should dance from the heart of pain.

After, Denis collected me from the outdoor bench where I was slowly dissolving into inarticulate tears and took me out for brunch. While he was using the men’s room, I wrote myself a note:

When there’s joy, create from joy. When there’s pain, create from pain.

It’s not a profound thought, just kind of a reminder. Both joy and pain can be fuel.

I find all this comforting. Last night I was busy worrying if bipolar is going to derail my efforts to work in dance; if I am, in fact, a poor investment for any company, no matter how small.

But I think I can do this.

I can’t go work a desk job when I’m here (and definitely not if that desk job involves phone-based technical support … eee). But I can get up and make my body work; I can get up and be nice to the humans who dance with me and the humans who direct me as a dancer; I can get up and make art, somehow, with my body.

I can plumb the depths of my despair for dances the same way I sweep them from the heights of my joy.

And I can feel this without fighting it; without resisting.

In the car on the way to Open Fly, I think I apologized to Denis for falling apart or something like that.

He said it was okay; that maybe a huge part of the problem is that I work too hard to hold it all together. He said something similar the other night (last night? the night before?), when I couldn’t stop crying on the way home from a movie — that he loves my feelings, that he’s glad I have feelings.

I’m not always glad I have feelings, and I don’t entirely appreciate the fact that my feelings are all about the guerrilla warfare. On the other hand, maybe he’s right: maybe if I would just let go a little more often, there wouldn’t be so much of that.

For what it’s worth, dancing helps with the letting go. It’s hard to imbue your dancing with any kind of real emotional presence if you’ve got your emotions sealed up in some kind of sous-vide container and locked up in a freezer somewhere.

Hell, maybe they don’t call it “release technique” for nothin’, eh?

Anyway. So that’s what’s up, over here. Part of me feels like this is basically so much emotional exhibitionism (but, erm, if that’s so, then what the hell is basically all of modern dance?); another part of me feels like I’m still writing this at arm’s length because being entirely human in so public a context still basically freaks me the feck out.

So, yeah. Not sure if this makes even a modicum of sense. It’s just stuff. But, on the other hand, like Denis always points out: “If they were rational, we wouldn’t call them feelings.”

Soundtrack for My Depression:

Adele, “When We Were Young,” from 25
Adele, “Hello,” from 25
Jeff Buckley, “Hallelujah,” from Grace
Jeff Buckley, “Corpus Christi Carol,” from Grace
Leonard Cohen, “Bird on a Wire”
Leonard Cohen, “If It Be Your Will”
Leonard Coehn,”Who By Fire”
Hozier, “Take Me To Church”
Hozier, “Work Song”
The Beatles, “Julia”

…Oh, and basically the whole of Faure’s Requiem, but that’s a playlist unto itself.

…And also, if you haven’t heard Buckley’s version of “Corpus Christi Carol,” OMG, go listen to it. He sang most of it in an exquisite falsetto, clear and  expressive and breathy only in exactly the right moments and sometimes tremulous; the rest in the upper part of his range, beautifully raw. Listen to his cover of “Hallelujah” while you’re at it, because holy. The man was a treasure.

And also, I so need to add “If It Be Your Will” to the contemporary ballet project I’m semi-secretly working on.

Edit: and “Who By Fire.”

Posted in balllet, bipolar, healing, health

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Ha.

I just realized that I’m in one of the pictures on Moving Collective’s Classes page.

There I am, right in the middle, in grey. You can tell it’s me because A) I look about 12 and B) my arms are (predictably) doing something weird. I remember that day; I brought a friend who doesn’t do modern, and was consequently nervous and having a rough go of it. I think I might actually have been in the process of knocking myself over, heh.

(The other two pix are presumably from the Friday class that I don’t currently attend, since I don’t recognize most of the people in them. There’s another guy! Yay!)

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Turn, Turn … Er, Ah, Oh Yes, Turn

Jul 2

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Somehow, I’m suddenly working for reliable triple turns.

Today’s were sketchy. Too much 1, 2 … and a half … 3. First two revolutions would be fine, but I’d lose my momentum in the third somehow. Once I wound up getting halfway through the third revolution and having to kind of do this embarrassing little hoppity-hop thing to get the rest of the way around. The next time I launched too hard from the foot, like I was trying to do a tour en l’air at passé. Oy vey.

I think the problem is one of confidence. I know I can do doubles, but I’m still not sure about my triples. I get anxious and lose focus, my spot slows down, and so … does … everything … else. Clearly, the answer is to go for quadruples — the best triple turns I’ve ever done were ones that wanted to be quads.

