Category Archives: class notes
Ballet Squid Chronicles: In Which Everyone Has a Terrible Class
I try not to make excuses, but I think maybe I need some today.
So here’s the litany:
I had an asthma attack last night.
For the first time in months! So if course I spent half an hour in denial, hacking my lungs out, which was pretty exhausting. Then, of course, I used my inhaler, and because albuterol is a powerful stimulant and I was already sleep deprived, I took a sleeping pill.
Predictably, I then overslept, so I made it to the bus stop by the skin of my teeth without having eaten breakfast (and still groggy).
Today in class I felt like I could neither learn combinations nor execute anything correctly. I was a mess at barre (seriously, we did turns at the barre and I cracked not one, but *both* knees!) and literally did not make it all the way through even one combination correctly at center.
Or, wait – I did the first set of little jumps right. So there’s that?
On top of not being able to think, my legs felt super-tight. This is what happens when I miss Wednesday class and then have to haul bacon to the bus stop on the bike.
The thing I did do right was persist. I wasn’t injured and I was still learning, so I kept going. Even though I didn’t know the combinations. Even though my balance and coordination were, um, less than perfect.
Once in a while I did something nice. Sometimes I did things that were wrong (that is, not in the combo), but which still looked nice. Sometimes I just a hot mess — and that’s fine.
For what it’s worth, I wasn’t the only one having a bad day. At least three of us (B, Brian, and I) missed breakfast and were not especially sharp, mentally speaking. Another lady (whose name I didn’t catch) hadn’t been in class in a while. The one remaining member of the class (didn’t catch her name, either) seemed to be doing well, at least!
For what it’s worth, I know my standard of badness, so to speak, has improved. When I first came back to class, a bad class was one in which I could barely manage to balance in a 45-degree extension without trembling and wobbling. A couple of months ago, a bad class was one in which I did Every. Single. Turn. the wrong way.
In this class I found and held 90—degree extensions without really trying or even realizing it. I would glance at the mirror (in hopes of confirming that I was doing the same thing as everyone else) and be like, “Ohai! Look at that!”
I turned the wrong way exactly once, and that was because I got ahead of the combo mentally. It had turns both en de dans and en de hors and a change of direction.
I also slipped coming out of a turn and made it look good by dropping into a nice kneeling lunge. Cool stuff.
So there’s that, too.
Perhaps just as importantly, I now feel comfortable enough with my fellow dancers to (GASP!) talk to them before and after class.
Even Brian (aka PDG) has somehow evolved, in my mind, into an actual human being and not an Intimidating Ballet Demigod.
It helps that he’s humble and funny and so forth. And, of course, it doesn’t hurt that he struggles with his arms as well (Brian! Of the Beautiful Arms! Struggles with his arms!).
So there you have it. Friday class. Kind of a disaster, but a good disaster nonetheless.
Essentials tomorrow, then opera.
Giant Ballet Part-ay!
I skipped class tonight to go on a date with my husband. This involved a whole lot of mental wrangling, which mostly revolved around the fact that I’m forever kvetching at him about how This Afternoon Will Never Happen Again But The Dishes (or Billing, or Whatever) Will Still Be There When We Get Back, So Let’s Go For This Walk Now.
This evening, we had a one-time chance to go see a friend from church speak about her amazing bike adventure, so I sucked it up and went. It was fun and illuminating. The best lesson percolated in my mind this way: When you’re reading, the adventure doesn’t really happen with things are going exactly how Bilbo or Frodo or Harry (and/or Hermione and/or Ron, etc.) want(s) them to go. The adventure happens when things are off the rails and the unexpected rolls in. The adventure happens when our intrepid heroes encounter giant spiders or Dark Lords or, you know, flat tires. Or just hours and hours of rain and hills.
So, anyway. Pretty cool stuff!
Tomorrow night, Louisville Ballet is throwing a party at ReSurfaced, which is an interesting little outdoor happening space that has materialized in downtown Loutown. We are going, which I am using to assuage the part of my mind that is totally having Wednesday Class Withdrawals right now.
I have no idea if anyone I know from class is going, but darnit, we’re going. Or, at least, I am. I hope Denis is, because I frankly have no idea what to do at a party by myself, even if it’s a ballet-related party. At least, I have no idea what to do until the dancing starts. Then I can hold my own until someone shuts the music down.
