Category Archives: class notes
Wednesday Class: Add X
Don’t worry, I’m not going to make you do algebra, even though I love algebra.
I’m talking about a different kind of “adding X.” Specifically, adding X-rolls—the modern dance kind—to improve your ballet.
Today, BG substituted for Killer B because it’s Spring Break. The unofficial topic-of-the-day was using contralateral diagonal connections to drive movement in ballet: like, thinking of your tendu front on the right beginning, more or less, from your left shoulder.
If you’re familiar with X-rolls in modern dance, this will feel very familiar.
If you’re not, here’s a nice little introduction:
Really, contralateral connectivity should feel familiar to everyone in ballet, since it’s basically just a different way of explaining ballet technique … but since nobody ever said to to me in quite that way before, I never made the (AHEM) connection, so I never really thought about it before.
X-rolls and their relatives are great for learning to feel connections between, say, the right toes and the left fingertips via the core and limbs.
When I thought about it that way at center, my tendus and turns suddenly looked lovely: present (if that makes sense), intentional, and clean. Also, my arms were far less inclined to be lazy and/or stupid.
The difference was subtle: my tendus don’t normally look bad. They just looked better. More alive. My turns, meanwhile, are usually a mixed bag: sometimes they’re beautiful; sometimes they’re just giant whirling handbaskets of WTF. Thinking about this kind of diagonal engagement made them reliably look (and feel) nice.
I’m going to have to keep working on this. I suspect that it is, for me, one of those “version update” things: an element that will move my technique from Ballet 2.0 to Ballet 3.0, or whatever I’m on now (honestly, I really wish I’d thought of this metaphor right at the start, so I could use it more effectively >.<).
I’ll also have to bring this with me to BW’s class next week (we don’t have class this week because of Spring Break).
Last week, he analyzed my turns via an exercise that went: tendu, fourth, plié, double from fourth, finish to lunge in fourth, rélèvé, plié, double from fourth, finish to lunge in fourth, rélèvé, plié, double from fourth, finish to lunge in fourth, rélèvé, plié, and so on and so fourth forth and sorted some of the other stupid things I do when doing turns from fourth.
Stupid things like finishing in a freaking enormous lunge(1), then not bothering to pull it in a little before launching the next turn, so I’m basically forcing myself to either jump into my turn or, like, climb into my turn.
- My fourth likes to be a borderline lunge all the time, if it can get away with it. I have heard the phrase, “Maybe a slightly smaller fourth,” sooooooo many times…
The purpose of the rélèvé was, of course, to force me to pull myself back in. A couple of times, I just did this crazy lunge-en-rélèvé instead. What even is that?
I’m afraid that this is really why my demi-pointe is crazy strong(2). I am constantly doing insane things with it. If I stop doing them, I hope my feet won’t be like, “Oh, cool, we can relax now.”
- Okay, not really. What makes my demi-pointe strong is a combination of mobility and, like, actual strength. My ankles and feet are incredibly mobile, which makes it possible to get up into a super-high demi-point. The downside, of course, is that I never, ever, ever get away with half-assing my demi-point(3), even when everyone else in class does.
- This also goes for just straight up pointing my toes. Amongst the many reverse-printed t-shirts I need to make, there is definitely going to be one that just says TOES! I can’t get away with half-assing that, either. My point is fierce, and every single one of my teachers knows that and corrects accordingly. There are days that counts for Thursday class basically go, “And one and TOES and three and TOES and five and TOES…”(4)
- Come to think of it, I am officially setting a goal for myself: get through one entire class without half-assing my toe-point so BW does not develop nightmares about desperately shouting “TOES!” into a cold and uncaring universe.
This week, then, is all about the x-connection, overhead pull-downs to get the lats back in order (because my right shoulder has been all creepin’ on my ear when working left at barre lately), keeping the sternum up and the transversus abdominis engaged, and … hell, I don’t even know. That’s enough to worry about for one week.
I realized today that some of the things I’ve been working on with BW are quickly becoming habits. I think that’s the upside of doing class several times per week. I don’t have time to forget the important corrections from the previous class, and each class involves practicing them countless times.
That means—whether for better or for worse—that habits build quickly.
So there we go. For better ballet, add X.
Modern, Rehearsal, Thursday Class, Shadowy Cabal Ops
Modern today felt good. It was just me, and LF gave me a cool visualization thing to start with. We did lots of floor work and work with using weight and the head-tail connection to move through space. Very cool stuff.
