Category Archives: balllet
Ballet Squid Chronicles: Monday Class with Brian!
Claire is away on a secret mission (to know, to will, to dare, to not blab your favourite teachers’ ambitions all over the place!) elsewhere this week, so Brian (AKA Professional Dance Guy) taught class tonight, and it was a blast.
He gives a very good class — athletic but not exhausting, challenging but well within reach.
I mostly didn’t hose up his barre; I promenaded without any dramanade; I did some pretty-ish turns (and some turrible ones); I didn’t forget any combinations going across the floor (though I did count wrong a couple of times; how hard is it to count to 16? Seriously!).
Many of today’s improvements were the direct result of the sole me-specific correction of the day. Brian was walking around correcting people who were getting slouchy at the barre, and suddenly he walked up to me, grabbed me by the waist, and pronounced “Not you, too!”
It was definitely more a command than a comment: but up til that moment I thought I was pulled up. (To be fair, I started out pretty well, but then apparently I got sloppy without noticing it.)
Oddly enough, it turns out that feeling pulled up isn’t the same thing as being pulled up. And, strangely enough, being really pulled up makes you dance more gracefully… and makes your turns better, and makes your dramanades turn back into promenades.
This was especially important because we did our promenades en dehors, which is harder than doing them en dedans (though we were doing them at passé, which is easier than doing the Swan-Lake-arabesque-extended-cut promenades no matter which way you turn).
Apparently I feed off physical corrections: every few minutes I would feel Brian’s hands on my waist again, like a mental-physical reminder: Are you pulled up? Oh, yeah? Really?
My calf got a bit sore by the end of class, so my final petite allegro combination looked a little lame (literally), but other than that I felt pretty good about myself today. I’m starting to make progress again.
I’m also doing all my physical therapy exercises like a good boy and trying to eat enough food even though my appetite has kind of died again. I am not worrying about it now, though: it seems to do this from time to time, and I am still not at a point where it would be dangerous to shed some weight.
If I get there, then I’ll worry. Otherwise, I’ll just try to remember to eat enough even when I’m not feeling hungry. This is part of why I still track my diet religiously.
Okay, so that’s it for tonight. It’s nice to finish class feeling excited about making progress again!
Ballet Squid Chronicles: On Poor Choices and Owning Them
A while ago, I wrote about returning to class after my extended winter break (link to come). Among other things, I said that I felt like a pudgy dancer.
I realized at the time that “pudgy” was the wrong word for a number of reasons.
First, it wasn’t the word I wanted, and didn’t actually convey the concept I hoped to express, but I wracked my brain and couldn’t come up with the word I knew I was looking for. Like autocorrupt on crack, my brain kept suggesting “pudgy.” Finally, I gave up and used it. Twice.
Second, it’s a loaded word. Like “chubby,” it’s one of those words that means “adorably chunky” when we’re describing puppies or baby elephants or cartoon orcas or toddlers or what have you, but something else entirely when applied to human adults (never mind that some of us, myself included, like how “pudgy” looks on other people; I married a slim guy, but I’ve always preferred big guys — pudgy guys, in fact). So it’s a word that implies a kind of judgment I try not to make, and also reveals the double standard by which I judge myself. “Pudgy,” in short, is a word that can hurt.
Third, the dance world is full of implicit (and, sometimes, explicit) judgments about body size. I’ve written about this a couple of times (again, links to follow). I try not to participate in this particular hegemony: I think dancers of all sizes can be beautiful. That doesn’t mean I’m not affected by it, though. I am both human enough to admit that I do experience reflexive moments of size-ist thinking, and to say that those moments are often concurrent with their opposites: one part of my mind will be thinking, “Wow, that one dude in the corps is pretty hefty,” while another part of thinks, “He looks really great up there.”
The difference is that the first of these thoughts is a conditioned reflex; the second is a feeling. So while my conditioned thoughts — the ones influenced by cultural dictates — are busy being jerks, my actual gut feelings are appreciating what I’m seeing. It’s weird, uncomfortable, and cognitively dissonant.
And when I use words like “pudgy” in contexts where they mean something bad (in this case, the word I really wanted was “clumsy”), I reinforce the cultural dictate that says dancers need to be shaped a certain way — even if that’s not what I believe, feel, or mean to convey.
Even if I really genuinely believe (and I do) that dancers actually need to be shaped all kinds of ways, my intentions don’t matter in a static context that doesn’t convey them. What matters is what I actually write.
Lastly, there’s a part of me that still genuinely believes that everyone else can be great and look great at whatever size but I need to be, in a word, skinny. That voice is always there. It was there when my BMI was 14.5. It was there when my BMI was 30. It is still there now, when my BMI is 24.
Every time I make a disparaging remark about my own weight, I reinforce that voice. Yes, I need to talk about that voice, and to acknowledge what it says (ignoring it sure as heck doesn’t make it go away) — but I need to do so in a way that reduces, rather than increases, its power.
I need to do that for me, and I need to do that for everyone else who has that voice (which, to a greater or lesser degree, is everyone).