I’ll be doing Friday class again, and probably just Essentials on Saturday because it’s Opera day, so the noon class will be too tight a fit, and I’m not ballsy enough to brave Advanced class yet. I don’t think they’d kick me out or anything; I’m pretty sure that if you’re a game Intermediate student and you know how to play along without holding the class back, they’ll let you jump in.
I have discovered that, where ballet is concerned, “Game” is my middle name. I will try anything once, and then again, and then an infinite number of times until I finally get it right, or at least sufficiently un-wrong to cease being a living embarrassment to the art form (at which point I will keep going until I do get it right. Even if I do keep forgetting what comes between the last saute arabesque and the brisée — assuming I heard that part right*.
So that’s it for tonight. I’m off to bed. Much homework to do tomorrow, plus conditioning workout, plus party taimz.
Notes
*I spent about an hour on Monday night lying in bed trying to figure out if I’d heard the first part of the combo right — like, was it sauté arabesque or piqué arabesque? I missed the visual. I did sauté the whole time and nobody complained, and since I went (as always) in the first group, I figure someone might have said something if I was totally freaking wrong.
Ballet Squid Chronicles: Attack of the Pros!
Neither PDG nor PDG2 happened to be in class tonight.
Instead, the Paul Taylor Dance Company arrived en masse for Claire’s 7:15 class.
Needless to say, they brought a new dimension to class, along with great energy.
They were all lovely people, very fun to have in class, and (of course) amazing dancers.
Also, we got to do brisées tonight amidst our very fun choreography. Claire is great at convincing us to transcend our perceived limitations. One of our regular classmates was afraid she couldn’t do the brisée, and Claire sais, “Yes you can!” and showed her how, and she did it*! Very cool stuff.
In other news, I’m glad I brought my legwarmers. The studio was cold tonight! The legwarmers worked brilliantly. I left them on through all of Margie’s class and through Claire’s barre.
My adagio is improving. I think half my problem is that I tense up because I think I don’t know how to do it. That’s half of everyone’s problem all the time, though, as best I can tell. Anyway, when I relax, it goes better; when I don’t I fall over (well, partly), in penché. Good to know.
That’s it for tonight. Class was amazing.
We loved having the folks from Paul Taylor in class and we all hope they come back soon!
Notes
*I did several brisées of diminishing quality, but the first one surprised me! Also tried entrechats but they weren’t as good. A couple of my turns were quite nice, though.
Ballet Squid Chronicles: Coming Together
Did both classes tonight. I felt good throughout, with the exception of totally not having a couple of barre combos sorted in Claire’s class.
Pirouettes are becoming reliable. I did one double, from fourth, semi-badly (it could have been worse, which represents progress).
My coupé- and passé relève balances are becoming like my track stands used to be: they work until I realize they’re working, Wyle E. Coyote style 😛 They’re improving, though, so no complaints.
Combinations came off well. I’m still going on the first group all the time, and it’s still working.
After class, Claire asked how it was feeling (the dancing, that is), then said, “It’s coming together!”
So that was an awesome end to a frank roller-coaster of a day.
So that’s it for now. Keep the sunny side up, and don’t forget to salt your eggs a little.
Ballet Squid Chronicles: Analyzing Last Night’s Class
I’ve been being lazy all morning and trying to finish Felice Picano’s Like People In History (and playing with AT&T uVerse’s Interactive Workout feature — we finally got uVerse in our neighborhood, so Denis made the jump), so I feel that I can take a few more minutes (or, you know, an hour and a half…) to avoid my homework and talk about ballet instead.
This morning, while waiting for my breakfast/lunch to finish microwaving cooking, I tried to run through some of the combinations from last night’s class, and I think I figured out part of the problem.
Besides the usual problem of putting changes of feet in places where they don’t belong (G-d bless Tawnee for noting that; because I don’t always realize I’m doing it until the next morning, and I was able to fix it a few times), I realized I made one enormous mistake: I kept sissoneing the wrong way.
So: when the combination went sissone devant, I kept going sissone derriere. The problem was in the translation: Tawnee initially gave us the counts in Ballet Frenglish, so it was “sissone front, sissone back,” etc., which is totally valid, but somehow my brain decided that “sissone front” meant that the, um, kicky leg* goes forward.
Even though I freaking well know better.
