Category Archives: balllet
Danseur Ignoble: If You Can Describe It, You Can (Eventually) Do It
Or, The Enabling Nature of Formal Ballet Vocabulary
For those who find foreign languages challenging (full disclosure: I don’t), entering into the world of ballet can be daunting.
Suddenly, you’re learning not only a new way of moving, but also a foreign language — one that sometimes conflicts with itself (Are my arms in third or fifth? …I don’t know, are we doing Vaganova, Paris Opera, or Cecceti today?).
I felt like this point needed an illustration, with apologies to photographer Fanny Schertzer, whose awesome photos from Prix de Lausanne can be found here:
“Zecheng Liang – Le Corsaire – Prix de Lausanne 2010” by Fanny Schertzer – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
and here:
“Mingyi Liang – Giselle, Prince Albrecht – Prix de Lausanne 2010-3” by Fanny Schertzer – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
You have to memorize all these words (some of which already have more than one meaning in your normal, everyday language), and then you have to remember them and perform the corresponding actions in the right sequence when your teacher shoots a string of pidgin French at you at the end of class. And then you have to remember them again next class (which, in the beginning, often means “next week”) and probably learn some new ones.
On the other hand, with the exception of minor quibbles over whether one’s arms are in third or fifth (aided by the fact that every teacher and dance master in the history of ever pretty much automatically demonstrates which one they mean as they’re describing the combination — seriously, even if the rest of them is standing still, bras gonna port) and whether to say “B+” or “attitude a terre,” the upside of this whole conundrum is that in ballet, we understand each-other. (Well … Mostly.)
When someone says soubresaut, as long as you’ve learned soubresaut, you can do it.
When someone says pirouette en dehors a la seconde, once again, if you know what pirouette en dehors mean and you know what a la seconde means, you can figure out what’s intended — and, if you know you can execute both movements, you can probably even figure out how to do it. Maybe not well, at first, but learning is almost always a process of successive approximations of goal behavior (hooray for Applied Behavioral Analysis!). Chances are you looked kinda funny the first time you rode a bike, too. Dancers learn by doing.
Likewise, once you develop enough vocabulary, you can ask other dancers what the names of things are: “You know that thing that looks kind of like tour jete, only you’re kind of rotating around one leg that’s in attitude? What the heck is that called?” Of course, half the time, the name of the thing you’re looking for turns out to actually be “name of thing you already know” plus “a la seconde” or “in attitude” or “from fourth,” possibly with a modifier like “en dedans” or “en dehors” or “grande” or “petite.”
This doesn’t always work as well as it might: it took me, like, three separate searches to figure out what the “thing that looks kind of like tour jete, only you’re kind of rotating around one leg that’s in attitude” is called (ungracefully) a “barrel turn.” But almost everything else in ballet can be picked apart based on its technical name (and it’s possible that the so-called “barrel turn” — which, I’d like to point out, is neither a barrel, nor a turn, but is a jump that has a turn in it — has a technical name I just haven’t discovered).
I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit in the context of choreography (in part because my project for this summer will involve explaining choreography to people who may or may not have a firm grasp of ballet vocab: yes, I plan to impart the names of things, but that doesn’t mean people will remember them).
Like, ballet choreography is maybe a bit easier to transmit than modern dance choreography, given that we have a standardized vocabulary from which we work. Admittedly, that vocabulary can’t transmit style. Watch some video from NYCB, some from the Bolshoi, some from the UK’s Royal Ballet, and some from the Dutch school, and you’ll see that there can be enormous stylistic differences, some of which — a la NYCB — trace back ot a specific choreographer. However, the basic elements of a dance can be transmitted intact, down to the beat (or even half-beat; the “and” bears great importance in dance).
Curiously, while I have some modern dance background, I’m not really sure how this works in that context. Like, my modern dance teacher was awesome, and because of that we always knew what she was talking about: but “Down, down, UP, down!” means one thing when you’re doing that frog-jumpy thing and a totally different thing when you’re doing what’s essentially a series of plies with a saute in the mix.
Different seminal choreographers have developed different vocabularies. They tend to be descriptive, but description doesn’t necessarily convey intention as well as we’d like. “Slash” (perhaps a term no modern dance choreographer employs?) could mean a lot of different things.
To be fair, ballet has been around for hundreds of years at this point, and it developed a tradition of formal codification pretty early (being as it was founded upon strictly-regulated court dance). It seems possible, even probable, that as modern dance (which is, what, a little more than a hundred years old?) evolves, it too will develop a cross-school choreographic language (rather like the way music has evolved a language of its own; all musicians speak at least a little Italian and/or German).
It’s at least equally likely, though, that it won’t — the coherence that exists in ballet reflects its foundations. It has evolved divergently (hence “Are my arms in third or fifth?”) rather than convergently.