At first my legs were like, “NO. NO, NO, NO. Nope. Screw you, buddy.” I’m experiencing the kind of achy, fatiguey weirdness that I have when my hormone levels are more out of whack than usual (read: when I’m essentially running on empty), which probably explains it. Seeing an endocrinologist is definitely in the plans for … meh, some time this year.
That said, the legs got over themselves by the of class, and I feel it was a good class overall. I finally admitted to LF that I get stressed out about remembering modern choreography, and she told me not to worry so much about it. On the last run of our final combination, I didn’t. Oddly enough, I remembered way more of it than I thought I would.
Dance Team was awesome today. They did some really good and really original work, and AS and I were really impressed. My own rehearsal also went well.
Ballet with BW was partly a private class—one of the owners of studio was with us much of the time, but had to pop out now and then to take care of admin things. Such is running a business!
Class was very intense—in a good way, as always. Interestingly, I got the exact same physical correction from BW tonight that Killer B me yesterday (or, well, one of them…). Obviously, my shoulders, neck, and chest are a hotbed of ballet problems right now.
I’ve realized that, too some extent, this grows out of a deeply internal focus. When I’m working hard, I to draw into myself mentally—and, it would seem, physically. I’m working on it, though!
Curiously, though, my legs had overcome the morning’s meh-ness … which is good, because I would have died of the rond de jambe combination alone, never mind the fondu and the grand battement, if my legs had continued to suck. The fondu/adagio, in particular, was challenging: slow fondu, slow relevé, slow fondu, extend avant then fondu attitude, hold forever, extend, sus-sous, continue pattern inside leg back, etc. The pace was what made it hard—it’s that combination of precision, restrained power, and grace that makes your blood boil at adagio tempo.
Speaking of grand battement, I realized that I haven’t been leading with the heel when closing from the back. It starts that way, then gets lazy in the last inch or two, which is no good. It makes for a lazy fifth and, over the course of the combination, works the supporting leg loose. I mentioned that to BW, and he gave me an extra set to the back only (though still finishing with plié-passé-attitude devant) to sort it.
We also did the dreaded Kneewhacker Turns, which went better than usual. Interestingly, I did whack my knee quite resoundingly once. It didn’t particularly hurt, but startled the heck out of me. I didn’t do it again, that’s for sure 😀 And, in fact, The Kneewhacker Turns that followed were whack-free.
At center we tendued (with turns) and then drilled double turns from fourth and second. BW had many thoughts my turns, all of which tie into problems I’ve been attempting to solve. My spot wasn’t as slow as it was the other day, except when I was being afraid of the Kneewhacker.
I called it a night after a nice waltzy combination across the floor. My toe had started complaining a little, so I decided to take the conservative route. Little jumps Saturday, maybe, and we’ll see how it goes from there.
After class I my fellow Bike Commuter Cabal operatives for a drink and a late supper. Ben and Jenn Folsom were in town, a rare treat for all of us. It was good to catch up with my bike peeps!
D took one look at this and said, “No one would ever guess which one of you is a dancer!” 😀
Wednesday Class: Mostly Functional
I was on the fence about going to class today, as I woke up feeling foggy and congested.
I went anyway, and was glad of it, since two guys who came for a few weeks last year were in class. They’re both very good, and really quite nice. Sadly, they’re only in town for a week this time—they’re both professionals, and they spend most of their time on tour.
Either way, it was nice having them in class. They’re both good examples for me: relatively muscular guys who dance really nicely. I wanted to tell the taller of the two that he’s basically my hero right now, since he, like me, is built for big, powerful jumps, but is actually really quite good at petit allegro. He makes the small, finicky jumps look pretty freaking great.
#goals, amirite?
Fogginess notwithstanding, I found myself surprisingly able throughout barre, adagio, and turns. BW’s class has proven to be the biggest help to getting me through Killer Class: BW gives me physically demanding fondus, makes me use all my turnout, makes me get my legs up as high as I can and then hold them there, etc.
I did get weirdly woozy at one point during grand battement. I’m not sure if I was holding my breath, or if my blood pressure just dropped through the floor for no reason, but it was weird. The last time that sort of thing happened, I was definitely holding my breath during a long cambré back (in BW’s class, of course) and almost fainted. Wooooooo.
I was also not too terrible during petit allegro, although I kept blanking on a part of the third combination that should’ve been obvious.
I actually did royales without substituting entrechats. I may be the only person alive who learned entrechats before royales, and whose body thus stubbornly persists in refusing to acknowledge the existence of the royale.