In case you’re wondering, “sissone front” doesn’t mean your kicky leg goes forward. It just doesn’t, y’all. When you sissone devant, you sissone to the front. This means that your back leg is the one that makes a pretty, pointy reachy gesture — and it does so to the freaking rear. Your front leg, meanwhile, kind of points downish, like this:
Obviously, your arms and core shouldn’t quite look like this — but presumably you have bones in your arms and spine, which makes things much easier. Edit: obviously, you should also maintain your turnout. I was a bit lazy with my image modification software, apparently O.O
So every time everyone else sproinged** forward, I sproinged backward, and vice-versa (amazingly, nobody crashed, probably because Brienne, who was taking class with us, was behind me and is a genius). And somehow failed to understand why I was doing this. And, of course, having done it once or twice, I fell into Stupid Zombie Robot mode and did it a bunch of times. Seriously, there are times that I totally know I’m Doin’ It Rong, but somehow can’t stop myself***. Does this happen to other people?
And now I totally get it: my brain was still in barre mode! So when Tawnee said “front,” my brain interpreted it as it would “tendu front” or “close front” — front leg reaches — and so on and so forth.
I am actually rather pleased with this revelation, because I think it probably explains a lot of the bizarre things I do from time to time in ballet class. I definitely have a bit of language-action disconnect in general, and I hadn’t really thought about how it applies to ballet.
So, anyway. That’s something I’ll have to think about and work on.
Notes
*In sissones, the kicky leg — that’s the technical term, I am sure — is Very Important.
**Also totally a technical term.
***My first memorable experience of being stuck in Auto-Rong mode? I was maybe nine or ten and was riding Marquis, the horse that I leased, in the ring at my barn. I had just dismounted, and some loud noise happened. Marquis panicked and bolted, and even though I knew that chasing a horse was a completely stupid idea, my body automagically gave chase while my brain went, “NONONONONONO! Don’t chase him, stupid!” I literally could not stop myself from chasing Marquis. Nor could I explain the concept when my riding teacher (very reasonably) chewed me out about it; in fact, I didn’t even try.
Ballet Squid Chronicles: In Which I Can’t Even Even
I guess tonight wasn’t entirely a wash.
They say you’re only learning when you’re making mistakes.
Tonight I must’ve learned a lot. I was like “MAKE ALL THE MISTAKES!”
My strengths were … Um, well, my sauté arabesque always looks awesome. All elastic ‘n’ ballonny and stuff*.
But I think I did literally everything else wrong at least twice.
Oh, I also managed like two good pirouettes out of, I don’t know, maybe a million? As we’ve established, I can only count to four. There were more than four.
So, um. We’ll chalk this one up to experience. Even Nureyev had bad nights, I’m sure.
Notes
*Oh, except got the part where I totally got called out for leaving my shoulder behind. My shoulder was all like, “Dude, just cause Mom makes me hang out with you doesn’t mean I’m not gonna pretend I’m with these other people instead.”
PS
I also did full splits. Both sides. Unexpectedly. My legs were just like, “Oh, do you wanna go all the way down? Okay, no probs.”
Yay!
Ballet Squid Chronicles: Sisson Double
Tonight, among other things, we did sissons (on purpose, even!) and also the sisson doublé variant. It took me a zillion tries to get sisson doublé to make sense, and then it did. The change-o-leg in the air was what was getting me.
Like, sissons are basically jumps from two legs to one, but normally you sproing and land without changing legs or directions. Sisson doublé does both (the turn takes place in the air, which looks cool), but is still a jump form two legs to one. I like the way it lands in attitude. And how I don’t fall over*. Yay!
This was most gratifying, after doing renversé something remotely like right a few times and very, very wrong a whole bunch of times and not doing pirouttes-from-fourth-to-coupé right, like, ever at all. Frustrating. My pirouettes just sucked tonight (my sous-tenu turns were fine).
I wasn’t feeling too hot at the beginning of class (digestive issues, fleh) but actually felt better by the end of barre. Thus, the beginning of barre was uninspired, but the end was mostly okay.
Adagio was mostly pretty, except for the moments when I got distracted by the mirror. Um, yeah. Maybe I should wear a blindfold for adagio?
The little jumps were lovely and easy by the time we got to them. I even counted to four correctly. Huzzah! I am so ready for my maths exam next week! Bring on the Counting Numbers Less Than Or Equal To Four!
Across the floor, all my glissade-pas de chats looked pretty good (I’m, even the ones that were supposed to be glissade-saut de chats, because I can’t hear very well, because allergies). Apparently, according to the Powers That Be, pas de chat doesn’t really fly in men’s technique too often. Too bad, because I really kind of love pas we chat. It can look joyful, athletic, floaty – whatever. It’s a nice step, and I have always thought so, so there.