Anyway, this is one of the things I like about ballet: sometimes I don’t know the name of a movement, but I can look at it and figure out what its component parts are, and then figure out how to string them together (likewise, I can often infer the name of a movement in the same way; nobody had to tell me what pirouettes a la seconde were called). Sometimes I know the name of a movement but not what it looks like, but if the name reveals the component parts, I can figure it out.
In short, if I can describe it, I can eventually do it (even though I’m actually a kinaesthetic learner, and therefore more often move from doing to describing than vice-versa; I figured out saut de chat — one of the less-descriptive things — long before I knew what it was called; likewise foutte [again, not the “black swan” variety”]).
Unfortunately, that doesn’t really help me with the barrel turn. I can turn, but I can’t barrel. Or, well, I can barrel, but more in the context that means “speed wildly,” like “barreling down the hill.” So I’ll just have to learn that technique the old-fashioned way, through demonstration, attempt, falling on my ass, and repetition — in other words, successive approximations of the goal behavior.
But not just yet.
Ballet Squid Chronicles: In Which The Gauntlet Is Thrown Down; Dansuer Ignoble
This morning a friend of mine on Google Plus challenged me to make a ballet video à la Sergei Polunin. Being as I am a sucker for a good challenge and also in need of some intermediate-term motivation, I (of course) immediately accepted said challenge. I still need to put together an audition video anyway.
I’m assuming that everyone on the internet who is even remotely interested in ballet and/or in hot Russian guys has already seen the video in question, but just in case, here it is. You know, for informational purposes and stuff. Consider me, like, a handy reference librarian.
Obviously, I am not Mr. Polunin, and I doubt I’ll master the art of launching myself from a supine position on the floor into a gigantic flying cabriole OMFG any time soon o.O So my video isn’t going to be anywhere near as impressive. Just saying.
But it does give me an excuse to get organized and finishing whipping my butt into shape and use my time more effectively. I am really bad at handling time without external structure, and only doing class a couple times a week has thrown a huge monkey wrench in the gears of my ballet plans.
Like, I do this thing where I’m all, “Okay, I have five days this week that I’m not in ballet class, I should definitely work in some calisthenics on at least three of those days.”
So I get up on Tuesday morning and I’m like, “Hooray, I have all this time to do my embarrassing calisthenics before Denis comes home; I think I will clean up a bit and work on some homework.”
And then, being me, I get paranoid, so I start on the homework first.
And then suddenly it’s Saturday morning and I’m back in ballet class and I haven’t done a single freaking push-up all week (though I have at least gotten rather good about actually working in some crunches; I do them in the kitchen while I’m waiting for dishes to dry or whatever).
Somehow, the thought of creating a video that OMG PEOPLE MIGHT ACTUALLY SEE makes the need to, like, actually not slack off on the physical training end of things seem rather more pressing. In short, being stronger (in a targeted kind of way; just building muscle for the sake of building muscle can become counterproductive pretty quickly for dancers) makes dancing easier.
Right now, my other pressing motivators are Burning Man (which isn’t ’til August), the deadline for submitting an audition video to Columbia (December, 2015), and then a performance with the adult ballet program peeps and Sun King in 2016. Given my total inability to conceptualize time, even Burning Man might as well be some time next century. Like, I try to get my head around it: you know, it’s at the end of August, and here’s how many months that is, how many weeks, and here’s this other stuff I need to do between now and then — but actually that’s pretty meaningless to my brain. I can imagine space really easily; time? Not so much.
In other news, I am also an idiot.
It appears that I do, in fact, know how to do grand jeté en tournant, which is simply the full name for what we all call “tour jeté” (I feel like I should have already grokked this, but somehow I never made the connection until I heard someone mention “tour jetjeté” as an example of ballet shorthand).
I have, in fact, known how to do that since I was, like, seven or eight years old (it is my most favoritest leapy thing, because it looks impressive but it’s actually really easy). The thing I don’t know how to do is something else. I’m not sure what it’s called, so I’ll have to consult with Ballet Technique for the Male Dancer and also the whole freaking internet until I figure it out.
Might actually be some kind variation on grand jeté en tournant; there are a lot of things like that in ballet. Everything is basically a variation on something else, in the long run, since ballet essentially builds on a handful of basic elements: a single tour en l’air, for example, is basically just changement with a spin (QV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMjIzufr20Y); changement is just soubresaut with a change of feet; soubresaut is just sous-sous with a little more oomph; sous-sous is just fifth-position releve with everything pulled in tight.
And sous-sous is actually spelled sous-sus, and some day I will remember that.
In other other news, I feel that I’ve sort of graduated into the realm of vertebrates now, and it’s not entirely accurate to call myself a “ballet squid” anymore. I’m really not, which is surprising and startling and stuff. So I guess I will hereafter refer to myself as a “Danseur Ignoble,” which about sums up my plebeian condition in the world of ballet.
