Author Archives: asher
Danseur Ignoble: That Moment When You Get It
Today’s class was good.
Not “I did absolutely everything right” good (because, come on, it’s ballet; the very instant you get something really right, they give you something harder to do), but “things are starting to crystallize” good.
I once described this feeling as “leveling up.” This time, it’s not so much leveling up as refining the level I’m on: like going back to collect all the hidden coins in a video game, or whatever.
Brienne gave me a zillion corrections today, which felt awesome (given my history with ballet, horsemanship, and academics, it shouldn’t sound weird to say, “Yay, criticism!” but it rather does, actually). She also said it’s fun to pick on me 🙂 That, too, is high praise coming from one’s ballet teacher.
Barre was quite good, with the exception of a super-weird moment in a grand rond de jambe from soutenu derrière (Brienne described it as “the worst thing in classical ballet, but we have to do it”), which was … well, it could have been worse, but it wasn’t good.
The highlight, meanwhile, occurred during barre adagio: Brienne gave me a handful of corrections as I did a different grand rond de jambe from derrière (this one did not begin with soutenu), and my working leg did this magical thing wherein suddenly it was fully pointed, straight, awesomely turned out, and weightlessly* hovering at what seemed like a ridiculously high extension. It startled3 me so much that I said, “Oh! Hey!”
And then my working leg basically owned the rest of that rond de jambe with essentially no effort from me. If only all of class could be like that, all the time!
Now, if I can ever do that again, particularly when someone is ready with a camera, I can probably die happy. I won’t even ever have to perform if someone just gets video me executing of a single perfect grand rond de jambe with that kind of ridiculous extension.
At center, adagio was … meh, could’ve been worse, but would’ve been better if I’d understood the first combination right the first time and then didn’t spend the remaining repetitions freaking out about getting it wrong.
On the upside? Double turns! On demand! WTF, when did I stop sucking at turns (again)?
Brienne gave us a useful talk about identifying one’s own natural spotting speed so one can modulate one’s turning speed according to the music. I think I am actually kind of a slow-turner, but I’m not entirely certain.
I also sucked it up and did the little jumps, since my toe felt okay, and was surprised how much faster they’re getting. It used to be that I could either jump really slowly with beautiful point and straight legs or schlub my way through quick jumps. Now I’m starting to hit really nice quick jumps about half the time.
Brienne has been making me focus on really working through my feet, and holy cow, is it ever helping!
We ran out of time before we got to do grand allegro, alas.
I’m thinking I will do class tonight. A) it’s giant ballet party open house night, and B) Ms. E is teaching, and I don’t think I’ve done class with her yet. Perhaps we’ll allegro!
Anyway. That’s it for now. There is nothing like the feeling of making progress!
Danseur Ignoble: Weaksauce?
On Saturday, I dragged Robert to ballet with me, and he made a respectable effort in Margie’s class. I, too, made a respectable effort, then proceeded on to Brienne’s class.
In Brienne’s class, I … um. Well.
Let me state for the record that it’s been a while since I’ve done two classes back-to-back, and apparently I’m still quite out of shape. Jeez.
Or, well — I may have been coming down with something, as I had a fever and some pretty unpleasant gastric distress stuff on Sunday and Monday. (Today, I’m feeling mostly better, so it’s back to Brienne’s class tomorrow.)
Either way, I had some strength-related issues at barre (sometimes, you fondue; sometimes, you fondon’t), though there were definitely some highlights as well. My balances are improving again.
At center, we did a rather nice bit of slow adagio (which I would have done better if I’d kept my extensions lower; I didn’t have the strength left to really sustain them above about 60 degrees).
Across the floor, Brienne tuned up our balancés — in my case, that was really a good thing, as my balancés have really needed some tuning. It was nice to get them ironed out and flowing.
I’m not sure what was done for allegros petit et grand; I bowed out at that point, as I was simply feeling exhausted by that point and didn’t want to roll the “exhaustion leads to injury” dice.
I hope to acquit myself better in tomorrow’s class.