In other news, it’s been a while since I mucked around in MSpain and made a silly drawing, so here you go — from Act II of Zombie Giselle:
Your call as to whether the ninja is after GiZombie or Albrecht, here. Presumably, by this point, Hilarion’s braingz have already been eated. Also, needs moar scenery.
I feel like someday I should post a real drawing, and I’m sure I will have plenty of time, um, next year. After I graduate. Before grad school.
So, there you have it, folks. GiZombie: Scene from Act II.
Finally, I actually managed to complete everything on my to-do list today for the first time in Untold Days. So go me! (And, yes, I totally pad my to-do list by including things like ballet class, so I can feel like I’m accomplishing stuff.)
So that’s it. Good night, all!
Notes
*Today I did a tour en l’air to see if I still could. I didn’t fall over, but I did over-rotate and almost turned my ankle. So that was dumb.
Ballet Squid Chronicles: Advanced Topics in Counting to Four
Class was decent tonight. Or, rather, class was great, and I was decent. My balances and développés are coming along.
Sometimes my core fell apart at the barre (usually when I was really concentrating on using my feet). Sometimes my arms got confused doing pirouettes. Sometimes I did nice pirouettes. This is becoming a pattern.
My petit allegro is getting better, provided I count correctly (see below). Tawnee likes to give us combinations that end with assemblé, assemblé, assemblé, assemblé. Those can get interesting. I have to look at pictures in my mind what that should look like before we do it again.
I rather fell apart doing little jumps. I blame math class. Clearly, I used up all my numerical faculties this morning in precalc. I could do the jumps, obviously, but apparently I couldn’t count to four at the same time. This was worse than usual. Counting is hard for squids, you guys.
That said, going across the floor, I thought my big jumps looked pretty good. They get rather better when we’re instructed to travel – then I remember to use my plié and my working leg automagically kicks itself higher. Amazing.
I’m still all about saying “Damn the torpedoes!” and going in the first group. Sometimes I don’t have the combination down perfectly (“Oh! There’s another sauté arabesque! Who knew?!”), but I strap on my imaginary super-cape and go like I have it down cold.
In the process, I’ve found that if you don’t stop to look sheepish when you forget a step, you will generally remember the next step and you can just roll on. I should have already figured this out by now (it’s, like, the first rule of all performing arts: if you make a mistake, just keep going like nothing happened).
I guess the goal is to improve incrementally every day, and I think I might actually be succeeding. Taking class three days per week really helps. I am very much looking forward to next semester, when I hope to up the ante to five days per week (I’m guessing one will have to be a conditioning class or plays or something, since there are no ballet classes Tuesday, Thursday, or Sunday*).
So that’s all for tonight’s class. I have an ocean of homework and housework and finances for the next two days, so radio silence will likely follow until Saturday, when we will be doing class and then going to see Giselle. I’ve heard our new AD is pretty creative, so I’m looking forward to that.
Notes
*Except company class?
Ballet Squid Chronicles: A Mixed Bag of Combos?
Class was interesting today. Claire called in sick, so we had two teachers — Margie for the first half of barre, then Brienne for the rest of everything.
I employed Claire’s suggestion about keeping my fingers in my eyes (okay, maybe that’s not exactly how it goes!)…
So many fingers. So few eyes.
…which made my balances a bazillion times better and let me focus on today’s challenge — preventing the Fail Chain and keeping my turnout, well, turned out.
At the start of our fondus, Brienne handed us a deeply-useful bit of advice: if thinking of bringing the heel forward is making stuff not work, try imaginging that you’re bringing your calf forward (I assume this means the back of the calf).
It’s a brilliant trick. Simply put, you can’t bring the back of your calf forward without opening your hip (and, where appropriate, your knee). Somehow, this little mental-imagery thing makes it way easier to find and activate the muscles that wrap around the back of the thigh and make your turnout go — which, in turn, makes your extensions about a bazillion times easier.
Also makes your balance in passé much prettier — I actually got a “Nice, Asher!” on one of these today … a non-ironic one, even 😀
Other things I learned tonight: PDG’s name is, in fact, Brian. He wasn’t in class tonight, but PDG2 (whose name is Connor) was, and wow, was he lovely to watch.
