Today my ear was screwy and my brain didn’t want to work — so of course today our AD dropped by to watch my class while I was screwing up the most basic combination ever. #FML
Category Archives: class notes
Good Days, Bad Days
Today, we rang bells for the last time this year. For me, it might be the last time for a while, since next year I will be really drilling down on dance stuff.
We played three pieces, all of which were pretty easy for me with the exception of a small bit of very quicbell-juggling — and even that wasn’t difficult, just less easy.
So we rocked right through the prelude piece (one which, I’ll admit, I could ring in my sleep) without a hitch and came off feeling quite good about ourselves, and I expected the same from the communion piece.
And then we began to ring, and I was startled by a wrong note.
…And then I realized that I was the one playing the wrong note (egads!).
…And then I figured, “Oh, hmm, must’ve swung the wrong hand.”
But when next I rang that note — a G — I swung the correct hand (which was, incidentally, also the right hand).
And then a kind of horror broke through me.
I shifted my bells. Rang again.
Still wrong.
Grabbed the bell that was still on the table. Rang that.
Still wrong.
…And, finally, I just put them all on the table, looked down, and picked them up all over again, in the correct hands.
Needless to say, although my wrong notes somehow managed not to sound too off (my part, in that section, was practically a bagpipe drone), I was flustered. Mortified. Frustrated.
Much the way I felt in class on Saturday, when I dropped in on Essentials because Ms J was teaching and proceeded to dance well enough that my fellow students concluded that I knew what I was doing and that they should just follow me … At which time my brain decided it would be a good plan to start doing the turns on the left side of a very simple combination backwards.
…Thus leading these tender, innocent new dancers into error (seriously, Ms J remarked on that when my group finished).
I knew what was supposed to happen. I even knew how to do the thing that was supposed to happen. I saw the wrong thing happening: and yet, once again, I was forced to watch in horror as my Ballautopilot hosed things up — only, this time, said Ballautopilot generously hosed things up for everyone. (Father forgive me, for I know just what I do, but not how to stop myself doing the wrong thing anyway?)
As such, the lesson of the day for the Essentials class was, “Know the choreography, and the choreography shall set you free. Also, don’t follow that one guy just because he looks like he knows what he’s doing.”
The lesson for me, on the other hand … Eh. I guess, “Sometimes the power steering breaks at the worst time,” or something like that. At least I remained physically committed to my own special variation and made it look good.
My ego is salved (at least where ballet is concerned) by the knowledge that I, too, have in my time been led astray, sometimes by company members who presumably are much better at this stuff than I am :}
But, yeah. Ballautopilot: the struggle is real?
At any rate, it’s good to be dancing again. I shall be doing a great deal of it over the next few weeks in preparation for the Cinci workshop.
So, there you have it. Good and bad days at the same time, sometimes in the very same combination.
~
PS: After my ignominious defeat by the communion piece, we rang the postlude piece like professionals.
Herp de Derp
I tried to post a video of my trapeze choreography (which is now memorized, so I’m on to working timings and applying polish!), but it failed for some reason, and then I derped out on posting class notes yesterday.
I’ll get the video up ASAP, though I think I might have to go the “Upload to YouTube > Embed to Blorg” route.
Yesterday’s Killer Class was pretty excellent, albeit hampered by the Groin Pull That Will Not Die (Why can’t I wait until the day before a week-long vacation to injure myself?! Seriously, you guys, I have a whole week in October scheduled for that kind of thing.).
The Pull didn’t like turns, so I did very few of them on the left supporting leg. I had doubles on the right (technically the left), though, so go me? Still not as good by any means as Company B’s.
Company B is a beautiful dancer, and I watch the crap out of him every time he’s in class, because I find it educational (okay, and also because OMG he’s just freaking “fearfully and wonderfully made”). Watching him yesterday, I had a huge light bulb moment that made a drastic improvement to my ballotté. I did one run-through of the final petite allegro to get that update installed, so to speak, even though I’d ducked out after the warm-up jumps.