Saturday’s problem — making it through class — shouldn’t really be too hard to overcome, as I’ll only be doing one class, or possibly two separated by many hours instead of back to back.
Wednesday’s problem — remembering all the combos and not screwing up my ballotés and, heaven help me, sissons (you know, the second easiest jump in the whole world; and as such one that I should pretty much never find difficult?) — well. We’ll see how that goes. Successive approximations, etc.
Those were very much in the Domain of the Baby Giraffe (Wait! Which leg goes where?) last week, so I’ve spent a great deal of time thinking about them, because we all know how much thinking helps in ballet! Mostly, I found myself thinking about how to solve the problem of the bizarre disconnect that sometimes happens between brain and legs.
Like, I know how to sisson, and I knew which way(s) to sisson in last week’s second allegro combo, and yet somehow when it came time to sisson, my legs were all like, “HOLY FRACK HOW DO I EVEN DO THIS?!”
I imagine that it was probably quite funny from the sidelines.
Anyway, tomorrow will almost certainly be better.
So that’s it for now. May your fondues refrain from becoming fondon’ts, and the sissons rise up to meet you, or something like that 🙂
Danseur Ignoble: A Not-Really-So-Good Bad Day
This morning, we got up and headed out the door on time to make the bus, but when I got out to the garage, I discovered that the side door was wide open and Robert’s bike was missing.
I told him about it (and that I’d be happy to send my mountain bike, which I don’t ride very much, home with him so he can get around), and he took it fairly well: he laughed and said, “Huh. So whoever it was apparently decided to steal the cheapest bike in the garage.”
When I told Denis about it this evening, he mentioned that the neighbors have been having some issues with kids trying to break into their garage, so that it might be the same thing. Denis thinks he probably left our side door unlocked the last time he was working out there, which makes sense — there’s no sign that anyone picked the lock or anything like that. Still, for the time being, I think I’m going to lock up the Tricross in the garage at night.
Anyway, we wound up missing the bus while I was double-checking to make sure nothing else (or, well, nothing else that was obvious; our garage is a bit chaotic right now) was missing, so we didn’t make it to class. I’m going to do both classes tomorrow to make up for it, though of course three classes on three different days is really a better practice strategy than three classes on two different days.
Other than that, though, today was pretty decent.
I took Robert out to a couple of shops to try to find some more comfortable summer going-outdoors clothes. We found him a couple of inexpensive wicking t-shirts as well as a nice, light short-sleeved Henley that was on clearance for $5. All of them should be much more comfortable for him when he’s out and about in the summer.
We had also intended to find him an athletic supporter, since finding a dance belt in his size on short notice is pretty unlikely. However, either Louisville’s entire stock of athletic supporters has been purchased in a the usual back-to-school shopping frenzy (public schools in Kentucky start early), or nobody sells them in regular stores anymore. We didn’t have time to trek out to a sporting goods place, though — I’d be surprised if a place like the Sports Authority lacked athletic supporters.
We figured a pair of compression shorts might work, but back-burnered them for the time being because Robert didn’t particularly like the only ones we found in his size. We’ll figure something out if he wants to try Margie’s class tomorrow.
It’s been nice having Robert around (though, of course, we haven’t managed to accomplish all of our goals yet: we still don’t have our Cooking with ADHD video done). He’s going home on Sunday, so I’ll be back to my usual routine next week.
Conveniently, so will ballet school — the fall semester begins Monday, and with it a new weekly session of Margie’s class and apparently a barre cardio class.
We have Open House days on Wednesday the 12th and Saturday the 15th. So free classes, yeay! If you’re in Louisville, get your hindquarters to Louisville Ballet School on Wednesday evening (I probably won’t be there; I do class in the AM on Wednesdays) or a week from tomorrow (I probably will be there).
Okay. That’s it for now. Tonight, we’re showing Robert Big Hero 6. Yay!
Danseur Ignoble: A Good Bad Day
I’m not sure how else to describe today’s class.