I (stupidly?) decided to stand on the same end of the room as PDG2 during barre (and, frankly, just about everything else) in hopes, perhaps, that some of his loveliness would rub off on me. At times, it worked, or maybe I’m just improving. At other times, it was more like, “Yeah, here’s a foil for my badness.”
I also decided to go ahead with my bold, bad self in the first group on every freaking thing — in part because I realized that we comprised an odd number, so then I could run around, hit the end of the line again, and practice all the combos cross the floor twice! Bwahaha.
That said, my jumps kind of sucked. Which is weird, because usually I’m all about the jumping, and I didn’t feel like my legs were particularly cooked. In fact, I specifically chose not to go home between school and class in order to spare my legs. I think the problem was actually in my brain; today was one of those distracted days.
Anyway, some of today’s combinations were good (the adagio was pretty, even); some of them were, well, meh. There were good moments (Pirouettes from fourth! I love them!) and there were terrible moments (Recite this in waltz time: Sauté arabesque! Sauté passé! Crap, what comes next? I have no clue!)
The weird part about that last one — I actually did know the combination (the next part was tombe – pas de bourrée – glissade – assemblé), but as soon as I would light out on the first sauté, my mind would go completely blank. It so happens that I can Sauté arabesque! Sauté passé! all day on autopilot, so I kept getting that bit down, and then the rest … ehhhhhhhh.
So that was my class today. I decided that it’s better to screw up boldly and confidently at the head of the line than to screw up mousily and quietly in the back.
For what it’s worth, at some point, the secret to all forms of dance is being able to fake it when you totally forget what you’re doing. You put on your biggest, most confident face (I would say “smile,” but what if you’re Von Rothbart, and you’re supposed to be getting your butt kicked by angry swans?).
Then you do something, and you sell it so well that everyone in the audience believes that you’re doing it right, and everyone else in your line (or in the entire corps, or whatever, depending on the scale of the piece, eh?) is doing it wrong.
Oh, and you don’t stand next to someone who’s better at faking it than you, or it won’t work.
So that’s it for tonight.
Be good, and if you can’t be good, be bold!
Ballet Squid Chronicles: More Brilliant Thoughts from Claire
I get great corrections from all of the teachers at LBS, don’t get me wrong — but something about the specific corrections I get from Claire just works for me. It’s like she instinctively knows how I think or something.
Today’s highlights:
1. You should always be able to see your fingertips.
I put my arms in all kinds of interesting places. The idea that my fingertips should almost never leave my field of vision keeps them where they should be. Much of the time, they hang out in the periphery, but they should still be visible*.
Like many flexible people, I have less-than-perfect proprioception (the “Spidey sense” that lets you know where parts of your body are without looking), so using a visual cue makes a huge difference. Eventually, I won’t need the visual cue — through repetition, my body will train my brain to place its arms correctly without the visual reference.
Anyway, sighting the fingertips fixes your placement so you don’t throw your weight backwards (which is still a problem for me at times). This, in turn, improves balances, turns, and just about everything else. Some of my pirouettes from fourth were pretty nice today.
For what it’s worth, I think the arms look nicer this way as well. One suddenly looks less like a crash-landing stork and more like a gliding swan.
Don’t be this guy.
2. Don’t hop out of turns. Ever.
This correction was issued to the whole class, but I’m pretty sure I did this at least once today — you’re turning, and something in you panics, and instead of letting the momentum of your turn do its thang, you hop out (and then you curse yourself because Professional Dance Guy is doing a triple).
It looks awkward. More crash landing. It also pretty much eliminates any hope you have of gracefully moving into whatever the next step in the combination might be.
Worse, as Claire pointed out, every time you hop out of a turn, you’re training your brain and body that it’s okay to hop out of turns. So just don’t. Fall over instead, if you must.
But, in fact, once I relaxed and just let my turns go, I found I was suddenly landing them rather nicely.
In general, class was good. I felt a tad fumbly and awkward at times in Margie’s class (too much thinking, maybe?), but mostly felt good in Claire’s.
PDG (whose name I really seriously don’t know — like, maybe it’s Tommy? Maybe it’s Brian? Maybe I’m just guessing, and I should, you know, ask?**) shared a barre with me again. It was just the two of us, all by ourselves, on our own barre on the end. Apparently, nobody wanted boy cooties. I totally cribbed off his breathing, since this week has been all about everyone telling us to breathe into our pliés and stuff.