Kind of has a ring to it.
Ballet Squid Chronicles: Back to Monday Class Notes
Essentials tonight. Lovely, easy class: port de bras and épaulement hung together all through barre, full splits again, grand battement mostly sans barre, back to doing single-leg relevés on both sides. I was able to do our sous-sous-échappe exercise (also sans barre, because there’s really no excuse for using the barre for that at this point).
No jumps tonight, which is for the best. The calf is definitely just a touch sore, so jumps probably would’ve been a bridge too far. Little jumps and Sissones next week, I think (and whatever on the left leg). Temps levee, on the other hand, is at least two weeks out (on the right leg).
Across the floor we just did glissade-pas de bourree. Super easy, so I made an effort to make it look pretty (and succeeded, if I do say so myself).
Today was one of those interesting days on which I felt okay about my body throughout class. I’m still wrestling with being okay with my body. That’s going to be a long process for me.
Still, it does help when your turnout works, and your extensions are high, and your arms work, and you don’t dance like a squid on too much Ritalin. Then you can at least say to yourself, “Okay, so I can be grateful that my body is capable.”
For a long time I really struggled with that idea, because I thought that recognizing that was supposed to magically make the bad feelings go away, and when it didn’t it hurry and I resented it. (I also resented the heck out of the idea that people wanted to tell me how I should feel: and while I’m sure some of them actually did, a lot of people who have said, “… But it’s great that your body Works!” probably really didn’t intend that.)
It turns out that I’m not stuck forcing myself to only feel one or the other.
Instead, the dysphoric hurtiness and the gratitude can kind of coexist, like siblings in the back of the car, elbowing each-other now and then but also not killing each-other, which really kind of feels like a big deal, to be honest.
So the difficulty, the dysphoria that may or may not every go away, that’s still there, but I’ve reached a point at which I somehow simultaneously manage to be grateful for some stuff about my body (and not just my feet).
It doesn’t make the dysphoria not hurt, but it makes it less cognitively dissonant to sit with the dysphoria in the face of an emerging appreciation for what is rather an immense array of capability. I don’t know if I’m making any sense, here, because it’s such a weird, new idea for me (I’m sure that folks who are better-versed in dialectical behavior therapy are all like “Well, duuuh!” ;))
Okay. That’s enough trying-to-asplain for now.
Anyway, I plan to go home and RICE my leg and rest it well tomorrow. This coming week I have a bazillion things to do, including a doctor’s appointment to discuss meds. I will try to also get caught up on comment replies (which I’ve been handling kind of willy-nilly) and reading all the awesome blogs that you guys have shared with me and, I guess, also shared me with 😀
No Wednesday class this week.
G’night, everybody.
Val Caniparoli’s “A Cinderella Story” at Louisville Ballet
I’m going to keep this brief, because I’m soooooooo tired.
This was, simply put, a really surprisingly great show. Very different, very modern choreography; great music; awesome set design; excellent execution by the dancers — but the acting element was what really stole the show. (Also: Loved the wacko stepmother. She was brilliant!)
Dancers embodying their characters; playing with them; blurring the line between “dancer” and “actor” — that makes for great ballet storytelling. No awkward pantomime. One rather hilarious allusion to Swan Lake.
Enjoyed immensely; highly recommended. Did cabrioles all the way to the car (but only on the left leg!).
If you can go see it, do!
One caveat: some younger kids (and some less creative adults) may not groove on the very abstract storytelling approach. Our nephew (who turned 7 in January) really enjoyed some scenes, but a lot of it went right over his head. However, dance-mad kids with some ballet training will either love it (if they love dance, period) or haaaate it (if they’re classical ballet purists).
Ballet Squid Chronicles: Taking It Easy
Ballet is basically the ultimate sport/art for masochists (short, I guess, of the Sun Dance). Dancers push themselves hard; we push ourselves ’til it hurts, and then, generally speaking, we push a little more, because we figure that’s A) how you grow and B) how you prove yourself.
As such, we dancers can be a bit silly about recovering from injuries. First, there’s the “No Fun” factor (What do you mean, no jumps?! But I love jumping!); second, there’s the eternal fear of (GASP!) falling behind. :::shudder:::
Needless to say, after re-injuring my now nearly three-week-old calf injury last Saturday, I’m taking one for the team. Sucking it up and cooling it down.
Today, I did class, but I skipped the jumps, the one-foot releves and balances (on the right), and even the little springing sous-sous/echappe exercise that I normally enjoy so much (because it lets me show off, basically).
I’m also working slowly and carefully through just about everything, paying constant attention to whether or not that calf hurts. It’s not my natural approach to dealing with injury (which is, more or less, to pretend the injury hasn’t happened and continue apace), but, well … I think there might be something to it.