It wasn’t always an awesome class in terms of accuracy (on my part), but the problems I ran into didn’t stem from lack of technique (mostly; for reasons unknown, there was one terrible soutenu moment in our fondu-et-rond-de-jamb combo… o_o) so much as from my brain butting up against increasingly-complex combinations, and there were some really quite nice moments.
Somehow, I left class floating on a cloud of confidence even though I’d completely hosed up the final traveling combination*.
Brienne definitely leveled us up today. We were packed with company dancers and teachers as well we few, we happy few, we band of danseurs et danseuses ignobles. After lulling us into a false sense of security with some nice, gentle pliés, our much-loved task-mistress moved on to a series of increasingly longer and more demanding combinations at the barre. We tried our hardest to execute them, because we all love her and would follow her into battle against the forces of Mordor and all that.
I also once again failed to eat (not on purpose — just poor planning and worse execution), so my brain was decidedly not firing on all 3.5 cylinders.
In case you’re wondering, that did not help me remember the combos.
That said, when I was doing things right today, they were apparently pretty right indeed — I got a, “Good, Asher!” twice; once after responding to a small correction and once straight out of the blue.
Ballet peeps, you already know: there is no accolade in the world better than “Good!” (or its equivalent, “Yes!”) in class.
Even better, I had an awesome conversation with Brienne after class. I laughingly lamented my total failure to get the last combo right, and she said she’s noticed that I’m using my feet against the floor better (thanks in largely to the combinations she and Ms. T have been giving us) and my speed is improving.
Then she said, “You have beautiful feet” and went on to explain that the range of motion in my feet and ankles means it takes me longer to “get there” (that is, to reach full point and extension) than it does for people with less flexible feet, which paradoxically makes quick jumps harder.
On the other hand, apparently it means my feet look great when they finally do “get there,” so I’ll take that. Speed, I can build.
Later, Ms. T. said I had beautiful legs for ballet o.O
This floored me. While my relationship with my legs has improved, I still think of them as disproportionately stocky (that is, disproportionately stocky relative to the rest of my body, which has always bothered me aesthetically). While I now definitely respect their functionality, I’m not really used to thinking of my legs as beautiful (to be fair, Denis also seems to think my legs are pretty fine, so it’s possible that I’m just wildly delusional).
My hypermobile knees are part of that, but at the same time, learning to actually get them straight without locking them has been surprisingly challenging, especially since dancing makes them more, rather than less, hyperextendy.
Sometimes in class I feel like a baby giraffe trying to learn to walk, scissoring around the Sahara, or maybe like a drunken ostrich**. It is nice to know that this is a function of having beautiful legs for ballet. Some problems are good problems to have.
Suddenly, though, I feel like I have a lot to live up to. Beautiful feet and beautiful legs?
So, yeah. It was a good kind of bad day — the kind that you have when you’re working on challenging stuff and your technique is improving; the kind you run into when the dimensions of your comfort zone are starting to expand.
In short, I could live with a lot more good bad days just like this one.
In other news, both of my Capezio Romeos have swallowed their laces (in case you’re wondering, it’s really quite hard to promenade when your shoes are slowly peeling off ._.). So I’m going to have to take some time to fix them. I really should’ve applied something to the knots to make sure they’d stick after I gave the laces a trim.
Um, lesson learned?
So that’s it for now. Robert and I are kicking around the idea of doing a Cooking with ADHD video post in the next few days. I’m also trying to make him take Ms. M’s class on Friday. He’s here ’til Sunday, so he might as well.
I’ll keep you posted 🙂
Danseur Ignoble: It Helps If You Can Breathe
12:15 class today with Ms. T. I haven’t done her class in ages (Claire used to teach the noon class on Saturday), so it was a new experience. I also haven’t done the 12:15 Saturday class in over a month, so that was cool.
While the 12:15 class is billed as a beginner class, like most it gets adjusted based on who shows up; today, we skewed towards the intermediate level, particularly at the barre/
I’d say that our work at center and across the floor was more advanced-beginnery — which is to say that we didn’t do 360-degree promenades in attitude or arabesque, anything with pas de Basque or balanceé as linking steps (you guys, I absolutely and irrationally love pas de Basque; it’s one of those steps that just feels like dancing), or any combinations with different flavors of turns.