Trapeze class was pretty good; still can’t get smoothly from half-mill to half-Russian (T-rex arms: the struggle is real!). I’m now forbidden to work on them for at least a week, anyhow, while this groin injury heals. Life is hard when you sleep with your physiotherapist.
I’m on full-time rest for the next couple of days, which is less annoying than it would be if this wasn’t Derby Weekend, which makes getting into or out of my neighborhood a nightmare and this reduces the angst factor. I definitely exacerbated the existing injury yesterday.
Best to take the rest now and heal so I will be in shape for our show and for the Cinci intensive.
And then ,no more injuries until October!
(Not So) Thoroughly Modern Monday
Modern class this morning was interesting.
I was a complete space cadet, having failed to take both allergy meds and Adderall, and having also slept for a loooong time.
Nonetheless, I did a reasonable job getting combinations into my body and responding to corrections.
At least, I did up until Part B of the left side of the final combination when somehow, inexplicably, it dawned on me that I was on the wrong leg. I felt a little exclamation point appear above my head, then threw in a little changement to switch legs, and just went on. After, Modern T was like: “Asher! On the left side, use the left leg!”
We all got a laugh out of that. I sorted out on the repeat.
I missed my choreography session with B because Denis needed to go to the doctor, so I did M. BeastMode’s Monday night class.
I should seriously do this class more often. It was really good — especially the big dance-y parts at the end.
Having begun my journey back into dance as a Ballet Squid, I now find that my arms generally know what to do with themselves. This is a fine thing. It allows me to think about other details, like rocking the épaulement.
I generally bag no trouble remembering combinations tonight, though I didn’t nail the final one 100% on the left (for one, though, it was because I added something that wasn’t really there).
There was also one enormous and effortless saut-de-chat, which was awesome. SdC and grand jeté have been my nemeses this year: I’ve been working through that gap between how high they were and how high they could be and trying to get out of my own way, but it hasn’t really come together until tonight.
Anyway, it was a good class and a good night and I’m glad that I went.
Tomorrow will be cleaning and mixed apparatus day.
If things keep going this will, l’m going to write a letter requesting that we change the name of this month from “May” to “Can.”
Like Wednesday Class, Only Bigger
Posted a day late, again. Posted two days late, because apparently I am increasingly able to remember complex modern dance combinations involving crazy nameless movements, but I can’t remember to change the status of a single post from “Draft” to “Publish.”
Oy to the gevalt.
ANYWAY. Here you go:
It seems as if, every week, Wednesday Class gets bigger.
As far as I’m concerned, that’s excellent. I really think it makes us focus down and work. Likewise, it tends to bring out a really good collective vibe.
That last bit sounds a tad hippy-dippy, but if you’ve participated in group-based physical activities, you’ll know what I mean. Dance classes, aerials classes, group rides, runs, group horseback riding excursions (and quadrilles) — I’ve experienced this sensation in all these settings. I chalk it up to the fact that humans are social animals and subject to a kind of social synergy.
Today, though I was working with a pulled groin and the iliosacral joint weirdness that has happened as a follow-on, class just felt good.
Barre was reasonable (mediocre extensions notwithstanding), and everything went fairly well at centre and beyond, basically.
The only bizarre thing was that, for some reason, I kept forgetting about chaînes whilst going across the floor. Like, no matter where they were in the combination, I would just basically forget they were there. If I got one set, I’d forget the next. Oy vey.
So, basically, we had this combination:
Balancé
Balancé
Sous-sus turn (arms in fifth)
Chaînes x4 (arms in that kind of demi-2nd thing)
Tombé
Pas de Bourée
Fourth
Double turn
Fourth
Something I’m forgetting maybe?
Chaînes x4
Attitude Balance
Run away!
Easy, right?
… Except I kept somehow forgetting the chaînes, then remembering them a half-beat too late and having to either leave one out or rush them to catch up. Feh.