Taking it easy in class is giving my calf time to heal — but it’s also allowing me to focus on really sharpening up my basic technique, and I think that’s an invaluable opportunity. I’m working on really feeling turnout in all the right muscles (without clenching; I am like the King of Clenching, people, you don’t even know!), really feeling where my weight needs to be, and so forth. Pretty cool stuff.
The weird part of working through this particular injury is that it has made me very conscious of just how hard the muscles and tendons in my calves are working even when balancing at releve on both feet. My sous-sous is just not as stable right now as it usually is: my right leg isn’t all the way there.
Also, it was really weird doing barre stretch with no releve on the right foot. You develop routines; habits (dancers are rather infamous for being creatures of habit anyway). I had to think about how to get from a la seconde to en face. The answer? One very un-balletic shimmy. Like, work that booty, baby. But it got me there, so it flies.
I spent the time that everyone else was doing little jumps working my plies.
I do not use my plie sufficiently in jumps anyway: I have way overdeveloped the muscles that let you spring off of your toes, so I under-utilize the rest of my leg when jumping, and that’s how I injured myself in the first place (Ballet peeps! When your teacher yells HEELS ON THE FLOOR!!! as you saute across the room, that’s why!).
As my calf comes back online, I plan to spend a few weeks really concentrating on getting my heels on the ground and using the bejeezus out of my plie, even if that means smaller jumps for now. Eventually, it should let me manage even higher, more powerful jumps — which is pretty neat, since I’m already pretty good at high, powerful jumps: but first, I need to retrain my muscle memory and neural wiring so using the plie fully is part of the jumping process.
Going across the floor I worked on ballet walk and then little chasses on the right leg; on the left, I was able to do the saute arabesque-chassee combination. Switching back and forth every couple of strides made for one heck of an effective coordination exercise; I was able to get my legs to do it, but my arms got hella confused. I also got off one little cabriole — but just one.
I feel like this means I should probably play with doing different combinations on each leg on a regular basis, to familiarize myself with the process of rapidly flipping back and forth between two different choreographic elements. Though, now that I think of it in those terms, it feels like it should actually be easier to do than it was.
Anyway, that’s it for now. Time to go collect a movie and some stuff to throw together for dinner!
I Don’t Think This Is Quite What Our Grandmothers Had In Mind
Let me begin by saying I’m a dude who grew up in something as close as possible to a parallel universe: a house full of strong women with a female breadwinner (an executive at a large utility company); divorced parents who got along brilliantly; a father who really saw women as equals, who valued friendships with women (including his ex-wife, my Mom) immensely. In short, a reality where equality between the sexes was a reality.
I sort-of got that sexism was a thing, and at the same time, I didn’t really see it in action. I kind of labored under the delusion that sexism was over, or that it only happened in far-away places — other countries, maybe. Or maybe Texas?
I’m sure now (because hindsight is 20/20) that my Mom and my Grammy and my sister experienced it: in fact, we all do. The extent of my exposure, as a kid, came in this sort of vague knowledge that my sister got picked on for being bigger than other kids in a way that boys her size didn’t — and even that, I only figured out in retrospect.
Well, and then there were the weird messages conveyed by TV shows. Oh, and road signage*.
Anyway, we were busy, free-ranging, book-crazed kids, outdoors at least as often as we were indoors — but we did watch some TV.
I remember being annoyed by ads that divided up toys along strict gender lines (who says girls didn’t play with Hot Wheels, or boys with My Little Pony?) and I remember being really, really annoyed by the theme song to James Bond, Jr., which included the line “… As he rescues the girl!”
The part of me that was semi-aware of such things was like, “Hello, this is the 90s, probably ‘the girl’ can take care of herself!” I’m not sure if that was actually a kind of an in-joke and The Girl in question did more rescuing than Mr. Bond Jr., because the show didn’t have any talking animals on it, so I wasn’t interested.
Anyway. So I was aware of gender issues, but in this very limited kind of way founded on the idea (common to lids in general) that the foundations of my world were just like everyone else’s, and that everyone was equipped with the same set of tools that let my sister and me roll our eyes and call bull when we spotted something obviously sexist.
So basically, grown-up life has been a long series of little shocks in which I’ve realized that, yes, sexism is still a huge thing (and not just in other far-off countries like Texas), and that it’s a big thing, and that it’s a subtler thing than I ever could have guessed. Oh, and that not everyone is equipped to see it or fight it.
For many women, I suspect this is definitely an eye roll moment: “Like, duh, hello? Of course it’s a thing!”
I’m right there with you: I feel like there’s a lot I should have seen sooner; a lot I still don’t see, probably**.
