The Great Data Restoration of 2017 is complete at last.
Bout freaking time.
Category Archives: balllet
TIL
…That a straight hour of partnering work can be pretty heavy on the arms even if there isn’t a single lift.
Especially 4-on-1 partnering, when you’re the 1.
Update: TI Also Learned that when I post at midnight, I don’t proof-read very well!
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.
You Might Be A Dancer If, Continued
Please ignore the shoes making their break for freedom. Nothing to see here. Move along.
- You have a tumble dryer or a clothesline, but laundry day at your place looks like this anyway
- And by “laundry day,” you mean “any day that ends in -y”
- Your bedroom resembles a fire sale at a Sansha outlet
- You have so many tights (Footed! Convertible! Capri! Short! Really effing short! Strappy!) and joggers you don’t know where to put them all, but only two pair of regular trousers
- Which you never wear because ugh
- You are more than typically grateful to the inventors of the Utilikilt
- You miss pockets, but not enough to make you wear regular clothes(1)
- Besides, they make hoodies with zippered pockets now.
In case you’re wondering, when a dancer and an aerialist love each-other very much, the result is:
- A closet like the one above
- A ridiculous collection of matching tights that the dancer almost never wears because deep in his black-feathered heart of hearts Serious Ballet Boy Is Serious (…but only about ballet).
Balanchine Noodle Experiment FTW
Tonight we added Apollo-y things and something I’m calling a Balanchine Noodle Experiment.
If you’re familiar with Balanchine’s ouevre, you probably know what I mean: those things where a flock of dancers basically ties itself into moving a Celtic knot?
Basically this, but with more heads and feet. (Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.)
Anyway, I’ve always thought those were cool (even back when I didn’t like B-style because I hadn’t seen it done well).
So that’s the kind of thing we’re doing—with partnering in the mix—and it’s hella cool.
We’re basically two weeks to launch now, which is really exciting.
Tomorrow, modern and BW’s class(1).
- I still haven’t found my effing jump rope, blergh; I’m just going to buy a new one. It won’t kill me to have a couple.
Tonight, sleeeeeeeeeep.
~
PS: I was a brainless mess in Killer Class, but evening class went brilliantly. Some light & lovely turns to combat the sheer badness of this morning’s turns.
Oh, Pinterest!
Wait, I thought that was “developpé,” not “cheesy taco pasta?”
That must be what they call it in Spaghetti technique…
40 More Seconds
After a rough start (I think the weather made us all boisterous), we sketched in 40 more seconds of choreography tonight.
I spent much(1) of the rehearsal standing around in 1st arabesque à terre while we worked two different bits in which I, standing there as such, am the still point.
- The rest of the time was petite allegro, running, more petite allegro, more running, even more petite allegro, demonstrating grand assemblée en tournant, even more petite allegro, and two full runs of all three minutes and ten seconds of the dance. Holy cats, do I need to locate my jump rope. Yea verily, my cardio sucketh.
I think the effect is going to be pretty neat. Following a section with much bourrée-ing, I chassé through and hold the 1st a-à-t whilst eight of the girls 2nd a-à-t, then collect back to a fondu-soutenu-y thing before leaping and flocking away to do pretty things stage right.
Immediately after the first flock departs, the other four girls envelop me (still bravely holding my position) into their flock, and then we do pretty things stage left.
The experience of dancing this bit of my part is rather like getting off of one train, watching as it sails away, then getting drawn into a second train amongst your fellow commuters.
Assuming, of course, that one is in the habit of arabesque-ing on the train platforms (regarding which I think I’d better exercise my right to the fifth amendment).
This was from our second rehearsal, not to mention a different part of the dance, but I really like this moment. Ironically, I’m invisible in this screenshot, except for my hands, which are in dead-bird mode.
One of the things I quite like about this piece is that it is not always the girls leading me or vice-versa. Sometimes they lead me; occasionally I lead them. At other points, I’m just part of the stream. (Evidently of commuters. On the bourré train.)
I’m curious about where we’re going next, as we’ve reached another partnering bit that is, per BG, sort of a little hommage to Apollo. For me, tonight finished on a total cliffhanger as I couru-ed my butt to downstage right and finished in this lovely lunge with arms extended à côté.
