Category Archives: class notes
Improve Your Ballet: Take Modern
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.
Turn, Turn … Er, Ah, Oh Yes, Turn
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 😉
Friday Class: Moar Bolshoi; Less Balanchine
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:
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:
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.
Time to Split!
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:
This month is Splits Challenge at Suspend. I’ve signed up in hopes of regaining hypersplits, heh.
Here’s my opening salvo:
Because Two Posts In One Day Aren’t Enough
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.
Saturday Class: Not Half Bad…
…Just half mediocre?
The were good moments today, but it wasn’t a shining example of my best work.
It was, however, an opportunity for comparison.
A year ago, I think, things that seem mediocre now would’ve seemed pretty excellent. I realized this whilst kvetching about the fact that I kept switching the entrechat trois with the entrechat cinque in a combination; whilst internally taking myself to task about some turns that were decent, but not great*; whilst being irritated about my tour lent being a touch wobbly on the first run through the adage.
I was a wreck at grand allegro, though. For some reason, my brain didn’t bother to video most of the combination; it recorded the audio instructions instead.
The instructions were:
Préparé
Glissade
Grand jeté
Glissade
Grand jeté
Glissade
Grand jeté
Failli
Piqué arabesque**
Chassé
Tour jeté
Chasse
Tour jeté LAND IN A BALANCE!!!
Tombe
Pas de Bourré
Glissade
Saut de Chat
Buuuuuuut! The initial glissades traveled, erm, kinda diagonally. Otherwise the whole thing turned into a disastrous zig-zag, like a Mini-Demolition Derby Bumper Ballet ride (which they totally DO NOT have at Grandma’s Nap Land; Grandma says that is WAY too dangerous).
Which I somehow failed to grasp.
Fortunately, we are having air traffic control issues (how often does one get to say that’s a good thing?), and I wound up in the second group, so at least I didn’t collide with anyone while angrily yelling at my body about still trying to launch its glissades to the side. I just looked like an idiot, so, you know. Par for the course, eh?
I also kept wanting there to be more tour jetés, but I always want more of those, soooooooo…
We all also got a general correction on our arms with regard to tour jeté: apparently, our legs were all, AGRIPPINA VAGANOVA! while our arms were like OMG WE ARE FIREWORKS!
This correction included the memorable phrase, “You can do fifth opening to second or you can do this: *demonstrates the arms everyone likes to do with grand jeté* but make sure I can tell which one you’re going for.*
So I then proceeded to think about my arms. I’m not entirely sure that helped, but we all know the rule about thinking in ballet, anyway.
Except, like, sub in "thinking" and "ballet."
(Okay, so that rule isn’t 100% literally literal, obvs. It’s more like, Think with your body, not with your brain.)
So that was my day. That, a bike ride, and open fly. Which isn’t where you inadvertently expose yourself, but where you get to play around in aerial apparati until your arms won’t go anymore.
Oh, and I was totally that guy today: I demonstrated to Denis how I could do awesome pull-ups on the lyra while complaining that about how I was still convinced that I couldn’t do regular pull-ups.
Then he sent me over to the pull-up bar, where I totally did a freaking pull-up.
So that happened, too, I guess. No humble-bragging intended; I just kind of felt like an idiot (which goes with looking like one in ballet class, so…).
Modern (Intensive) Monday
In Brief
Busses Ridden: 1
Classes Attended: 5
Ratio of Girls to Boys: Something like 29/me*
—*Apparently, yes, there is a point at which being Only Guy feels kinda weird
Favorite Class: Partnering & Weight Share
—Girls Dropped: 0 (Yay!)
—Girls Stepped On: 1 (Sorry about that!)
Most Awkward Moment:
That time in Rep when I basically had no freaking idea what the middle of the dance was. Herp de derp.
Second Most Awkward Moment:
That time in ballet when the lining of my left shoe was like, “Screw you, I’m done,” and I finally just peeled it out and chucked it between barre exercises.
—Two unexpectedly-long balances kinda made up for it, though.
Friction Burns Acquired: 2
Muscles Used: So, so many. Basically all of them.
Giant sandwiches consumed: 2
Tireds Acquired: All The Tireds
So far, I’m really enjoying this. Can’t wait to go back and suck less at rep tomorrow.
G’night, errbody.
PS: We did barrel turns. Huzzah!
Wednesday Class: In Which Dancers Are Hot
…Literally.
This afternoon, we all walked out of class looking like we’d showered in our dance kit.
It was completely worth it, of course — especially the delightful little grand allegro at the end.
It was another simple combination (the petit allegri were hard today; crazy fast and full of beats) — just:
Small Temps levée à droit
Chassé
Small Temps levée à gauche
Chassé
Temps levée arabesque
Failli
Glissade
Grand assemblé battu or Pas de chat or Saut de chat (“Choose Your Own Adventure”)
Reverse R/L on the opposite side, of course.