**Weirdly, ballet is one heck of an effective mirror for male privilege, because dudes are kind of like unicorns in the ballet world, and even a marginally-talented unicorn gets a ton of attention and encouragement (everyone likes to have unicorns around!).
It amazes me that insecure straight dudes aren’t flocking to ballet class in droves. Nothing, and I mean nothing, has made me more aware of my own privilege as a male (let alone as an able, conventionally-attractive male) like ballet has.
Like most kids from privileged-yet-socially-liberal backgrounds, I’ve also been raised with the assumption that, as a society, we’re making progress — we’re moving forward; that the general trajectory of the course of history (occasional backpedaling notwithstanding), in relation to human rights, is forward.
In a sense, we are: take, for example, the huge cultural conversation about sexual assault on college campuses***.
Not that long ago — a heartbeat ago, on the scale of history — that conversation couldn’t have happened. The straight male voices that dominated cultural discourse would’ve said, “Ha! This is nothign but a bit of hysteria. You little ladies should get back to your Early Childhood Education studies and leave the big problems to us men.”
Now we can talk about it, an we are talking about it.
And that conversation has been revelatory: particularly, it has revealed how utterly blind a lot of dudes are to their role in the problem. And while a lot of them have predictably been public asshats about it, some have woken up and said, “Holy crap, I am part of this problem.”
Most importantly, though, women have stood up to speak, and are still standing even after some pretty intense efforts at shouting them down, and that’s a fine thing****.
****Never mind that some campuses have responded with bass-ackwards “Don’t go out at night if you don’t want to get assaulted” policies.
Like, seriously, people? THIS IS 2015. We should all know by now that that isn’t how it works.
So we’re making progress there, by fits and starts.
Yet, at the same time, in other ways, it feels like we’re going backwards.
A case study:
A while back, after the bazillionth ad for hair dye or straightener or something during some TV show I want watching, I said something to Denis about how it seemed like everyone always wanted whatever kind of hair they didn’thave, and that I felt lucky that I was happy with mine.
And then I realized, wait — this is sexism in action. It’s capitalism feeding on sexism; on the kind of sexism that makes women feel like they’re never good enough the way they are, no matter what.
This whole snowball is about insecurity: all these ads were aimed at women, and they all began with the assumption that if you were blonde, you should want to be brunette so guys would think you were smart and mysterious or something and want you, and if you were brunette, you should be blonde so guys would think you were vivacious and fun or something and want you, and if you were somewhere in the middle, you should maybe go full ginger, because everyone knows gingers are unpredictable force-of-nature sexy vixens and guys love that.
And I realized that I am more or less satisfied with my hair because I’m a guy,and I don’t have an entire culture and all my friends telling me I should try some other color or maybe get a perm*****.
We’ve reached a point now where guys are starting to do this stuff, too: eating disorders in men are on the rise (when I was 13, I was an anomaly as an anorexic dude; not even a blip on the cultural radar; now, the problem is noticeable enough that there have been a few documentaries about it), etc.
In one sense, maybe that’s a good thing: it says that men are at last beginning to be subject to the same market pressures as women, if on a much smaller scale.
Let’s face it, dudes: ladies who are shaped in any way differently than the whatever the culture has deemed correct take way, way more flack than men who are equally divergent. Likewise, while we guys may catch a little more flack when it comes to making career choices that are aimed at giving us more family time (as opposed to more money), women are more than compensated there with an exceptionally heavy load of cultural crap-flinging no matter what they choose.
Here’s the thing: while we’ve upped the market pressures on ourselves, we’ve also upped the pressures on the women. I suspect that “good enough” has never been good enough for women in our culture — but now it kind of looks like maybe even perfect isn’t good enough.
If you’re a fast-track career woman but not Supermom-cum-Wonderwife, it’s not like our culture says, “Ohai, you’re doing great, actually!”
Instead, it’s all, “Yeah, well, Angelina Jolie has a zillion well-adjusted kids and a high-powered career and still finds time to bake all-organic quinoa crisps.” (Helpfully leaving out that Jolie can afford to pay someone else to do the marketing or watch the kids and can afford to take the rest of her life off if she so chooses.)
Meanwhile, dudes still practically win the Nobel Peace Prize whenever they manage to heat up a frozen pot pie without also burning down the house, because LOLz, cooking for the fam is totally still for chicks******.
So, in short, we’re still a long way from equal, around here. And I’m pretty sure that’s not what our grandmothers and great-grandmothers were after.
What I’ve learned by being a dude, but also a gay dude, is that having privilege is (rather aptly) just like being a fish in water: you have no idea that you’re surrounded by it, buoyed up, floating in it, until you encounter some air-breather that’s caught a toe in some seaweed and is struggling and going, “Holy crap, how can you not see why I’m drowning, here? This stuff is everywhere!”