Evidently the girls are going to make use of my arms, and I’m burning with curiosity as to what, exactly, that means.
At any rate, I just hope they put them back when they’re done, because I am definitely going to need them, if only to shove food and so forth into my face after the performance, as one does.
Anyway, it’s past my bedtime. I’m taking a rest/cleaning day tomorrow, since both Wednesday and Thursday promise to be long days.
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.
Bizarre Choreography Advice from a Dream
Today was the third straight day that I woke up at 7, did a few things, decided to read for a few, and promptly zonked out for two hours. Considering that I can usually only nap if I’ve been awake for two days straight that’s bizarre enough.
However, today’s nap featured a dream in which BG offered the following advice for creating dances:
- Make sure the floor is clean. (Okay, that’s not so weird.)
- If you’re choreographing a dance for your little sister, use a combination of dish soap and Windex so she can see the reflection of her arm in the floor, but only if it’s a wooden floor (…oookay).
- Never leave rotting fruit on top of the piano unless you’re using it as part of the choreography. (Wat.I mean, obvs, but WAT. Also, why?!)
- And even then, only bananas.
I wish I could remember more of it.
It was all so sincere! BG in the dream was totally offering this in the vein of choreographic mentorship, as if these were basic questions central to the art of choreography that any budding choreographer might encounter.
…And yet, at the same time, it was all so bizarre(1).
All of this suggests that my unconscious mind is, at present, deeply concerned with matters of choreography and cleanliness (which, yes, but I didn’t need weird choreographic cleaning advice from a dream to figure that out).
So, in short, remember:
Never leave rotting fruit on top of the piano unless you’re using it as part of the choreography. And even then, only bananas.
- I should probably admit that this dream also involved a “pee machine,” which was a kind of elaborate Japanese urinal-and-holding tank that was supposed to allow people of any sex to pee modestly at outdoor festivals (apparently Dream Japan has never heard of the standard Port-o-Potty). In fact, it was so badly designed that even a bog-standard cismale with no intersex stuff going on would wind up pissing all over everything within the area of a meter and a half. Oy to the vey. I was cleaning that, too. I spritzed it with bleach, which caused crackling noises, which caused me to say, “I love chemical reactions!” What. The. Hell.
La danse est fini!
…Essentially.
“Knocking,” that is, not the ballet one.
The second-to-last missing piece was The Lift, which we hadn’t gotten around to really trying. Today it was just ABM and me, since AMS has a tech run for another thing tonight, so we took the time to firm that up.
The one we’re using is a simple modern-dance lift that involves wrapping yourself around your partner as she wraps herself around your middle, lifting her, turning in place, and then releasing her back into the wild.
Of course, that all happens as one smooth movement. In this case, it follows a series of washing-machine chaînés, which makes spotting the turns essential if you want to maintain a spotless record as someone who doesn’t drop his partners.
Getting the lift down also solved another problem I was having, which was an Awkward Classical Ballet Moment. I replaced it with a Contemporary Ballet Moment that hooks into the surrounding steps, et voilà, it all hangs together.
The really-last remaining piece is just a little moment that each of of us has individually right before the last sequence, and I’m confident that we’ll all come to the next rehearsal with something.
So, basically, the whole thing is thinged.
ABM told me she’s proud of me for stepping out of my classical ballet box and creating something much more contemporary. I’m pretty pleased with that as well—I feel like I left the dance go where it needed to instead of fighting it. That’s kind of a breakthrough for me, too be honest.
Our performance date, meanwhile, has moved to April 1st, which is totally fine by me. It gives us time to really polish the dance, and I think the end result will be nice.
Meanwhile, our Rep group is swinging right along. We’ve made really good progress this week! I’m still enjoying that piece immensely.
That’s it for today. Everything is tired, but I have really good chili and an evening and a day day to stay home and recharge.
Saturday, we’re going to see Human Abstract, which is exciting. I’m glad I take 9:00 class, though, because we opted for the mâtinée.
danseur ignoble 