The cool part is that it’s really hard to overthink your dancing when you’re conscious about your breathing. I guess that makes sense, though — when you learn Zen meditation, you begin by following the breath.
Claire also sorted another problem specific to balances that’s been plaguing me at the barre but not at center: I kept losing turnout on my supporting leg, and couldn’t figure out why.
Turns out (no pun intended) that I was leaving the shoulder on the same side behind my center of balance, so then my hips would rotate in an effort to correct, and instead of bringing the shoulder forward and the hips back, I would attempt to do … who knows what? All I know is that the end result was a half-baked turnout and shoulders at an obtuse angle to the barre.
By bringing the shoulder into alignment, one prevents the whole chain of failure. The hips stay where they’re supposed to stay and everything else remains appropriately perpendicular to the barre.
Now if I can just get the whole chain to hang together when moving from attitude devant (which I do quite easily en relevé) to passé (wherein I fall apart again), I’ll be quite happy.
We did lovely little sous-sus turns across the floor in Margie’s class; in Claire’s, we did all kinds of stuff. Like glissade – jeté then two sautés on one foot, change direction, lather rinse repeat, followed by glissade – assemblé – soubresaut – soubresaut. I thought my soubresauts were rather nice today. My one-footed sautés started out high and pointed and all that good stuff, but around the fourth repetition or so I got tired and they stayed pointed but lost most of their height. Oh, well.
My favorite combination today was cabriole-sauté passé-cabriole-sauté passé-glissade-failli-pas de chat. But I think I’ve left out something in the middle, perhaps? It sounds like I’m missing a couple of beats in there somewhere. We couldn’t do anything much longer because we were in the small studio and there were something like thirteen or fourteen of us, all long-leggedy leapers.
Anyway. I enjoyed that one simply because it was pretty. We went in groups of three, in lines, and because we all had the combination cold Claire asked us to focus on staying together. The effect was quite nice.
After class, one of the newer students said to me, “You’re so good! I have to get like you!” So I was totally flattered (especially since I spent the whole class thinking the same thing about PDG and a fellow student who I’ll call Claire the Second).
Oh, and the Shoes
The new shoes worked nicely.
Perhaps because of the construction of the shoe or perhaps because I’ve placed the elastics correctly this time (maybe both?), I found the support through the arch quite nice. My ankles felt quite stable today (sometimes they want to supinate en relevé). Some of this is probably a question of improving technique and increasing strength, but I suspect the shoes do help.
The bottoms of the Pro1Cs feel seamless, which makes rather a difference. I’m not sure how exactly Sansha accomplishes this effect, since the sole pads are quite stiff — but one does not at any point feel as if one is standing on an earbud wire or something (which was definitely a problem with my other shoes at times — not the Romeos, but the little inexpensive eBay shoes).
A word of caution: if you do buy yourself a pair of Sansha Pro 1Cs, be aware that the sole pads (both fore and aft) will be slippery at first. Mine had mostly sorted themselves by the end of today’s second class; they’re still a little slick, but not too badly. At the beginning of the first class, I felt like I was trying to dance on ice. IIRC, this was also the case with Capezio’s Romeos.
So there you have it. Still no pictures, because I was starving by the time Claire’s class ended and didn’t think of it.
Here’s one of the Pro1cs, anyway. The little seam right under the arch seems to enhance the support of the shoe.
Soon! I look so different than I did six months ago. I am trending towards being rather lean and defined. That’s a surprise. Prior to gaining a bunch of weight, I was more or less skinny (except my legs, which have never been skinny). I had some definition because I had so little body fat, but now when I look at myself I get a sense of working musculature instead of just twink-tastic scrawniness. Not that I minded being scrawny, but, there you have it. I think I rather like being built like a dancer.
Anyway, homework beckons (though I think I’m going to take a bath first; my legs are seriously cooked), so I’ll close here.
It’s 4:00 — do you know where your fingertips are?
Notes
*The obvious exception is when you’re in allongée with your face turned towards the hand in front, and so forth. In that case, you probably won’t be able to see the fingers of hand that’s to the side.
**There’s a part of me which feels that sharing a barre with someone three or four times and still not knowing his name is kind of like waking up next to the dude you met at the bar last night and not knowing his name. Only, I’ve never done the latter. Still, it’s awkward. Like, “I should have asked this weeks and weeks ago, and now I’ve missed my chance” awkard.
danseur ignoble 