And, then, what you do with that information is up to you. You can either help an air-breather out or you can go, “I don’t see what the problem is; I’m breathing just fine.”
Only, like, that analogy can only go so far, because we also make the water, and (after a period of adjustment) we’d be okay without it. Those of us who already hold a fair bit of privilege have a lot to say about which way the culture turns — that is, whether it’s a place that’s harmful to air-breathers, or a place where both air-breathers and those of us who can choose to breathe water or air can both live.
So now I keep an eye out for my own privilege, because it’s up to me to not be that guy.
Yeah, this gets weird and difficult sometimes: like, when I realize that as a boy from the frenetic Northeast, my entire conversational style makes it really hard for a girl from the South or Midwest to get a word in edgewise. But part of being a grown-up and wearing my big-boy trousers is learning how to handle a little discomfort.
I can back myself down, listen more patiently, and so forth. That doesn’t mean, by the way, that girls from the South can’t also adapt to different conversational styles: they can and do, but it’s still my job to meet them in the middle and to figure out what I’m doing wrong.
That’s part of what being equal is about: I don’t get to feel like my way is the only right way. I don’t always have to agree with the way other people do things, but I do have to give them full consideration.
So basically I feel like we’ve got a long way to go — and I think that every inch of progress we make along that way actually makes the world a better place for women and for men.
As for that golden future the Feminists of earlier generations envisioned: I used to think we were already there.
Now I know we’re not.
I also know that while women probably can move ask the mountains to get us there entirely on their own, they flat-out shouldn’t have to.
It’ll be a lot easier for everyone and better if we guys wake up, smell the privilege, roll up our sleeves, and help out (after all, we built those stupid mountains that are in the way).
So, um, I hope this is all okay. When I stated writing this, I thought I knew what I was saying, but it got away from me (like, you know, every blog entry in the history of ever).
Anyway, here I am, and here’s my shovel, and I hope I can help move these mountains, because I’m realling looking forward to dancing together on the other side.
Ballet Squid Chronicles: More Cabrioles Followed By Argh
Margie’s class was great today, mostly.
Pretty barre. One long, effortless passé relève balance. Graceful work at center. Nice cabrioles. I got to demonstrate grand jete.
And then, boom.
This bizarre popping sensation in my calf, and once again I was done. Just like two Mondays ago, my calf would not work. I could stand, I could walk, I could jump on my left leg, but putting weight on the ball of my right foot was essentially un-doable.
The protective mechanisms that keep you from destroying yourself had kicked in. Interesting!
Fortunately, Denis was in class, so once we were really done, I asked him to take a quick look at my calf.
The verdict: no tears or anything, but in the process of compensating for my previous injury, I’d injured something else.
I’ll be doing only barre and maybe adagio for a week or so. No jumping; no one-leg relève balances on the right. No promenades on the right foot. No cabrioles 😦
Denis is lovely and has bought me some compression socks and a support sleeve thing for the right ankle. They feel really good.
Anyway, I’ll be back at it soon enough.
In other news, Claire’s secret mission was an audition with another company, and she got the job!
Which is both super exciting and kind of sad.
Ballet Squid Chronicles: Cabriole
I took Margie’s class today, due to the calf thing (which is now almost entirely better).
Good corrections:
1. I’m still throwing my shoulders back in my turns (this was a self-correction that Margie seconded :D)
2. I flex my shoulders back too much when my arms are in second.
Edit: OMG, you guys, I just totally figured this out!
When I bring my sternum up and forward, I’m throwing my shoulders back, as if they can’t move independently of one-another.
In fact, they can: there is no bony connection whatsoever between the shoulders and the ribcage (creepy, amirite?) — just the cartilaginous one where the sternum and clavicles (collarbones) connect.
So it is, in fact, possible to move the sternum up and forward without moving the shoulders back — basically, if you think about keeping the shoulders down and moving the sternum up and forwards (as if someone has a hook through the front of your shirt!), it’s easier to do this without throwing the shoulders further back and thus hosing up all your turns.
Et voila!
Like, I go to allongé, basically, as my default second. This is what felt so different in Brian’s class (he made us do almost the entire barre with arms at second, and he made m do my second right).
This is another artefact of that benign hypermobile joint thingy. So having retrained my proprioception in my wrists and elbows, I now need to retrain it in my arms so second feels like second, instead of second allongé feeling like second. Normal second feels like I’m curled in on myself, but it looks really good and keeps my balance forward.
I came up with an analogy that works for me regarding développée avant from fondu — it’s like you’re using the inside of your heel to hand someone an egg.
If you turn in at all, you drop the egg, so you have to keep rotating the leg as it rises. For me, this forces a smooth, graceful extension.
I also did cabrioles while we did sauté arabesque, chassée across the floor, because why not? Margie mentioned it, so I whipped them out.