Anyway, I forgot to tape my toes and forgot to take my nasal spray. The latter of these was the worse oversight: my nasal spray keeps my whole nosapharynx open, and my allergies are on high alert today, so breathing became a challenge towards the end.
Barre was iffy at first (my plies felt inelastic, and it took me a while to get my head in the game), but the last half of barre was pretty good, and I felt pretty solid at center and going across the floor.
We did some nice adagio at center (with promenades at passé, which are comfortingly easy at this point) and then a really pretty traveling combo in waltz time that went:
Prepare (B+, port des bras);
Tombe
Pas de bourré
Plie fourth;
(Long) Passe balance
Tendu back;
Tombe
Pas de bourré
Plie fourth;
Single (slow) turn en dedans
Tendu back;
Tombe
Pas de bourré
Plie fourth;
Double turn en dedans (or triple if you were that one guy with the awesome turns);
Pivot
Soutenu turn to fifth
Plié;
Chassee to 1st arabesque en releve
Allongé
(Faille implied.) Run away!
I wanted to say that the tempo was fairly moderate, so there was lots of room for expression, but when I tap it out on my mobile metronome it’s about 130 BPM, which is squarely allegro.
Maybe it felt slow and easy because we did a really fast grand allegro combo on Wednesday. I mean, like, we ran it first at a tempo that was also squarely allegro, and then at about twice that speed. Woof.
Anyway, today it felt like we had plenty of time and room going across the floor and weren’t rushing to get from one step to the next.
I was on the rear point of a triangle with its front line made up of two people who were shorter than I am, so I kept having to moderate my travel so as not to gallomph into them or become unsynchronized. That’s a useful exercise, though, as being able to maintain spacing in a squadron of differently-sized dancers is an essential skill.
That said, triangles usually go point-first in ballet, don’t they?
I got through the first set of little jumps before my toe started to feel iffy. I skipped the second set, which made me sad — dangit, I wanted to do entrechats! I also skipped grand allegro today, just in case.
Not being able to breathe very well didn’t help. Everything feels about twice as difficult when your air intake is clogged.
It’s mostly, I think, that when you get even a little winded, it’s hard to get enough air to recover properly.
Instead of getting a little winded, recovering, getting a little winded again, and recovering again (which is a normal pattern during certain parts of class), you get a little winded, get more winded, then get even more winded. By the time you make it to the end of the first set of little jumps, you sound like a freight train and feel like your head and/or heart are going to explode.
That said, it’s not like this is a new thing for me. I have had nasopharyngeal issues as far back as I can remember — I’m just usually better at making sure I’ve dealt with them before class.
So, yeah. Nice reminder today about why I take my nasal spray before class.
I think next week I’ll swing for all three intermediate classes (M,W,F) and the 12:15 class on Saturday, which Brienne is teaching, though I may do evening class on Monday (Brienne is teaching that, too).
Brian is back to teaching the following Monday, which will be awesome. On the 14th, Wednesday AM class will be taught by the instructor who teaches advanced classes, so I’m rather looking forward to that as well.
Anyway, that’s it for today.
Never underestimate the importance of breathing 🙂
Cooking with ADHD: Easy Maize Pudding, Coming Up!
Just a quick heads-up: I’ll be putting together a much briefer version of this recipe with step-by-step pictures (this post is too long to fit the Cooking with ADHD model!) and probably a video version as well.
It should be up soon.
I should probably also try to come up with a semi-standard, ADHD-friendly format for these posts if I don’t get distracted bef— SQUIRREL!
Anyway, yesterday, I woke up with a random craving for hasty pudding/Indian pudding/maize pudding/whatever you want to call it.
I looked up a bunch of recipes and became more and more discouraged: most of them involved a bazillion steps, required ingredients that I didn’t have, served 30, and/or took at least two hours* to cook.
That’s hasty, my friends — hasty like a sloth.