On the other hand, turns and terre-a-terre were otherwise good. Suddenly I have nice doubles from fifth, nice tombé-piques (I’m no longer trying to launch them into space), and arms that do things related to the combination and not just random crazy stuff. Also, my adagio glissades are da bomb.

I felt tired halfway through petit allegro, though the first combination went very well, and very much phoned it in throughout grand allegro. Some of my jumps were lovely, some were just plain wrong because I missed part of the combination (thought the second chain involved entrelacé and fouetté when really it was two fouettés; fixed that going left).

The linking steps were an unmitigated disaster (in short: I could only remember half of them), though I worked to make it look like I thought I knew what I was doing. I didn’t. There was a whole coupé-tombé-pas de bourré that I replaced with a chassé, which meant my saut de chat, though decent, was hella early. Frustrationne.

This, by the way, is my new ballet strategy: Don’t know the whole combination? Just pretend you do and really commit to whatever game version you invent.

I’m out of Adderall right now, and I feel it in advanced class. The combinations are long, and I tend to fail to keep my concentration engaged while receiving them. I would be like, watching watching watching huh, I wonder if I should take my legwarmers off, D’OH!, watching, watching…

That said, I’m doing surprisingly well remembering and executing adagio right now. Occasionally I find myself in a position that I can both execute and watch in the mirror, and it’s neat to watch my legs just unfurl themselves while my body stays still and upright.

My arms mostly seem to know what they’re doing now, as well, though once today they tried to do something weird (I caught them). My head is slowly getting with the program. There was less eye-rolling today.

Also held a right attitude balance arrière that blew my previous records out of the water.

Felt like I could’ve stayed up there forever. Came down in complete control — allongé, arabesque balance, close to sous-sus, plié. First time, probably, that I’ve chosen to come down from a balance because the class was getting ready to start the second side! (Usually I choose to come down when it starts to feel like things are thinking about falling apart.)

Left was nowhere near as good — too much thinking — though the exit was similarly controlled and graceful.

At barre, B commented on how far I’ve come since January and added, “One day I look up, and there’s this dancer in front of me.”

I suspect that has a lot to do with it, in a way — I think of myself as a dancer, and I think that shapes things. As dancers, we tend to embody our inner visions of ourselves. What we visualize, we do.

Of course, quite literally being stronger and fitter than I have ever been and just plain getting to class reliably make a huge difference, too.

As does finally being able, once again, to trust my body. It’s more and more like an exquisitely well-trained horse: horse people will understand the feeling of riding a horse that seems to read your mind; even to know what you want before you do.

It may seem strange to describe one’s body that way, but the sense of trust and unity and satisfaction is the same. I know where my arms are now in a way that I didn’t six months ago.

One more detail before lunch.

Looking at pictures of Nureyev (who apparently had ridiculous knees like mine) in fifth and sous-sus, I realized that I can probably nail mine tighter if I really max my turnout and pull my inner thighs tighter than I feel is physically possible.

This should help get my giant, bony knees out of the way. I’ve been kind of cheating lately, given that my turnout is really close to 180 in first at this point. I keep doing the thing where you plié and rotate your front knee back and  heel forward simultaneously, but then having to reduce turnout a bit to get my knees in or out in tendus, etc, because they’re in each-other’s way.

If I engage my inner thighs more effectively, I think I should be able to pull the knees past each-other rather than against each-other. Heretofore, I haven’t been doing that because Male Dancer Reasons, but um, suffice it to say that there’s at least one painting of Nureyev in the nude, and he had bigger (ahem) reasons than mine, so to speak. In short, I should trust my dance belt to do its job.

So that’s it for today. Lunch, splits challenge, and then … Honestly, who knows?

Coincidentally, this should also help me make my petit allegro quicker, since I’ll have to work on making the same set of muscles stronger. It will also stop me getting yelled at about my lazy assemblé and soubresaut 😉

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Friday Class: Moar Bolshoi; Less Balanchine

Jul 1

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This morning’s class resulted in a deeply satisfying ballet conversation.

I received a specific note on my grand jeté — it basically went, “Everyone else: try for more up. Asher — you’ve got plenty of up, but there’s a little hitch at the top. Try to travel more.”

As is my habit, I summed this up — out loud, of course, because I’m a kinaesthetic learner, so the doing part of saying something helps — in an aphorism I’d be likely to remember:

Oh! More Bolshoi; less Balanchine. I keep putting too much Balanchine* into it.

One of my classmates, who teaches in Georgetown and makes quite a long trek several times a week, happened to be standing next to me and heard me and said, “Well, you’ve got the Bolshoi body.”

And my insides went:

happy-seal

Shamelessly ganked from memegenerator.net, of course.