… But the focus was on the performance elements — especially arms and épaulement. The idea was for the legs to stay razor-sharp and fast while the arms were light and smooth and graceful, using a variant of Ceccheti/RAD third through first on the first four steps.
Oh, and we were to do all this whilst eating up the entire floor in one pass (not hard to do in this case; I really like to travel).
The music was also quite fast, which made for a really nice contrast between the quick legwork throughout most of the combination and the flying leap at the end.
We went in pairs, and on every run my partner did saut de chat while I did pas de chat which, as it turned out, looked quite cool. Pas de chat is one of the steps that I’m willing to say that I really do very well, and my partner’s high, fleet, linear saut de chat contrasted beautifully with my high, light, bouyant pas de chat.
It probably helped that we were similar in height and proportions.
I experimented with different arms on the pas de chat. I think for this combination, taking the arms to fifth and opening back to second through the latter part of the arc worked really nicely.
Anyway, by the time we were done, I think we were all well and fully cooked and ready for a break.
For what it’s worth, my turns were better, but my adagio was terrible today. This was definitely a class in which I felt the lingering effects of my sleeping pill. I got progressively better as the hangover effect faded — I am definitely far less coordinated on mornings like this one.
In other news, I switched to the day track for the Cinci workshop — it turns out that they were probably going to wind up canceling the evening track anyway. I’ve been very impressed with how well Mam Luft & Co have organized this thing and how promptly and smoothly they handled my request.
In trapeze class, meanwhile, I nailed down Montréal and learned a new sequence that starts with Montréal, then passes into Surfer, then into a balance whose name I can’t recall (looks much like the stag pose, only your feet are on the bar, which cants up towards the front foot), then into a hands-only spin around the leading rope to horse.
I also learned that if, as you’re spinning, your hands start to burn, you should definitely not relax your grip, no matter what your brain says, unless you’re keen on — shall we say — trying a higher voice part in choir (ahem).
Apparently, the moment that the bar connects with your “no fly zone” is also clearly visible to everyone in a the immediate vicinity. I feel heartened by the fact that everyone winced right along with me, though — and that, apparently, everything looked really good up to that point.
Also, it is totally possible to semi-gracefully dismount the trapeze before staggering over to the nearest available spot suitable for collapsing. In case you were wondering.
Fortunately, no permanent harm was done. Add to with “Bodies are weird” and “Bodies are different” the aphorism, “Sooner or later, we all walk the walk of shame.”
Which is, in case you’re wondering, more like a pinched shuffle, really.
Advanced Class: Temps Lie, Turns, and Transitional Steps
None of the above-mentioned things, of course, are specific to advanced ballet studies. Dancers begin to learn all three almost from the beginning.
However, they’re all examples of skills that, as a dancer, you never stop honing.
Today, we touched on all three.
At barre, we used temps lié in several combinations; we came back to it in our adagio at center, then again in our pirouette combination. At barre, we were reminded to really work through the whole of each foot in order to keep our turnout; at center, we were encouraged to make our temps lié bigger (without losing our turnout or letting our cores fall apart).
Curiously, our turns themselves garnered little correction today — really, we just got a note about using a better coupe-piqué into our sus-sous turns. The idea was to make it sharper and cleaner; a clear, unambiguous step rather than a sort of blurry pivot.
We repeated everything up to the pirouette combination, making subtle but transformative changes. My favorite involved one of the really common transitional steps, faillé — Ms. T asked us to really make something of it; to carry our arms and shoulders through along the diagonal and make it beautiful. This is something I’ve been working on, and I feel like I really nailed it down pretty well today.
Not perfectly, but pretty well. Better than it has been so far.
On Wednesday, Mme B noted that I was doing a weird thing with my arms in turns from fourth and sorted them for me — so turns today were also much better than they’ve been for a while.
During petit allegro, I finally got my temps de cuisse sorted again, which is comforting. For a while, I kept stepping on my own foot during the shift between the posé phase and the sisson fermé phase. I suspect that may have been a function of not engaging my lower core, and thus losing my turnout on the back leg.
In case you’re unfamiliar with temps de cuisse, it’s a handy little jump that combines a coupé with a sisson fermé.
I still screwed up the combination a bit, though — I kept forgetting that there was a pas de bourree in there and also a second set of entrechats, so I kept going, “Oh!” and winding up a quarter-beat or so behind. Not the end of the world, but not ideal.
We ended with a simple zig-zag grand allegro, one at a time (with the next dancer starting as the previous one zigged for the first time, since there were a million of us in class today).