I can’t really complain, though, because much of the rest was pretty respectable dancing, and I pulled off some very nice attitude balances.
I made myself redo the left side so I could finally get it right. I honestly don’t recall whether that succeeded, though.
I also couldn’t seem to remember the pas de bourré in our petit allegro combination, which was:
Glissade jeté
Glissade jeté
Glissade temps levée
Temps levée
Temps levée
Coupé balloné
Coupé balloné
Pas de bourré
Entrechat quatre x2
(Or that-ish: the counts seem slightly off in that write-up.)
I was like, “… Coupé balonné, coupé balloné, oh crap forgot my pdb again, straight into entrechats because I am awesome, maybe no one will notice :P”
Our last combination had elements from one of the fairy variations from Sleeping Beauty, which was cool, though now I can’t remember which one.
In trapeze class, I made up for my balletic shortcomings (or, as autocorrupt would have it, “Balrog Zirconia”).
Our choreography involved inversions in the ropes and I got to do them on the high trapeze (though not on the highest one, because the ropes aren’t long enough for the inversions we were doing). That’s a vote of confidence — it’s too high for spotting, so Aerial M. needs to feel pretty confident to let you do inversions up there.
We also did half-mills (which I can do in my sleep) and half- Russians (which are hard for me because, proportionally speaking, I have t-rex arms). Aerial M have me some pointers on those, but they’ll need more work than anything else I’ve done on Trapeze thus far. I look forward to working on them 🙂
Anyway, my love affair with trapeze continues apace.
To be honest, before today, I would have told you I wasn’t strong enough to straddle up into and inversion on the ropes, since that depends entirely on upper-body strength (including abs). There’s no jumping into it.
I would have been wrong.
Sometimes it’s nice to be wrong.
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.
Finally Back On The Silks
One word: Yasssssss!
We got a great explanation today about getting into this inversion (crossback straddle/v inversion).
Sure, you can try to just muscle it up with your legs, but that’s the hard way (and note the word try, here — many, maybe most, can’t actually invert from the upright crossback straddle just by muscling it up).
The — well, let’s be frank — the less hard way (it still requires a fair bit of strength and coordination, but feels pretty easy once you get it) is to use your abs to contract up through the hollow-body position while pushing the poles of the silks away with your hands (which should be quite high).
Basically, you pull your pelvis towards your face using the core muscles, just as if you were doing a head-tail contraction in Modern dance.
I couldn’t do this with any degree of polish before my recent break-for-illness — not because I was weaker (though I was, towards the end), but because I hadn’t grasped the point about using hollow-body to achieve the inversion.
Today, Tall C explained that, and it clicked. Huzzah! Denis didn’t hear her, and still wound up muscling through it with great struggle. A couple classmates and I mentioned the hollow-body part when he came down (we also mentioned it when he was on the silks, but he couldn’t hear us over the sound of his effort, heh).
He’ll get it next time.
Honestly, since I haven’t been doing silks, I expected today’s class to suck — but it was actually awesome.
We also have video in which I — clearly tired — basically mark my way through a bit of choreography and fumble into arabesque at the end. I’ll post it later. Watching it, I was surprised that my transitions didn’t look like complete crap, given that I was pretty cooked and really not even trying.
Anyway, it’s good to be back at it, and I think my newly-reduced schedule will help immensely.
À bientôt, mes amis.
Saturday Class: Progress is Relative
I can’t say that I was at my best this morning, but I can’t say that I was at my worst, either.
Ballet is funny like that. Progress is always relative.
You have not-so-great days, and you have to remind yourself, “Six months ago, I would have thought this was a great class; I would have been really proud of my adagio and really impressed at how well I remembered the combinations.”
So by my current standard, today was, as they say, “Fair to middlin'” — mostly great Barre (though my mental block about flic-flac continues unabated); fairly good adagio (though there was a little too much “making it happen” on the first run); turns … Eh.