Fortunately, my brain was working and I had the good grace to say, “Oh, thank you! I’ve been working on it!”

She then commented specifically on my “powerhouse” legs, and I said, “Yeah, I always felt weird about them until I saw a picture of Nijinksy, and then I was like, ‘Oh, well … okay.'”

Her reply? “And Nureyev!” (followed by some more specific details that were lost in the haze of being compared to Nureyev, because seriously, how often does that happen in the life of any danseur ignoble?).

And my insides went:

o-HAPPY-DOG-DAY-OF-HAPPINESS-facebook

Shamelessly stolen from the internet at large.

And then, apparently because I was in a good mood, I did the grand jetés beautifully on the repeat, and proceeded to do beautiful pas des chats Italiens (if you’re wondering what these look like, here’s a good video; maybe I should get Denis to record mine) and very serviceable grand assemblés en tournant after class, apparently just because I could?

This all came on the heels of a class that started out as a disaster (I just could. not. fall asleep last night, and then when I finally did [at 4 freaking 30 AM] I had this cinematically intense dream about being part of a resistance force attempting to throw off the shackles of a seriously oppressive, repressive totalitarian regime … basically, like the Death Eaters meet Sauron meet the Empire). Everything was going badly because I was feeling bad; accordingly, I felt worse and did worse.

Then, in the middle of barre, we all cracked up about something, and I realized that it wasn’t just me — we were all a mess; none of us could count or tendu or remember a combination to save our lives (even the phenomenal Ms. J was having trouble remembering her own combinations!).

Suddenly, the mood of the whole class lifted, and then we all did better, which basically says everything about how powerful our minds are.

By the time we got to rond-de-jambes, I actually garnered a “good!” (which is saying something, Ms. J is probably the single pickiest instructor on staff — which is, of course, why we love her. Also because she is really good at sorting out things like heads: apparently, today, I more rolling my eyes towards my hand than turning my head, heh).

I have done better adagio, better turns, and better terre-a-terre than I did today (and my petit allegro was summarily terrible), but it was still pretty good, and I managed to remember that ballet is all about moving the goal post — a year ago, I would’ve sacrificed a black goat at midnight to be able to do terre-a-terre like I did today. And I definitely wouldn’t have had beats — even lame ones — on just under four hours of sleep.

As far as I’m concerned, any day that includes good grand allegro, really good pas de chats Italiens, serviceable grand assemblés en tournant, and being compared to Nureyev (if only for my enormous thighs :P) is a damned fine day. I’ll take it.

This is probably something worth commenting on in the vein of body positivity.

I still struggle with my own body image sometimes. Not as much as I used to (which is to say: the struggle is no longer constant), but there’s a part of my brain that really believes that my body should basically be one of David Hallberg-ian dimensions.

Being compared to Nureyev cast things in a different light.

I still, somehow, think of my body as a big, square block. Now, there’s nothing wrong with being a big, square block — I actually happen to find the big, square block body type very attractive.

It’s just that my brain is weird and experiences this tension between two parts of itself: one part that’s still going, “WTF, we cannot stop being an ectomorphic stick figure, that does not compute!” and another part that’s going, “Yeah, but we’re a big square block, have you looked in the mirror lately?”

And then I see pictures like the ones from last night and realize that both those parts are cray, and then someone compares me to Nureyev and I think, “Huh. It would be totally cool to reach a point at which I’d be okay with being built like Nureyev; in fact, it would be crazy not to be okay with that.”

Likewise, part of me has historically been kind of weirded out by the fact that my upper body is really pretty far out on the ectomorph end of the scale, while my lower body is squarely, solidly (heh, see what I did there … o_o) in mesomorph territory. I could skip leg day for months on end and my legs would still be huge. It’s genetic; I got ’em from my Mom.

But Nureyev was built like that, too: slender above the navel, leonine below, all of it graceful.

I get that the weirdness in my brain that led me to starve myself when I was already below 120 pounds (even when I was 14 and weighed 84 pounds at 5’4″) might never figure this out.

But I’m learning to let the other parts of my brain speak.

The parts that think Nureyev was beautiful, and would be totally okay with that kind of build.

The parts that understand that my greatest asset as a dancer — the ability to leap like a gazelle with a cheetah on its tail — owes in no small part to the unusual combination of sylph-like upper half with heroic lower half.

The parts that understand that it’s these legs that can garner enough air to make a plain pas de chat look like it hangs suspended for seconds at a time (even though that’s totally not what’s actually happening); that it’s these legs that let me do pas de chats Italiens like they’re no big deal (regarding which: they’re apparently kinda hard?).