It went, simply:
tombé à droit
pas de bourrée
glissade
saut de chat
tombé à gauche
pas de bourrée
glissade
saut de chat
…twice, for a total for four diagonal passes.
Not difficult in terms of steps, but very exposed and timing-critical.
I think my tombés were probably terrible, but it’s also the first time since I received clearance to dance that I’ve done grand allegro (okay, except in Essentials, which almost doesn’t count).
On the other hand, my sautes de chat were pretty decent.
Anyway, I must go do a bunch of cleaning and make a portable dinner for tonight. We’re going to have a picnic with B and N and then go watch U of L’s spring dance gala.
That’s it for now.
À bientôt, mes amis!
Modern Monday, T… I Got Nothin’ For Tuesday
Yesterday (Monday) began not-so-well and ended brilliantly.
Modern class was, on average, more or less a wash. I had trouble waking up, and while my floorwork was good, I simply couldn’t remember much of the across-the-floor sequence.
I suspect some of that was sleep- and medication-related. I have been having trouble sleeping for … well, for reasons that I hope are sorted now via some very blunt communication with our housemate (in summary, “Yes, I sleep that lightly; no, I cannot afford to stay up later at weekends, so Quiet Hours After 10 PM really, really means just that, or I will eat your face, kthxbai). My circadian rhythm had crept back to its natural 2-or-3-AM-is-bedtime pattern, so I finally just knocked back an Ambient on Sunday night.
I got some much-needed sleep, but I don’t think my brain was 100% online until after lunch.
That said, a post-lunch choreography session went really well (once I wrestled technology to the ground, anyway) and produced some useful material — and the extra edition of Killer Class (Mme B subbed for M BeastMode) went brilliantly.
First of all, I did all the freaking turns the right freaking way. There were no backwards turns. There were no just l-plain-failed-to-turns.
I was not channeling Derek. Zoolander.
Don't be this guy. (Shamelessly stolen via teh Googs.)
Second, I adaged like a boss.
I was pleased with that, because the strength of my legs is uneven at the moment (though improving every day), which mostly translates to left-supporting-leg balances being wobbly. (Y’all, it is so frustrating to pull off a really long attitude balance on the right, then barely manage one at all on the left because your hip is all loosy-goosy).
Third, I did do part of the petit allegro incorrectly on the last repeat, but only because my brain skipped over the easy part in order to get to the less-easy part.
Also, my left split is back, now that my sacrum is no longer jammed on the opposite side.
Even better, after nearly four hours of dancing, I felt sufficiently tired to sleep without pharmaceutical guidance.
Today, I played on the lyra and got stuck in the silks in Mixed Apparatus Lunch Meeting Class. The silks thing was kind of hilarious. We were practicing figure-8 foot locks one at a time up the fabrics, and (because my legs are super-strong and flexible because ballet) I climbed right up to the ceiling … Where I proceeded, somehow to get my left foot tangled while stepping out of a foot-lock.
At ground level, this is merely embarrassing. You hop around on the free foot as you extract yourself.
Fifteen feet in the air, it’s a little more complicated.
I should simply have put my right for into a foot-lock, but by the time I realized that, I’d been desperately hanging there, alternating between single short-arm hangs, until I’d already exhausted my arms. I was, at that point, freaking out not about the prospect of falling, but about the prospect of being caught by that one tangled foot and breaking or straining something.
My brain was like, “NONONO, WE NEED ALL OUR FEET FOR DANCING.”
So instead I called to Denis for help, and he reached way up and flapped the tail of the silk around until we managed to free my foot.
Silks, you guys. Sometimes, the struggle is really real.
Incidentally, I now enjoy a much healthier sense of empathy towards fishing-industry by-catch.
This miniature disaster was mitigated by a very enjoyable Flexibility & Mobility class tonight — it turned into the equivalent of a knitters’ Stitch-n-Bitch (complete with off-color jokes) as we foam-rolled ourselves into oblivion.
After, in open fly, Denis & I worked on the timings for our performance and ran through the piece several times. I ran mine on both sides, just because — it works well either way, so I can adjust as needed according to how the apparati are set up.
I’m still just really excited about the fact that I can make it through several successive runs of my trapeze routine in a row, even with the timing changes that force me to hold gravity-defying positions for ages.
I’m also happy that I feel confident running my routine on the second-highest of our traps (the ropes on the highest one are too short for the iron cross segment).
FWIW, I’ve now practiced this piece, or sequences from this piece, on four of the five trapezes that are most often rigged in our studio. Woot.
Tomorrow, it’s my usual Killer Class, so I hope the fact that I took my Ambien early will help reduce the duration of the “hangover” effect. Then I’ll be working around the house until it’s time to go to Trapeze class.
Speaking of Ambien, mine has decided that I will sleep now — so I’ll close this here.
danseur ignoble 