I didn’t do them on the right (supporting) leg, though — the calf is mostly healed, but I didn’t want to push it. As I got tired, my sautés on that side turned into sissones. I got called out on that, too 😉
Margie reminded me that I should be beating the bottom leg and letting the top one sort of rise off of it; did my next set with that in mind, and it worked like magic.
It’s one of those technique things I know but don’t think of. I tend to do some kind of crazy diagonal soubresaut thing instead.
So there you have it. Friday class with cabrioles. I’m looking forward to tomorrow ^-^
Ballet Squid Chronicles: In Which I Inadvertently Take On An Awesome and Frightening Responsibility
So, you guys might remember a while ago — sometime last summer, I think — when I decided to take on the challenge of doing some choreography to some Philip Glass, and then decided that it would be awesome to use this choreography to create a small performance piece for Burning Man that could be built upon and performed by total ballet noobs?
So, um, apparently I failed to realize until yesterday that, in so doing, I basically said to the world, “Give me your ballet noobs, and let me teach them!”
o.O’
So, in essence, this means I’ve taken on the task of teaching some very basic ballet to a random group of people without either A) injuring them, B) ruining any chance they have at developing sound technique, or C) destroying their love of dance forever by overfacing them with things they can’t do.
You know.
No pressure.
Obviously, I’m not going to take a bunch of total beginners and try to teach them double tours (or even single ones) or anything like that — and I’m pretty sure I can put together a basic barre that anyone with appendages can do (I’ll be cribbing it from Margie’s barre). I’m pretty sure I can even impart basic form and placement decently well.
Here’s the thing: I remember my very first ballet classes as a wee kid reasonably well, but by the time I took them, I’d already been doing gymnastics for at least three years (seriously, I was three when I starting taking gymnastics lessons) and pre-ballet for one year. Nothing we did seemed difficult at all, and I picked up everything really easily, so I have essentially no idea which bits and pieces people find difficult.
And that leads to my question for you, adult ballet students of the internet. Two questions, actually!
First, when you were completely new to ballet, what was hard and/or unpleasant for you?
Likewise, what was easy and/or fun?
I realize I’m going to get a range of answers, here — like, if it was up to me, basically nobody would ever do chaines until they’d already been dancing for fifteen years, because for some reason I perceive chaines as difficult (even though I’m now at least somewhat good at them). Denis, on the other hand, has no difficulty with chaines, but thinks piques (to my mind, the easiest turns in the entire universe) difficult. Likewise, soutenu turns are super easy for both our nephew and for me, but apparently nigh impossible for Denis. I’m just hoping to get some consensus on what’s doable.
Fortunately, we don’t have to try to do any leaps, because as far as I know we’ll be dancing on the equivalent of a marley remnant laid directly on the playa. I don’t want to mess up anyone’s joints, so no leaps — maybe a few sautés, but that’s it. As such, the mini-performance choreography in question will be mostly adagio and steps that might otherwise be linking steps.
Anyway, that’s it. I’m very much looking forward to this project, even though I’ve realized that it entails way more responsibility than I initially imagined. It should be a lot of fun, whether I wind up working with a bunch of eager people who’ve never danced a minute in their lives or a bunch of people who dance professionally and could mop the floor with me in a ballet-off.
That’s it for tonight. As my now-favorite ballet shirt proclaims, “Keep calm and rond de jamb!”
Crazy Post-Adolescent Ballet Obsession: Reflections on Almost One Year as a Ballet Squid
I am convinced that there are basically only two flavors of adult* ballet students.
There are those like Denis — people who go to class once a week or so, enjoy it, and even develop an extensive ballet-specific vocabulary.
People who like to watch ballet, who enjoy being around dancers, who can even carry on conversations with dancers without going all glassy-eyed at the third or fourth mention of some obscure ballet term or yet another vivid description of some random dancer’s feet. People who like ballet, dance a little, and yet somehow just float along on the surface of the roiling tide that is our chosen medium.
…And then there are the rest of us.
You know who you are. (Ahem. Hi! :::waves enthusiastically:::) Those of us who cram as many classes as we can find into our schedules, purchase untold lengths of high-powered elastic with which to strengthen our feet, and practice adagio in the kitchen as we baste the roast. Those who understand what it means to crack an ankle on the dishwasher while attempting turns a la seconde (also in the kitchen).
Those who understand that the kitchen is simply where one practices turns. And adagio. But not allegro, unless the kitchen is also really big.
Those of us who find ourselves possessed of twenty-three tennis balls, even though we don’t play tennis (probably bad for the turnout), because we bought one to roll out a kink in a leg muscle, and then the cat made off with it, so we got another, which the cat also stole, and so forth.