I say all this not to brag, but to try to convince myself: maybe this body is, in fact, kind of awesome in its own way. Maybe I can learn to feel that.

Now I’m going to eat some food and consider attempting to nap before maybe dragging my husband out to watch a movie about animated fish.

*If you’re wondering about this analogy: Balanchine’s style is characterized by a really strong emphasis on the vertical, while the Bolshoi’s dancers tend to be more fluid, lyrical, and lateral. Not that the guys at the Bolshoi don’t launch themselves into space during big leaps; they totally do — there’s just more traveling going on at any given time than would be typical in Balanchine.

Because of this, I try to channel the New York City Ballet for turns; the Bolshoi/Mariinsky/Vaganova universe for leaps. For jumps like pas de chat, I just try to channel Ben, who is my favorite of LBS’ male dancers.

As for Sissones … for some reason, my Sissones are so bad right now. I don’t have time to channel anyone; I’m too busy trying not to die.

Posted in balllet, class notes, fitness

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Time to Split!

Time to Split!

Jun 30

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Wednesday Class was decent yesterday (Ms. B is teaching summer intensive, so we’ve got a substitute whose name slips my mind right now, Ms. E); learned that my tombé-pique/step-over/lame duck was a little, erm, enthusiastic; dialed it back and got a double or two in.

I basically always go into it like I’m going to do coupé-jeté en tournant. Or, at least, that’s how I was going into it. We had to do them slooooooowly yesterday – eight turns to super-slow music: pique, pique, pique, double pique; tombé-pique, tombé-pique, tombé-pique, double tombé-pique if you’ve got ’em.

My petit allegro was slow, but that’s why petit allegro isn’t my strong suit. I need to work on that, always. Forever. It’s physics: pendulums with skinny ends swing faster than pendulums with fat ends, and I have freaking huge ankle bones. My ankles exist, now, but they’re not what you’d call skinny.

Wasn’t sure if a thing in grand allegro was temps de puisse or coupé-balloné (edit: it was temps de puisse; I just sort of blipped out somehow while our instructor was giving the combination); once my brain was un-confused, my legs kept trying to do both at once. Other than that, though, pretty good.

Tonight in acro we did a new thing called “lever,” which I fly like an ace because I have pretty solid splits.

Here it is:

image

This month is Splits Challenge at Suspend. I’ve signed up in hopes of regaining hypersplits, heh.

Here’s my opening salvo:

Posted in acro-balancing, aerials, balllet, class notes

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Because Two Posts In One Day Aren’t Enough

Jun 27

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I took Monday evening class today because Ms. B (of Killer Class) was teaching. Also because I figured some ballet might help my mood (it did; I’m not all sunshine and roses, here, but I’m … Eh. Less awful?).

I’m glad I did. I struggled in my last two morning classes due to circadian rhythm disasters, but tonight I was on it (except I still don’t have my triple turns back, and for some reason my right leg didn’t want to coupé-balloné at the start of our medium allegro.

I got a lot of notes at the barre — detail work, now, refining port de bras and épaulement, mostly, and a “Nice, Asher!” during adagio.

Barre adage was good, too: working at relevé, I managed to finally lift my legs with the right muscles, and it was like, Boom! Effortless extensions at 90 degrees and above. This was a spectacular development, as I’ve been fighting with my à la seconde to a wildly unreasonable degree. My gluteus medius usually thinks it’s supposed to do, like, all the work, so it blocks several degrees of extension and then cramps. Tonight it was just like, “Oh, I’ll be over here, just call if you need me,” and the rest of the muscles were like, “Thank you. OMG, thank goodness that guy got outta the way.” And there was my leg, extended just above 90 from dèveloppé, and nothing cramped or strained or anything.

I continue to be surprised that I’m sorta, kinda becoming good at adagio. Also that I like it. As a kid, I thought adagio was boooooooring. Now I don’t — it has become a lovely opportunity for expression, not to mention a chance (in class, anyway), to check in with my body and pull everything together.

Speaking of which, my turns were sloppy at first, and then I realized that I was doing them with my “Cheetah eyes” turned off and my core all kinds of disengaged. Fixed that, and things got so, so much better.

After class, Ms. B said I look good! That’s a huge thing — I feel like I came back from Mam-Luft&Co a much better dancer; more so than I would ever have expected. That’s what I’m working for, so it’s good.

I’ve also been surprised by the conviction I feel about dancing: the audition I’m looking towards will mean, if successful, skipping Burning Man and returning early from Florida. I would do either of those in a heartbeat to be able to do this thing.

I guess that’s how you know you’re doing what you really want to do, though. All those decisions become essentially effortless.

Posted in auditions, balllet, class notes, life

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