It was Killer B’s demo that fixed me: I’ve been thinking of a royale as a sort of half-baked double beat (like an entrechat that’s slow to wake up, or something), but if I think of it as a squeeze-change, I don’t then end up doing an entrechat quatre and thus finish on the wrong foot.
Or, well, I don’t finish on the wrong foot unless I start on the wrong foot, which is always a possibility.
Killer B gave us a long, beautiful grand allegro. Predictably, I landed a pas de chat not terribly well (I was trying not to run into a railing at the edge of the studio), my toe started kvetching at me, and I had to stop.
Or, well, I didn’t have to stop. I could have kept going … only I’ve realized that this toe isn’t going to finish healing until I stop pissing it off all over again. Sometimes you give up the grand allegro for a bit, even though it’s the thing you really love, so you can get back to doing grand allegro without having to bail a third of the way through the nicest grand allegro combination you’ve seen in ages (there was a cabriole and everything!!!).
I thought about getting back up there and hitting the repeat on the grand allegro, but I didn’t. I think that was probably the right decision, particularly since grand allegro is really my strong suit as a dancer and I’m not really losing a great deal by sitting it out once in a while.
Anyway, it turned out to be a much better class than I expected, considering the slow start this morning. Now I’m off to dance team, then probably home for the evening. Last night I was hit with a gigantic wave of fatigue at roughly 8 PM, so between that and the fogginess and the vaguely-itchy throat (and the performance this weekend), I’m taking a conservative approach to physical stuff today.
I Just Can’t Even (Finish A Post Right Now)
So I’m going to write a short one and just get it doon.
After last week, during which I lacked A) higher cognitive (and any executive) functions and B) the ability to actually execute a decent pirouette, I appear to be regaining my faculties.
The weekend was highly mediocre ballet-wise, with a really nice moments lightly sprinkled on a field of “meh,” “Wait, what’s the combination?” and just plain “WAT.” Highlights included half-awake me and pre-coffee BG attempting to follow each-other at the barre, with about the degree of success one might predict under the circumstances.
Last night I took class because, in short, I’m an addict. Even though I was late (and made friend L, who came with me, late) thanks to challenges resulting from last week’s brain fog(1), it wasn’t half bad. I managed some nice doubles and some intentional, if not awesome, triples.
- Dear Sunday-Evening-Just-Past Me:Where did you put my keys?! THIS IS NOT FUNNY 😦 😦 }:(
Today’s technique tidbit: take a second before launching your turns (with all guns blazing, if you’re anything like me) to feel a few things. Where are your trochanters in their hip sockets? Is the pelvis rotated or tilted? If so, can you adjust it? (Unless you’re in a ridiculously huge 4th,the core muscles can usually correct the pelvis.)
Obviously, this is easiest to do when the music is slow, so use your discretion, but it can be really helpful. More than once, I’ve caught myself preparing turns with one hip cocked, which isn’t what one might call a Best Practice.
Still couldn’t stop second-guessing myself during petit allegro, though, which resulted in a petit allegro that looked as if I’d been told, “Using the medium of ballet, interpret the behavior of a ball in one of those showy random-number generators they used to use in televised lottery drawings.”
What’s the rule, again?
“There’s no THINKing in BALlet!”
—Not Tom Hanks in A League Of Their Own, but close enough.
…So that was Monday, also known as Logical Friday The Second, because my schedule is FUBAR.
Oh, and I think I acquitted myself decently in our lone grand allegro, which is good, because I kept running over myself in a high-momentum tombé-pdb during Sunday’s.
TFW You Can’t Freaking Turn
I just couldn’t turn today.
Or,well…that’s not entirely true. I nailed a few really nice singles and maybe one nice double, but it wasn’t a good turning day.
My spot was, for some reason, extra slow.
My working foot didn’t to go where it was supposed to (seriously, at one point I closed an en dehors turn with the toe to the front of the knee, then moved it to the back immediately … just, WAT?!).
I hopped out of more than one double.
I blame my left ear, which is being weird. At one point I had to lie down on the floor and give myself a bit of the ol’ Epley Manœuvre.
I also blame Roberto Bolle, who showed up last night in one of those dreams that just go on and on, no matter how many times you blink briefly awake. I don’t remember it terribly well, but I think we were doing Swan Lake, with Bolle both dancing and directing.
Mostly I remember him yelling at me about my arabesque: higher, straighter, point that working toe harder, what’s that supporting foot trying to do? Get that demi-point UP!
