So the audition was a bit mixed (kept reminding myself that almost nobody else had 100% of any individual phrase, either), but overall a complete blast — especially loved the partnering improv.
Also, I think my legs are going to fall off.
Category Archives: adventures
Playa Time
We’re out in the dust, doing all that setup jazz.
For me, right now, this mostly translates to taking care of the domestic end of things: setting up our home for the next two weeks, making sure people get fed, and so forth. This also leaves some time for reading and writing, both of which are happening.
Once our other two camp leads are settled in, of course, the real push to build a village in a couple of days will take off.
Right now, we’re just an assorted grouping of campers, vans, and storage trailers (we bought two this year); by Monday, we’ll be a cohesive mini-community of 35, home to a dance space with barre, a bar with dance space, a public lounge, a camp kitchen and lounge, and (assuming all goes well) our own aerial observation deck.
For the moment, though, I’m enjoying the time to myself, in a space that I’ve (mostly) organized according to the way I work, which occasional forays to dance in the dust.
I miss the structure of class and the rhythm of my normal week (though perhaps not the breakneck intensity to which I’ve consigned myself by tackling both aerials and dance at the same time), but I can make my own structure until the Burn officially begins, at which point there will be enough scheduled technical dance classes to comprise another one-week dance intensive.
I’ll be mostly offline for the next two weeks — after the gates open, in fact, getting online will quickly become impossible.
As such, here are a couple of pictures is one picture because WP’s Android app is being dumb. Inevitably, during the actual Burn week, I’ll mostly fail to take pictures. I’m fine with that. Build week is actually my favorite part, and I’m okay with the momentary and serendipitous things that happen during Burn week being just that — momentary.
I've been decorating (hooray for liquid chalk).
So I’m off for now. I might get around to posting again before I return to the Default World, but I might not.
So, until then, à bientôt, mes amis.
True Story
In fact, I was exactly as tired as I look, here.
This picture happened because none of us thought to bring a single hand mirror to our Road Show performance on Tuesday.
Pros (or kinda-sorta-quasi pros) we may be. Organized? Um. Wellllllll….
I thought my eye makeup was uneven (it was); wound up with a highly consternated selfie by accident. Ultimately decided to keep it because I enjoy the look of blank desperation on my face (Is it uneven? I think it is. I’m not sure. I can’t go on like this! My kingdom for a mirror…)
Also, I forgot to take the sunglasses off my head — but don’t worry, the first inversion on the trapeze got that job done!
You Might Be A Dancer #002
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:
- You go to a gathering where lots of people are barefoot and you think, “Wow, all these people have really flat feet.”
- You can’t stop your hands from twitching when you’re watching a ballet.
- You manage to count every piece of music into phrases of 8.
- When someone says, “Count me in!” you automatically shout, “…Five, six, seven, eight!”
- You find yourself choreographing short modern dance pieces … to the jingles from YouTube ads.
- Ditto TV and radio jingles.
- Let’s not even talk about movie soundtracks.
- You have officially spent so much of your life wearing leotards that normal clothes feel weird.
- You own six pairs of technique shoes, each with different characteristics and applications, that are essentially indistinguishable to normal people.
- And pointe shoes. Let’s not talk about those, either.
- You do rond de jambes. In line. At the supermarket.
- You can intelligently discuss intra-company politics at a ballet company halfway around the world — but you honestly have no idea who your local representative is.
- Your friends arrive at your home for a party only to stand around looking awkward as you hastily stash all the dance belts that were drying in front of the air conditioner vent.
- Your friends don’t even bother to look awkward because you know them all from class.
- But sometimes you don’t recognize them with their clothes on, which *is* totally awkward.
“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.)
You Might Be A Dancer If… #001
You might be a dancer if you go to look for a picture of yourself in “professional attire,” and realize that essentialy every picture taken of you in the past year is more or less you in elaborate underwear.
Edit: PS – I’m #NotDeadYet but I’m completely swamped right now. Bleh.
So festivities. Much schedule. Wow.
I Survived Mam-Luft & Co’s Summer Intensive…
…And it was basically one of the best weeks of my life, even though I felt all shy and weird and awkward at first.
I even took notes (and occasionally remembered to apply them in class) … though they’re still in the car right now, because yesterday I had an epic (and completely unnecessary) meltdown on the way home from Cinci and then did a cube workshop (pictures to follow). Needless to say, I was kind of tired when I got home.
Some quick highlights:
The masterclass series. I keep finding myself being like, “Jeanne’s masterclass was THE BEST!” or “Demetrius Tabron’s masterclass was THE BEST!” or “Gina Walther’s masterclass was THE BEST!”
In fact they were all THE BEST! for entirely different reasons — and that, my friends, is how a masterclass series should work.