Finally, I thought, “Screw it, entire peoples who didn’t even have recipes have been making cornmeal mush ever since cornmeal was invented. I’m just going to do that, add some brown sugar and vanilla, and throw a little whipped topping on**.”
So I marched into the kitchen, grabbed the cornmeal from our giant Lazy Susan cabinet thingy, and … hesitated.
Perhaps, I thought, Perhaps I should consult Betty Crocker … just in case.
So I did, and right there on page 354***, was a recipe for polenta, conveniently labeled fast, which in cooking parlance usually also means easy.
It was also labeled low-fat, I didn’t really care about that, but if you’re on a low-fat diet, you’re covered. Those on low-carb diets, on the other hand … um, maybe this isn’t the optimal recipe for you guys.
I didn’t make polenta (though basic polenta will definitely be covered win a Cooking with ADHD post).
I did make a really easy maize pudding — the polenta recipe just gave me confidence that my intuition about ingredient proportions was pretty much on track.
So, without further ado, here’s the basic idea:
Easy Maize Pudding — Makes 4 Portions
You’ll need:
Equipment
- A double boiler (Don’t worry! You can improvise one! see notes below) or a medium-sized sauce pan with a heavy bottom
- A wooden or nylon stirring spoon
Ingredients
- 1 cup (about .25 liter) cornmeal — yellow, white, red, blue — whatever color you have on hand)
- 2 cups (about .5 liter) milk (I used 2%; I’ll try this again with almond milk for vegan version)
- 2 tablespoons (30 ml) brown sugar (this is just for flavor, it’s okay to use less or even to substitute honey, molasses, white sugar, Splenda, or whatever you like)
- 1 teaspoon (10 ml) vanilla extract
- pinch of salt
…That’s it. That’s all you need. You could probably even use water instead of milk, though the end product might not be as creamy.
Instructions:
- Turn on your favorite streaming radio, a YouTube documentary, or whatever you like.
- The next step can be done two ways:
- If you have a double-boiler: fill the bottom part with water and the top part with the milk; heat over medium-high flame* until the milk steams.
- If you don’t have a double-boiler: pour the milk into a medium-sized sauce pan with a heavy bottom over medium-low flame* until the milk steams. It might take a while.
- Add the brown sugar and vanilla to the milk.
- Add the cornmeal, stirring while you pour it in. You don’t need a fancy whisk or anything; a plain old wooden or nylon spoon is fine.
- Stir until everything is well-blended, then cover the double-boiler or sauce pan, reduce the flame* to very low — like, as low as possible without actually turning off your burner — and set a timer for ten minutes.
- While the pudding heats, stir it once in a while to prevent sticking or scorching, but for the most part, leave it alone.
- After 10 minutes, remove from heat, uncover, and allow to cool for a bit so you don’t blister the roof of your mouth off like I did that one time.
- Serve hot with whatever suits your fancy.
If you’re using the heavy-bottomed sauce-pan method, you’ll have to pay closer attention than you will with a double boiler, since milk scorches pretty easily. You might also want to throw in a little butter or cooking oil to prevent sticking.
That’s it!
About Proportions
You’ll notice that the metric equivalents above aren’t exact. Don’t worry about it — in this recipe, all you need to know is that you want a ratio of 1 part cornmeal to 2 parts milk, and even there you’ve got some wiggle room. The rest you can fiddle with according to your personal taste. For example, I’d probably like less sugar, but 2 TBSP was a sound guess for dessert applications.
About That Double Boiler…
A lot of people don’t have double-boilers. They’re finicky specialized kitchen things that take up a bunch of space, and most of us don’t use them very often.
If you’re among the many, though, don’t worry!
You can improvise a double boiler from of a sauce pan (or even, in a pinch, a deep frying pan) and a metal bowl that’s just big enough to rest on top of it or inside of it without touching the bottom of the pan. I used to do it this way back before I had access to a double boiler.
Here’s a link to an article on improvised double boilers: http://bakingbites.com/2009/09/how-to-make-a-double-boiler/.