My arabesques were, in fact, very nice today, though. So, thanks for that, Mr. Bolle
.
“You’re welcome!” (via Wikimedia Commons)
Dr. Dancebelt also featured in this dream as a disembodied voice over the house PA system. I remember thinking that was odd: we never saw him, but we knew he was there.
Seems fairly relevant.
Ultimately, this is what I get for watching Paris Opera Ballet doing “Études,” Bolle in “Manon,” the remainder of Bourne’s Swan Lake (2012) all one evening. Weird dreams and bad turns.
I wasn’t awesome at the grand allegro: it ended with a change of direction via piqué soutenu, and I just couldn’t remember that.
On the upside, my extensions are back above 90 even à côté, I managed not to flail in tour lent en attitude, and I actually didn’t hose up the petit allegro.
So there you have it. Wednesday, now with 100% more advice from Dream Bolle.
Tours De Farce
Modern was rather great today. I figured out how to do it without annoying my foot. I’ve discovered that the only thing that makes it hurt is putting even a little pressure directly on the outside of the joint, which happens with alarming frequency in modern dance. I simply faked my way through anything that involved that (safety releases, etc) and things went fine.
I’m still fairly terrible at remembering modern combinations, but that’s nothing new. It is slowly improving.
BW’s class tonight, meanwhile, was quite good once my body decided to wake up and participate. I think it was feeling sluggish because I’d just subjected it to a rehearsal followed by no stretching and a 20-minute drive. I suppose it was within its rights to feel grumpy about that.
Anyway, we did all the jumps today: so much petit allegro, followed by one grand allegro exercise.
One of the petit allegro exercises involved temps de cuisse, which I’ve been erroneously calling temps de puisse ever since I for some reason decided it was, in fact, power-step and not thigh-step. But I was right the first time, which is funny for the very specific reason that I initially thought it was really neat that the step was named after a piece of armor, then disappointed that it wasn’t … but I was wrong, and it really is named after the piece of armor!
…Which is pretty cool, though POWER STEP!!!!!111oneoneone1one1onewon is also a pretty cool name for anything in ballet.
Anyway, turns out temps de cuisse is supposed to be done upstage to effacé. Also turns out that when you do it that way rather than trying to do it en face, it’s a hell of a lot easier.
Oh, and remember that you “BOING!” upstage to efface, which I completely failed to indicate here because laziness.
The weirdest bit is that I remember looking this up, but maybe that happened in a very vivid dream, and I can file it away with BW’s choreographic advice about rotting fruit?
This is the most important thing I’ve ever learned about ballet, and in fact about dance in general: with few exceptions, things are largely easier when you do them correctly.
In fact, I would almost go so far as to say that this is pretty legit advice for life in general.
I don’t actually remember the rest of that combination at the moment, though I know involved entrechats, because I had done fugly entrechats in the second petit allegro exercise and was startled that they miraculously just plain worked in this one (probably because I was busy thinking about temps de cuisse instead).
Anyway, for grand allegro, BW gave me the choice of various species of jetés across the floor or tours. I said, “Tours, because I never get to do them in any other class,” which met with approval 🙂
Anyway, BW gave me a little combination that went something like:
tombé
pas de bou-chasséi(1)
plié fifth(2)
tour
- This is that kind of hybrid step in which you begin to pas de bourré, but instead of simply going back-side-front to fifth, you go back-side-front straight to fourth through a kind of flying chassé.
- In this case, you’re practically doing a petit assemblé that lands fifth. It spring-loads the legs. Oy vey, does it ever.
I tried this a couple of times and alarmed myself by doing 1.5 tours instead of proper singles … and then I ran the combination again, got off a nice single, and promptly fell the feck over. Like three times.
BW said he’d had the same experience, and once in fact left class in tears because he couldn’t stop falling over. He also pointed out that falling over means you’re trying really freaking hard. Which, in fact, was true.
I’ve had a bad habit of doing itty-bitty little cautious tours, which probably have their place somewhere in the great universe of ballet, but honestly aren’t very interesting. I’ve decided that I’m going to launch all my jumps into space all the time (okay, okay, exept when we’re doing petit allegro), in the interest of actually A) being an interesting dancer and B) making the best possible use these giant slabs of ham with which the Universe has for some reason seem fit to favor me instead of normal human legs.
Anyway, after falling over backwards a few times, I decided to switch sides, and except for the part where my brain insisted the first time on doing the right-side variation anyway, the left side came off without any falling over. I then tried the right again, almost fell over but caught myself, and realized that a part of the problem was simply that I was instinctively trying to avoid putting my right foot down.