Every master teacher reinforced concepts we worked on with the others, but every one also brought unique insights. In short, Mam-Luft & Co knows how to assemble a masterclass series.
Remembering the choreography (or not). For basically the whole week, I thought I was the only person in the entire class who didn’t have the choreography 100% down in rep. I was wrong. Almost everybody was missing bits here and there, it just took me ’til Friday, right before the final showing, to figure that out because I was too busy being anxious about not having it down (and about that whole eldritch god thing; see below).
Partnering. I freaking love partnering, y’all. I think I already said that, though. Partnering class was the first one in which I felt really confident; that transferred to the parts of rep where we lifted people.
There was one part of the choreography in which we collectively lifted G into a high side-plank lift, and then, as everyone else stepped away, I wrapped my arms around her and lowered her slowly to the floor. The moment when our instructor Susan said, “It’s okay, guys, he’s got this,” was literally one of the best moments of my life.
You guys, there was a time not all that long ago when I figured I would always kind of suck at partnering because, frankly, upper-body strength has never been my strong suit. Turns out that has changed considerably. It is good to feel capable, and it is amazingly good to feel capable of adapting myself to meet a goal.
Wednesday. Basically, all of Wednesday was pretty awesome for me. That was the day when I started being less terrified that my fellow students were, like, going to sacrifice me to an eldritch god or something. (Seriously, WTF is wrong with me?) Perhaps unsurprisingly, it was also the day that my brain went, “Oh, wait, this is dance, we can do this.”
Ir probably helped that ballet went well (Triple turns on demand! Like it was no big deal! …Which was totally not the case on Friday, btw, but that basically owes to a nasty blister* in a horrible spot which consequently made me super-stiff — I was constantly afraid I’d rip my foot open and render myself unable to dance).
“Cheetah eyes.” At lunch on Thursday, one of the other students mentioned that one of her teachers once said something like, “If you were a cheetah, your spine would enter your skull in a different place, and your eyes would be in a different spot in your skull. Imagine you’re a cheetah, and imagine where your eyes would be. Now go back to being a human and use your cheetah eyes (as well as your human eyes, obvs).” No an exact quote, but I hope you get the gist. Holy crap, did this ever fix the frack out of my alignment.
Release technique stuff. We do a lot of this in Modern T’s class, and bits of it had clicked here and there — but I discovered in Cinci that I actually really love it when I get out of my own way. In Leslie Dworkin’s masterclass, especially, I was able to briefly stop being an incredibly shy, uptight ballet nerd and just really use my whole body.
Repertory class. I started out feeling downright timid about this class, and it ended up being a highlight (and a bit of a crucible, I think).
I walked in afraid that I would literally never nail down the choreography; that I’d be so freaking bad at it that they’d ask me not to dance in the showing.
By the end, I felt like I knew enough to try to start making something out of some of it (though I still forgot to add the whole performative element to one of my parts, feh). Not that I didn’t make some mistakes during the showing (the most glaring one being the part where I wound up on the wrong leg in a static pose).
Also, we all kind of bonded over the lift-y parts and turned into a cohesive group. That was just plain cool.
Perhaps the most important thing I learned is that I automatically adjust my game to the level of expectation — when, for example, our ballet instructor called for triple turns in a combination on Wednesday, a small part of me went, “I don’t know if I can do that,” but a bigger part went, “Welp, better crank out some triples.” So I did.
This didn’t happen every time, but on average, when I got the hell out of my own way, things went better than I expected them to. When I got all tense and weird, things did not go so well.
I need to learn to hang onto my confidence in the things I do well and not freak out about other stuff.
I’ll try to post my more detailed notes later. Suffice it to say that I had a blast, learned a great deal, and will definitely be going back next year.
*nasty blister picture below the cut, because seriously, if you want to know what happens when you start to get a tiny blister right on the ball of your foot and then don’t think to tape it, this is what happens
Monday Madness
I didn’t do Modern T’s class this morning because I had a scheduling conflict, so I went to M. BeastMode’s evening class today.
We were all just coming back from Spring Break, so M. BeastMode went easy-ish on us (which meant class was pretty relaxed, for me; M. BeastMode’s class at its hardest is still only about half as physically grueling as Ms. B’s Killer Class).
Barre was great. Everything went beautifully at barre. I worked on the let it happen principle, and suddenly my fondues, developpés, and grand battements were beautiful, high (or, as required, low and elastic), and really effortless.
Ditto turns, as a general rule. Fine and effortless, mostly. Turns from fifth are back; turns from fourth are trending towards reliable doubles again.
We did a quarter turn-half turn-full turn combo that was perfectly intuitive as long as you didn’t think, but went straight to Helena Handbasket (good ol’ Ms. Handbasket, heh) if you second-guessed yourself or started thinking. Mostly, though, I acquitted myself beautifully doing turns.