Improvised Lids
If you don’t have lids for your sauce pans or improvised double boiler, you can make do by resting a stoneware or Corelle plate, a cookie sheet, a metal mixing-bowl lid, the glass lid from a suitably-sized casserole dish, or any similar flattish, heat-resistant object atop the pan of pudding-in-progress.
Just make sure to balance it carefully if you’re using an improvised setup and to use potholders when you lift it off (seriously, I cannot tell you how many times I’ve gone, “Herp de derp, think I’ll just lift this metal bowl lid off with my bare fingEAAAGGHHHHEHEHEH!!!”).
In fact, even if you do have lids for your pant, you may find yourself doing this if, for example, they’re all in a disorganized overhead rack and you don’t feel like fighting with them.
Um, not that I would ever do that. Ahem. :::quietly tucks metal mixing-bowl lid back into the cupboard:::
Other Ways To Enjoy Maize Pudding or Cornmeal Mush
This dish makes a pretty decent breakfast on a cold morning. For that purpose, I’d recommend making it with less or even no sugar. I like it without any at all for breakfast (that said, I’m not into sweets for breakfast, so your mileage may vary).
You can also add things like raisins, dried cranberries, dried cherries, or chopped dates for a sweet, fruity kick (you might want to increase the liquid just a little bit; I’ll report back in my updated recipe post).
For a quick and easy savory side-dish, substitute a little garlic and/or onion powder for the sugar and adjust the salt to taste. You can also brown some chopped onions (you can even get them in the freezer section already chopped) in butter before you add the milk or water. For a one-bowl meal, add salty kalamata olives, feta cheese, some fresh baby spinach, and cooked chicken or lamb once the mush cools.
Like standard cornmeal mush or polenta, you can even chill this pudding in a loaf pan (or, if you’re me, a plastic container lined with plastic wrap), slice it, and pan-fry it. Pan-seared maize pudding topped with vanilla ice cream sounds pretty good to me.
It’s also really very good with real maple syrup.
Speaking of maple syrup, don’t be afraid to try the less expensive, darker grades. Darker maple syrup bears a stronger maple flavor, so a little can really go a long way. It’s absolutely delicious on mild-flavored desserts like vanilla or sweet-cream ice cream — or like maize pudding.
If I remember correctly, most systems for grading maple syrup in the maple-syrup producing regions of North America date back to a time when maple syrup was used as a substitute for regular cane sugar, which had to be imported at great expense from the tropics.
The paler syrups (which are not more processed, but rather are collected early in the “sugaring” season) earned monikers like “fancy” and “Grade A” and commanded higher prices because their subtler maple flavor made them better substitutes for cane sugar.
However, the darker grades are absolutely delicious and perfect for those of us who really like a lot of maple flavor but don’t want to have to swamp our food in liquid sugar to get it.
Though I grew up in easy reach of the famous Vermont sugaring grounds and their storied produce, I’ve become quite enamored of a local, very dark maple syrup that hails from a nearby part of Indiana. It’s perfect on maize pudding.
Road Trip: Day 10—Wethersfield and “The Witch of Blackbird Pond” (Part Two of Two)
Yay! My home town of Wethersfield, CT gets some love from Emily Jacobs in the post below the fold (which, admittedly, is now over 3 years old, but sometimes the wheels of the Blogosphere grind slowly, amirite?).
Ms. Jacobs has included some beautiful pictures from Old Wethersfield, most of which were taken 2 blocks from my Mom’s house.
Old Weth is its own little universe, and I still love and miss it.
Edit: PS, I wasn’t sure whether to mention this, because it might sound like a bit of a downer, but my father (who died when I was a senior in high school) is buried in the Village Cemetery. He loved Wethersfield, too, so even though I am sad that he is gone, it is nice to think that his resting place is in a place where he felt at home.
If you like old buildings, Wethersfield, Connecticut is pretty much house porn for you. The slideshow below is what I saw while walking to and from the Cove.
After I toured the Buttolph-Williams House, I walked over to the cemetery.