You can do tours to a single foot if you’re doing actually doing tour-to-the-knee, but you have to do it on purpose(1). Otherwise, you half-ass things and fall right the heck over.
- Even then, you do it by bringing the front leg to passé after lift-off, which neatly shoots it out the back because Physics, and then you land in an awesome-looking lungy-kneely thing so you can look all romantic and impressive and princely.
So now I know two different ways to fall over doing tours.
A. Forget to change your feet.
The first thing you do in a tour (well, after lift-off) is change your feet. If I remember correctly, not everyone does it this way, but it’s the standard, and the guys who change the feet last are stylistic mavericks. Anyway, I once tried doing a tour without changing my feet just to see what would happen. I managed to stay upright, but just barely; if I’d put any real force into it, I would’ve been flat on my tuchas in a heartbeat.
B. Change your feet, but then fail to actually put the one that started in front down all the way.
In a tour, your feet act as a kind of braking system. You load up a metric shed-ton of momentum, and changing your feet and sticking both of them on the ground allows you to oppose that momentum in a meaningful way so you don’t fall on your butt and roll, which seems like it might actually be a valid way to end a tour if you’re dancing a role in which that’s how you die, but probably should otherwise be avoided.
Artist’s depiction of how not to land tours. Any resemblance to Kokopelli experiencing wind turbulence is entirely coincidental.
Anyway, the falling-over-backwards bit was pretty hilarious, mainly because it was a complete surprise Every. Single. Time … at least until I figured out why I was doing it.
By then, it was just after 8 PM anyway, and we’d been working for more than 90 minutes, so we called it a night.
Sadly, I won’t have class with BW next week because of rehearsal, but he is coming to see us dance that Saturday.
This Saturday is our final fitting, and I finally get to find out what I’m wearing in the performance other than white socks and white shoes (SPOILER ALERT: YES, there is a shirt).
Tomorrow, we have Awesome Acro Workshops, followed by a weekend of madness and final costume fittings and a rehearsal on Monday.
Next week, I am taking Tuesday OFFFFFF.
A Mostly-Good Day
Sunday class went well today. I seem to have suddenly remembered how to dance, though my grand allegro (of all things!) was iffy. I was, of course, thinking hard about my arms, and the rest of everything was just rather meh, except for the last grand jeté, which felt very nice.
JMH is one heck of a good teacher. I find the pacing of his class very pleasant, likewise the material is about right—stuff I can do and am polishing, generally. Hence the “thinking hard about the arms” part. I am trying to cure myself if this embarrassing wrist-flick that has infiltrated my arm programs.
I also managed, amongst a field of mostly acceptable turns (not bad, but nothing to write home about), a triple that felt light and stable because:
- I didn’t attack it mercilessly until dead.
- I got up over my leg and didn’t let myself tip over backwards.
- I didn’t anticipate my spot.
I did, however, keep overdoing the chaînes in the same combination. Not doing them badly, just doing too many. Which is a better problem than the previous problem of hating chaînes and struggling with them.
I stepped out early from the class I’m semi-teaching because my right foot hates modern right now. I dislocated my irritable small toe a while back, and it stayed that way for a month (because dancers, or at last this dancer, can be monumentally stupid: like, “It’s still attached, and I’m still dancing, so it must be fine!”). It’s back in place now but very annoyed with me.
I hung in there gamely for a while, but even a well-executed safety release makes that foot scream, and we’re performing next week (YASSSSSSS!), so I don’t want to annoy it any more than is necessary. And there will be a metric shed-tonne of necessary the next two weeks.
That gave me a few minutes to roll my legs, though, and they neeeeded it.
After, I did Pilates, finally, and discovered to absolutely nobody’s surprise that, yes, my core needs work. And after that, I had one pint of IPA and found myself surprisingly tipsy.
Definitely out of practice, there.
One Weird Trick Again
Class again with JMH (it turns out that his surname does not start with G, something I seem to learn and then immediately unlearn on a weekly basis).
Today he gave us a handy bit of advice for plié that is, in short, One Weird Trick to Improve Your Turnout: focus on the idea of pressing the small-toe side of the foot against the floor.
It might not actually seem do much of anything to your foot (though if you have a habit of letting your arches collapse, it will correct that), but because of the way the posterior chain works, it keeps all the things turned on that need to stay turned on.