Here’s the combo:
Waltz turn and waltz turn
Pique arabesque
Extend
Down (plie)
PDB
Chassée
Fourth
En Dehors*
Fourth
Relève
En Dehors*
Fourth
Détourner
Chassée
Fourth
En Dedans (as many as you can, obvs)
Pliè
… Repeat until you run out of room.
*These could be singles, doubles, triples — whatevs.
Not a hard combination, but pretty, unless you for some reason keep screwing up your turns.
Little jumps would have been better if I hadn’t switched into a totally different combination halfway through and then gotten scrambled trying to get back into the right one.
This is the danger of strong kinesthetic learning abilities! Your body is all like:
“Cool! I remember this from yesterday! :)”
And your brain goes:
“No, that’s not it! :/”
And your body goes:
“But I thought…? :O”
… And so on.
We ran out of time and didn’t do grand allegro, but that’s probably okay. My lungs are still a little verklempt. Slow and steady heals the lungs.
At the end of the day, my technique is about a thousand times better
Anyway, that’s today. We’re off to the Met Live in HD.
À bientôt, mes amis.
Friday Morning Fumbling
I had many troubles with the sleepings last night, as is probably evidenced by my falling back onto something resembling a combination of dogespeak and lolspeak.
As a result, today, I arrived on the scene mentally jumbled, then proceeded to try to lead pliés.
Oy vey.
You guys.
I have been doing pliés since I was six. You would think I would have this down. Likewise, I’ve designed (edit: and led) plié exercises for beginning dancers before. Whole barres, in fact.
It’s not hard. In fact, it’s so easy that the proverbial cave man could do it, providing that his musculoskeletal system allows for an appropriate degree of turnout (otherwise, he should modify accordingly).
Usually, you can do something like two demis, one grand in 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 5th, then stick cambres and things between them if the music allows. At the end, you either take a sus-sous and possibly detourné or maybe you don’t, depending on your class. Maybe you just take a sus-sous and balance. Maybe you just finish en bas.
Anyway, coming up with an opening plié combination is normally the easiest thing in the world.
But, OTOH, it really helps if you listen to the music first and work your way through. Which I totally failed to do.
So there we are doing the pliés I’ve just given, and I’m going, “Oh, crap, I should’ve included cambres in here, there’s totally time,” and kicking myself and screwing up the port de bras. That I’ve just given.
Meh.
Anyway, later in class it got better, as my brain finally decided that it could come on line and work a little. I had an easier time asplaining the chassée-sauté combination that we did going across, and even convinced the class to relax and play around a little.
Semi-Pro Tip: when doing a simple chassée-step-sauté combination, invoke the Party Scene from Nutcracker; it makes everyone giddy (unless they hate the Nutcracker, in which cause … I dunno, there are good party scenes in basically all of Petipa’s ballets; just pick one). Likewise, to encourage freedom in the arms, ask your dancers to imagine themselves in big floofy skirts that they can wave around with their hands — grown-ups think this is funny, which makes them laugh, which helps in and of itself, but they’re often willing to step right into the Big Floofy Skirt role. (YMMV with guys; I didn’t have any guys today, but I’m certainly not afraid to don my Big Imaginary Floofy Skirt.)
I was, however, an overall terrible example much of the time, because sleep deprivation had left me a tad wobbly and was also making it hard to keep my head in the game.
Seriously, when we had some time to practice turns at liberty, I did two stellar singles from fifth, then somehow got distracted by my own reflection and pretty much fell over. I mean, not all the way, but you know how it is.
Bleh.
Anyway, next week, I will come prepared with a plié exercise in addition to all the fancy tendus I keep thinking about, and then I will maybe introduce them to basic mazurka step, which I think they’d enjoy.
And, also, I will listen all the way through the music while class is getting itself set up, so I know what I’m working with (though if it’s the same music, I know what we’re doing now).