Ditto across the floor, at first. We did a cool combination that I am now nearly unable to remember, but it was set to a tango, and the goal was to focus on economy of movement. Since this is a thing I’m working on anyway, that was great.
Then we did another thing across-the-floor, and it just … I don’t know. There was a renversé. I love renversé, and I can do it quite well, and did beautiful renversés while marking the combination … and then, for some reason, when actually dancing it, my body kept insisting that the step in question should be fouetté, even though there was no fouetté in the combination.
Bleh.
I didn’t work that part out until after class, though. I just knew that something cray kept happening to my beautiful renversé moment.
This is what happens when I don’t go first and don’t mark all the way through the combo while the first group (or, in this case, groups) are going because I’m afraid of kicking somebody or getting in the way.
So, um, yeah. I shall work on that. It is getting a heck of a lot easier to pick up combinations, though (honestly, picking up almost any ballet combo seems like a breeze after a complex modern combo — not because modern is harder, but because ballet is my “first language”).
After, I ordered most of the remaining parts for our trapeze costumes (which should double for ballet stuff, later; it looks like things might be shaping up in terms of getting an adult students’ performing group together, but more on that later, as I don’t want to screw it up by speaking too soon).
Likewise, it would seem that I now have a choral performance iron in the fire for next year, which is great — not something that will require a year-long commitment, but something I’ll enjoy immensely.
So that was Monday. I’m super tired, so I’m off to bed.
G’night, everybody.
Learning to Fly: Weak (But Not Too Weak)
Today, we took our first class at Suspend — their “Cirque Sampler” offering, which lets you try things out (we focused on silks and trapeze).
We had a blast. It turns out that being a dancer makes silks feel pretty
Yeah, I sort of don’t have any new pictures of aerial stuff, so please enjoy this blast from the past.
intuitive — but not so much that it makes you entirely equipped to pwn the silks right out of the gate. Works out about the same on trapeze.
In short, today’s lesson essentially confirmed my worst fears about my core- and upper-body strength (or lack thereof): or, well, maybe not confirmed them, but indicated that they weren’t entirely out of line with reality.
So, while I was intuitively able to do graceful things on the silks and the trap, I was not able to climb the silks (or, well, I could climb onto the silks, and that was it) or to hold the extended chair position for any length of time, and my straddle dismount on both silks and trap was somewhat uncontrolled, though not as bad as it might have been.
Yeah, this one’s not just recycled, it’s re-recycled. You’re welcome, Planet Earth.
Denis, meanwhile, has the core strength of a hundred men and climbs like a natural-born monkey. Seriously. He’s just like, “Climb a thing? Sure, I can do that. Extended chair pose for four hours? No problem. Do you need me to work out the Grand Uniform Theorem while I’m at it?”
Basically, in terms of climbing and core strength, I got schooled by the hubster.
Conveniently, however, the muscles that need to get stronger for aerials are the same ones that need to get stronger for ballet, particularly if I want to venture into partnering someday (which I very much do).
Also conveniently, we were able to convert our 10-class card (and $25) into two intro-unlimited-classes-per-month plans — one for each of us for the next month, starting Tuesday, and our instructor today said we’re good to go ahead and step into the second class of Intro to Aerials. w00t!
So, naturally, Denis has now signed us up for All The Classes, and I will finish the month of January significantly more fit and, I suspect, significantly more tired 😉
It looks like we’ll be doing aerials and circus arts on a Tuesday-Thursday-Saturday schedule for now, which should nicely complement my Monday-Wednesday-Saturday ballet schedule. I’ll still have two scheduled rest days, unless I pick up a Friday class somewhere, which depends on a number of factors. I do not want to overdo it.
Tuesday we’re doing Intro Aerials and Thursay we’ll try Acro Balancing, which looks fun. I’ve done a bit of that as a function of gymnastics training when I was younger.
Next Saturday, we’ll be trying juggling after Advanced class, so that should be interesting. I have never actually really juggled, so my day will encompass both something I do well enough to more or less legitimately take an advanced class and something in which I am a complete and unregenerate novice*.
*I realize that “unregenerate novice” doesn’t actually make a whole lot of sense, but gosh darnit, it sounds good, and because I also write poetry, I am just going to claim poetic license here and go with it.
So that’s our first day of life as Official Cirque N00bs.
In other news, I just realized that the grad school application I need to knock out this month needs a 7 – 10 minute audition video, so if I disappear off the etherwaves for a bit, my apologies. Between that, ballet, aerials, and a job I’m in the middle of applying for (for which I’m now in “doing evaluations and preparing for 2nd interview” phase), I don’t expect to come up for air again until the 16th.
Ballet class notes, however, might continue apace, primarily because I ride the bus back from ballet class, which gives me time to do that.
À bientôt, mes amis!
danseur ignoble 