Those of us who have collected six pairs of demi-pointe slippers in an undying quest to find the perfect ones for our particular, unique feet (or out of simple, obsession-driven avarice; also completely valid). Those of us who can identify, among our apparently-infinite arrays of highly-similar tights, not only which are the best ones, but why — and who will simultaneously weep and take up arms if ever their manufacturers stop making them.
Those of us who can intelligently discuss the problems unique to dance belts or pointe shoes.
Those of us who automatically make up choreography in our heads whenever we hear music, including video game music**.
Those of us who take up ballet with an off-hand comment about how it can’t possibly be more expensive than racing bikes, and then later realize that we dare not even breathe aloud the sum total of the year’s ballet budget***.
Those of us who — explicably or inexplicably, either because we danced as kids or because we never danced as kids, either because we always wanted to dance or because we never thought of it until one day we stumbled into a free class and then … well, you know the rest of the story by now — find ourselves utterly subsumed by the aforementioned roiling tide, upon which our arguably more mentally-balanced friends float with such ease.
My completely unscientific survey of my fellow adult ballet students suggest that the former group — the Denises of the adult ballet community — are in the minority. I am left with the impression that ballet, perhaps by its very nature, either demands or creates unstinting**** dedication. This may be partly because I follow the blogs of other ballet-mad individuals and take my classes at a pre-pro school with a pretty demanding teaching staff, but I suspect that it’s mostly the truth.
I think that, like cycling, ballet asks a lot of those who participate. New students filter in and either get swept away on the tide or filter out again after a while. Once in a while, someone like Denis manages to stick around without becoming completely obsessed, but anyone who happens in hoping primarily for a social outlet probably tends to happen right back out again.
Ballet (again, like cycling) is at once social and unsocial. It is a near-universal rule that dancers go to class, and that classes should be made up of several dancers at least; the nature of the form demands a group. However, we don’t socialize in class. We might chat in the hallway before class. We might grab a bite to eat after. We might throw out an occasional off-hand comment (there are days that I’m that guy in class; the one sometimes can’t repress the urge to make some random comment that helps him remember something: “So, no gorilla arms?”) or an eyeroll or a snippet of banter across the barre.
We direct respectful questions at our teachers; we listen to and absorb their instructions; we occasionally trade high fives.
We do not talk: not in the sense of carrying on meaningful verbal exchanges (or meaningless ones; nothing wrong with just shooting the breeze, if you have that skill). We are not treadmill buddies (not that there’s anything wrong with treadmill buddies!): we are dancers.
We come to work*****.
We come, in a sense, to worship: the instructor, perhaps, is our hierophant, interpreting the sacred mysteries, conferring them upon each class of willing acolytes.
In short: I feel like ballet deserves devotion. Part of me recognizes that becoming so fundamentally obsessed with something like dancing is outside the realm of typical adult experience (kids, however, do it all the time) — but, as Denis says, “Average was never the goal.”
As for me, almost a year after I finally goaded myself back into the studio, I’m glad I’ve become one of the ballet-mad throng.
Dancing has given shape to my life in a way that I didn’t expect: I didn’t particularly expect it to lead me to a career path, let alone one that I’m champing at the bit to undertake. I didn’t particularly expect it to eclipse cycling as an organizing force (in fact, I rather naively expected to continue racing bikes from time to time! Ha!). I didn’t expect to restructure my life, my eating habits, and ultimately my body in service of some art form in which I may or may not ever find an opportunity to perform before an audience******.
I write this all in an attempt to better understand, for example, why it seems so bleeding important to perfect my petite allegro, to acquire a decent set of exercise bands for my feet (I had a green one; it did not survive), to Do All The Classes!
Call it part navel-gazing and part homage to the beloved.
There you have it, though: I am happy to be obsessed. Glad that I have given up my life to the harsh mistress called ballet. Also not remotely embarrassed to be seen in public in tight and legwarmers, though it’s not like I was before (because cycling).
I have been back in the studio for almost a year, I am hopelessly obsessed, and I am the better for it.
~~~~~
In other news: I am officially going to the Big Burn this year. Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!
Tickets are purchased (as members of an official theme camp, we were able to buy tickets through the Directed Group Sale). Thus, it looks like my choreography project is a go (See? Performance opportunity made!).
So now I need to settle down, really finally finalize the choreographic framework, write it down, and start looking for other Burner-Dancers (or at least Burners who would like to try to dance; the goal is to make most of this choreography simple enough that we can teach it to raw novices).
So that’s what’s what today. I’m hoping to squeeze in an extra class this week on Friday (yes, my inner Obsessed Ballet Zombie just howled, “IT SHOULDN’T BE EXTRA!!!!!! THAT’S SUPPOSED TO BE PART OF THE SCHEDULE!!!!!!!!”).
Now … where’d I put that tennis ball?
danseur ignoble 