In a sense, this is an extension of what BW always says to me (knees back, knees back, knees back) when I’m failing to engage Maximum Turnout Mode . It’s just a different way of approaching the same problem: almost a cheat-code, really, to gain access to the hidden treasure-chest that contains one’s deep rotators. Or, well, to the last few degrees of that treasure-chest.
Honestly, the metaphor kind of breaks down there. It also sort of implies that I’ve got junk in my trunk.
Which, in fact, is more or less true (QV: dancers … got … back).
Prime rump roast on the hoof, y’all.
How do I know it works?
MY BUTT HURTS.
Or, more specifically, all the muscles that click on when you imagine pressing your little toe, and indeed the entire lateral edge of your foot, into the floor. Or, well, technically, they feel tired and grumpy. They’ll hurt tomorrow.
Oh, and my turnout kept happily obliging me with another degree here, another degree there, as class progressed, without me thinking about my knees at all.
This did not, by the way, prevent two of us from so convincingly imagining ourselves to be on the wrong leg during an adage that we have now done three weeks in a row(1) that we actually both looked to make sure.
- It’s a really nice one, so I’m glad we’re repeating it.
Neither of us, by the way, actually was on the wrong leg. We were just apparently having some kind of shared delusion.
So I guess I should add a warning label.
CAUTION:
This technique may cause delusions of wrong-leggedness.
Honestly, though, it was just one of those days. I couldn’t seem to wind up on the correct foot after a series of waltz turns, probably because I was busy trying to make them look like, you know, waltz turns, and not like an incompetent ice skater, which is how I often imagine that my waltz turns look.
Sunday Class: Grand Allegro Pyrotechnics
This has to be brief, as I still have a boatload of stuff I need to finish today, but JMG gave us a really lovely, long grand allegro today, and I apparently tossed out one hell of a nice tour-jeté.
It was edifying to hear that it was nice, because I put All The Efforts into that run, including the tour-jeté (which I spring-loaded as if BW was there to remind me to jump higher) and couldn’t catch my breath because stupid allergies are stupid, so after we finished I had to sit down so I wouldn’t puke.
I don’t think that the left side was quite as nice, but it was still pretty nice, with the added bonus that there was no fear of barfing after finishing the run.
I think this is probably the first time I’ve managed to cram grand assemblé, tour jeté, saut de chat, pas de chat, Bournonville jeté, and a tour into a combination in class 😛
Oh, and today I did triple turns on command. Bad triples—one was pretty decent, the others were like, turn, turn … FECKING TURN ALREADY AIGHT, one with the Hoppity-Hops of Shame—but triples nonetheless. Both sides. Like four of them. So that’s a thing now, I guess?
I remember when bad doubles on command were the only doubles-on-command that I had, so I’m taking this as progress.
Any now, back to restoring all the freaking financial data via manual data entry because apparently I have severely, severely offended the Demi-urge of Bookkeeping.
Modern: The Side Successions Succeed
…Sort of.
I learned to love side successions in Cinci last summer. They are so the opposite of ballet, but when they work, holy crap, they’re beautiful (and they feel really good; like your body kind of massages itself while you’re also stretching).
Yesterday we worked on side successions a lot, especially a little traveling side succession thing that has been doin’ me a heckin’ bamboozle during a combination we worked on Tuesday and today, à la “Ballet Squid Goes Modern.”
I wasn’t thinking of it as a travelling side-succession. I was thinking of it as … I dunno, a more vertical washing machine(1) with wavy-gravy arms?
- To whit: “washing machine” might not even be the standard Modern Dance People name for the thing I call a “washing machine,” which is basically a squatty kind of chaîné in 2nd en tournant that you do en manège … yeah, I pretty much always wind up describing modern in ballet terms.
In fact, it’s a side-succession coupled with a chassé and a little turn-under.
We did a bunch of these across the floor to some super-cool flamenco music (if I had time for another dance form in my life right now, I’d go straight for flamenco).
Overall, a fairly successful class: I got frustrated at the end because I was struggling to remember bits of a long bit of choreography and I was All By Mysee-e-eeelf, so I couldn’t crib off someone else for the missing parts.
Curiously, I think I remember most of the choreography now ._. I am sorta cursed with that thing where the choreography consolidates on the way home.
Anyway, now I’m going to go try to wrangle the finances. Apparently, at some point, our Quicken restored a backup file (and apparently lost the newer ones?), and I’m basically having to re-do the reconciling for all of 2016. Not happy about that at all.
danseur ignoble 