. . .
It was a very sunny day, and a hot early afternoon, but the cemetery still gave me the creeps. My guide was kind enough to let me know that the oldest stones were at the top of the hill, known as Hungry Hill because that is where the Indians would retreat during flooding times, often with little sustenance.
. . .
It’s just not a vacation if I don’t get to go to an old cemetery.
. . .
It took me a surprisingly short amount of time before I found Gershom Bulkeley’s gravestone. As I said, in the bright, hot sun, it was still an intensely creepy…
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Danseur Ignoble: Now That’s Showbiz
Did Brienne’s class today, and I made it All. The. Way. Through!
(Though I skipped a couple of reps of petit allegro.)
She has a really fun CD of class music called “West End to Broadway” (hence, in part, the title of this post), including some nice, slow pieces for torture fondu and barre adagio.
Barre is improving.
If you’re a horse person, you know that thing where if you don’t ride or school your horse for a while, sometimes the horse in question acts a bit silly when you put him back to work? That’s kind of where my body is.
I'm back! Mostly!
It does things I didn’t really ask for, then I correct it, and it’s all, “Oh, you mean those turnout muscles! Okay. No worries!”
However, it’s doing less of that now than it was last week. My successive approximations are closer to the goal state. So, Yay!
Speaking of successive approximations, at center and across the floor, we had nice combos today, and I did the traveling ones, if not worth prefect execution, at least with a lot of elan.
Now, if I could just stop putting in failles where there aren’t any and leaving them out where there are (and adding an extra saute arabesque here or pique turn there)…
But that’s more of my body being a silly horse. At least it’s a silly horse that’s got some style?
Which brings me to the other reason for this title: one of the things my classmates kept mentioning was the struggle to remember the combinations (some of which were fairly complex).
The cool part is that you wouldn’t have known it, for the most part: everyone focused on performing and enjoying themselves, and most of us looked pretty good. (I’ve determined that if you turn the wrong way on the rear point of a triangle, it actually looks pretty cool anyway, so I don’t even worry about that anymore ;)).
I’m back to a point at which I don’t freeze if I blank on the combo halfway through; instead, I improvise. It’s a skill I learned as a musician: nobody knows you screwed up if you don’t let them know.
Of course, in class (okay, and sometimes in big corps numbers), that’s not entirely true, but what you practice in class is ultimately what you will do on stage — and, of course, mistakes do happen during performances, even to professionals. Like we lowly danseurs and danseuses ignobles, they have to learn to make it look good.
And that, too, is showbiz.
(Come to think of it, looking like you meant to do that is an important life skill in general — ask any cat!)
So that’s it for today. The final combination in today’s class went so well (You guys, I threw in a cabriole just for kicks! I’m back!) that I finished up feeling jubilant, ebullient, even bubbly.
Now, home to do computery work.
A Little Lift
As you may have already determined* based on the sheer number of posts I’ve made in the past few days, my mood appears to be creeping up a bit at last. As usual, I’m trying to approach this uptick with caution, so as not to, like, scare it away (or burn out my synapses, or exhaust myself, or overcook my brain, or whichever analogy you like).
The timing is interesting. The whole intersex thing, in my case, means my hormones do interesting (and sometimes horrible) things on what has evolved into a fairly predictable cycle. I would, in fact, rather expect this to be the part of said cycle that makes me (and everyone in a 20-meter radius) miserable. That said, I am not complaining. Complaining about catching this lift is like complaining about catching a taxi in Times Square at 2 AM (I think? Oddly, though I have spent a fair bit of time in the Big Apple, I have never been to Times Square, let alone at 2 AM).
Of course, it’s possible (to belabor my metaphor) that this lift which appears to be driven by a sedate little old lady driver is in fact under the command of the Little Old Lady From Pasadena (Go, Granny; Go, Granny; Go, Granny; Go!). As those of us whose carpool parents were huge Beach Boys fans may recall, “…she drives real fast and she drives real hard.”
So while I am not complaining right now, I reserve the right to complain at a later date.