And, with any luck, I will be less sleep deprived, so things will hang together (like my head and eyes and arms, for example; so many times my head was just like, “Oh, we were doing rond de jambe now? I was, you know, thinking about Swan Lake, and also about bagels.”
So there you have it. Failing to plan is planning to create a deeply inadequate plié combination.
Remember that.
À bientôt, mes amis.
Leap Day (and the Rest of the Week)
Ha. Forgot to post this the other day. Derp. So, here it is, a few (okay, four) days late.
A fine class today: except for a touch of wheeziness, barre was good; at center, I threw off a beautiful turn from 2nd, then got cocky and kept putting too much power into the rest of the turns in that combination. I backed it off when traveling across the floor in the next combination and things improved vastly.
I have discovered that I get excited about things like renversé and sometimes kind of lose my head. I worked on keeping it together, though my failure to take my Adderall this morning made that a bit more challenging than it might have been.
Our final combination, however, was not challenging, just:
Sissone
Pas de Bourée
…Eight times. The cool part is that you’re constantly switching the direction of your hips and shoulders through each pas de bourré. It’s easy to do, but looks really cool,especially if you can get high Sissones and clear épaulement.
I managed both, and felt quite good about myself, thank you very much.
After class, I took a few minutes to practice entrelacés/tour-jetés, because it would be a travesty not to leap on Leap Day.
Thanks to a second-hand note via Yorksranter (thanks, Yorksranter!), Mr. B, who was chatting with someone but still utilizing the Ballet Master’s All-Seeing Eye called out, “Good! Again!” then gave me another note that resulted in a series of, “Good! Again!” séquences.
So that was Monday’s class. Wednesday’s class was also quite good, though I was still not back at “full power,” so to speak. Nonetheless, there were some good moments, and I didn’t hose up absolutely everything.
I made it all the way through, as well, even though it was a billion degrees in the studio and I was already somewhat dehydrated at the start.
My promenades are improving again. For what it’s worth, I love promenades (and turns) in attitude. They just look cool. My turns are also coming back together.
Also, a quick shout-out to the amazing Kathryn Morgan, whose excellent video on Renverse has greatly improved mine. A few weeks ago, we had class with J.P., and he mentioned the part about renverse beginning as RDJ (grand/en l’air, of course); Ms. Morgan takes it a step further, pointing out that you want to make it all the way to arabesque before you think about getting to attitude.
Otherwise you just do crazy, dumb things with your legs and lose your turnout and stuff. Um, but she puts it much more eloquently than that.
Anyway, go watch her video; it will help you immensely with your renverse (or, if you’re already a master of the renverse, it will help you explain it to other people).
Also, pelvic placement (the Theme of The Month, apparently) really helps, but indirectly: forget your heart — if your pelvis is in the right place, you’ll have an easier time with turnout and extensions, both of which are necessary to RDJ, which is necessary to renverse.
Aerials this week have been a mixed bag. I didn’t expect to be awesomely strong after sitting on my tuchas for a week and a half, and as such was not terribly disappointed in myself, though at times I was frustrated.
That said, Trapeze on Wednesday rocked. I kind of feel like trap is my “thing,” aerials-wise — I love being up there and I find it fairly easy to do things well. It probably helps that I find heights thrilling, rather than frightening, since a lot of trapeze work involves either standing on your toes on a skinny little bar or dangling from ropes above one or your knees below one.
It also helps to have freakishly strong legs and abs, which apparently I do? I haz the knee beats, y’all. CL is teaching now and has a fantastic gift for conveying subtle technical details.
Thursday I had some weird and alarming stuff going on that led us to go see my doc today. She doesn’t think I’m going to keel over dead or anything, but did order some bloodwork to check on various things, including my thyroid function.
On the upside, my vital stats are still stellar, with blood pressure of 107/63 and a heart-rate (including the uptick for Adderall and caffeine) of 71. w00t.
Anyway, that’s it. Advanced class tomorrow, then various Suspend-y things.
danseur ignoble 