Speaking of dates!
I love dates. The fruit, I mean. A while ago I bought a 2-pound tub of deglet noor dates at ValuMarket (which, though it sounds like a Quick-E-Mart kind of operation, is in fact an awesome little local grocery chain; the one in my neighborhood is decidedly international in flavor).
At the time (this was several months ago; the dates in question suggest that I use them by 30 June, 2016, so we’re good), I was in the midst of an upswing and not shopping all that carefully and failed to notice that the dates in question are processed with glucose. So now I have all these sugar-coated dates lying around, waiting for a purpose in life … or, well, un-life, I suppose, since the purpose of the sugar is to preserve the dates, which are not living, and perhaps could be considered undead**?
Since I am not really into consuming oceans of refined sugar (regarding which: dates are pretty sugary to begin with, but you eat them whole, fiber and all; it’s the added sugar that’s kind of not my thing), I have been working my way through the dates a little at a time. Last week, I added some to my batch-o-muffins. This morning, I said “screw it” and ate four of them (a portion is about eight) with breakfast.
So, to make a short story unnecessarily long, I’m thinking that the next time I have people over, I am going to make an enormous, enormous date-oriented cake or something in an effort to reduce my household Zombie Date population. I am also thinking I could probably soften them in water (which might also coax some of the added sugar off the dates), chop them up, and make them into bike/ballet fuel of some kind (and then freeze the extras).
If any of you have any recipe suggestions, let me know.
In the future, of course, I shall purchase my dates more carefully.
I make no promises about the duration of this uptick, but I plan to relax and enjoy it while I can.
In other news, our finances are more or less sorted at this point, and I was able to purchase a RAM upgrade for my laptop. Said RAM arrived last night; I dropped it in (which was an incredibly frustrating process; getting the RAM seated correctly in this machine is a huge PITA) and my lappy, unsurprisingly, is like a whole new machine.
I really should’ve done this ages ago.
Danseur Ignoble (Again!): A Teaching Tip I’m Totally Going To Steal
Tonight, I went and rocked out Ballet Essentials (even though The Divine Ms. M playfully scolded me: “What are you doing in this class? You should be in the other class!” I explained I was saving my toe against Wednesday’s Intermediate class).
We had a raft of new dancers and a lovely, simple barre. At center, we worked the basic port-de-bras and positions of the feet, then did chassees (a droit, a gauche, et avant), then did a little combination in two versions: a simple “chassee avant right, chassee avant left” for the really new folks or a swift-traveling polka for those who had been dancing for a while.
You guys, I love polka (if you’re wondering, here’s a basic example: chassee avant right, hop [kind of a saute passe, really], chassee avant left).
Here’s the thing, though, that I’m going to steal: after everyone had traveled across the floor, Ms. M asked even the newest students to try the polka step — and then she said, “Imagine that you’re Clara in the party scene of the Nutcracker — or, for the gentlemen, that you’re Fritz. Get into character!”
At the same time, she demonstrated the characteristic steps for each part.
Suddenly, everyone had permission to play, to perform — and we did.
When you’re teaching adult beginners, especially, there’s a kind of play barrier that you have to knock down. Adults feel as if they must master technique, and they focus on it so hard that they forget to play and have fun and pretend to be Clara or Fritz.
You guys, I have to tell you — everyone in that room looked a hundred times better immediately once they jumped on that bandwagon. Even me.
I got my Fritz on. I thought about the character, about embodying that spirit of Sassy, Irritating Little Brother-ness (because, frankly, that’s a role I know pretty well; I’ve only been working on it all my life) and about how sometimes when you’re a little sibling, you do this thing where you both mock your big sib and show off at the same time. And then I danced that, and it looked cool.
You guys, it was fun, and I think we all enjoyed it.
So I’m going to remember that, and I am going to steal the heck out of it. Talk about “one easy trick!” It’s a nifty workaround to get adults to lighten up and enjoy themselves.
Which, of course, leads to better-looking ballet, for all the reasons I mentioned earlier today.
danseur ignoble 