~~~
I thought long and hard about whether to write this at all. I’m just going to go ahead and admit that, in short, I was debating whether or not to stick my head in the sand and hope nobody noticed my apparent act of woeful hypocrisy.
I was being a coward, but I guess I was also thinking about what I said (“pudgy”) and why (because my language co-processor was on the fritz, but also probably because I was having a exceptionally poor body image day) and what to write about it (this, it turns out).
I’m glad I did: that is to say, glad I tool some time to think about it, and also glad I took some time to write about it.
If my choice of words hurt you, please know that I’m sorry. Nobody deserves to be hurt (except maybe masochists who have been really good and done all their chores ;)). And I guess I should apologize to myself as well, because I am a dick to myself way too often.
For what it’s worth, I really do mean what I say: there’s room in dance for all kinds of bodies, all colors and sizes and shapes and abilities. All of those different bodies are valid and valuable — and just as painters have expanded their palettes as new media have emerged, it behooves those of us with choreographic ambitions to expand our palettes to include all kinds of bodies (“Oh, brave new world that has such creatures in it!”).
I’m hoping that, having written this, I’ll think of more to say on the topic. For now, this is it.
Go forth and be pudgy and proud, or svelte and sublime, or medium and miraculous: no matter your shape, dancers of the world, the things your bodies can do are amazing.
Ballet Squid Chronicles: Brief Thoughts on Paul Taylor Dance Company
Tonight we caught a performance of PTDC’s 60th Anniversary tour.
Really amazing stuff — Taylor’s choreography is the work of someone clearly literate in the language of classical ballet, but able to leap beyond its boundaries and forge a kind of syncretic modern dance vocabulary suffuse with free and playful movement.
It reminded me of our Introductory Intensive with the amazing Linnie Diehl at the ADTA conference this year. We talked about Laban movement analysis, and about the qualities of movement — about how some people (and dance forms) are very formal and bound (hello, ballet!), while others are fluid and free. We also talked about how sometimes dance forms or people encompass more than one style of movement.
Paul Taylor’s choreography captures that principle: it can work within the formal vocabulary and syntax of ballet at one moment and discard it the next.
I’d love to reach a point in my own life — as a dancer, but also as a person – at which I can do that. The language of ballet works for me because I am, by nature, rather formal and bound. My best days in class, though, are the days when I’m the most free; my best moments in general happen when I manage to let go of the concept of doing things correctly and precisely and instead I just do them. This is part of why I love clubbing: I get to be free, to be moved by the music, to toss the rules out the window (don’t get me wrong — I actuality love the rules of ballet; they are the restrictions that perfect the art).
I want more of that in my life. I want to incorporate a little of Paul Taylor’s freedom into my own work as a dancer.
I think the next time I’m in New York (whenever that is…) I’m going to drop in on their daily class. I may be a ballet boy at heart, but I suspect there’s a lot I can learn from these modern dance mavens.
As for you guys out there in Internetlandia — if you get a chance to see Paul Taylor live, snap it up. And if you get a chance to dance with them (which is how I learned of their existence — they came to our class a while back), snap that up too.
Ballet Squid Chronicles: Dances with Moobs
I am not the world’s most patient person*.
I doubt I would have been regardless (hello, hyperactivity and short attention span), but the circumstances of my upbringing and much of my life since have taught me that I need to pursue what I want immediately and relentlessly.
The result?
Waiting really freaks me out.
I mean, not short-term waiting. Like, once the appointments are made or the tickets are purchased or whatever, I’m fairly cool. Maybe not as cool as a typical person would be, but cool for me. Like, I can shut the hell up about it and think about other things. Likewise, I’m not terrible at waiting for minor things, or acquisitions of tangible goods (I keep my stuff in the future; that way, I feel like I already have it, and I can relax and save my money to purchase things — and, often, by the time I have enough money to make a material purchase, I’ve decided I don’t really want it anyway).
It’s major, important stuff and skills-acquisition that seem terrifyingly subject to immediacy.
So right now I’m in a spot where waiting for one Big Thing is making me wait for another Big Thing.
I decided last year that I really, finally need to get off my butt and get the surgical correction going on for my gynecomastia. Because, seriously, there are a few ladies in my ballet classes with smaller boobs than mine, and part of me is like, “Yeah, but … you know, ballet, there are lots of girls in ballet with no boobs, so you really shouldn’t freak out so much” while the rest of me is like OMGWTFBBQ 100%
.__.
First: that wasn’t the raison d’etre for my decision. Just a keen reminder; a kind of sand-in-the-underpants thing.
Second: Mine are not, you know, the most epic knockers in the room by a longshot, but it’s still awkward, and I still go to class in a gynecomastia vest — which is not, you know, super uncomfy, but seriously, I fantasize about the day I can dance unencumbered by said vest. I still feel awkward, and it still sucks (BTW, this is one of the reasons I’m still wary of getting back on meds: in short, THANKS, RISPERDAL >.<). It's also one more thing to wash at the end of the day, even though I have two vests (I had four, but I'm too slim for two of them now, which means they do nothing, and I'm holding out against buying any more).
Worse, while I actually think hands-on corrections are essential to teaching ballet technique, there is definitely a part of me that freaks out in giant letters every single time my teachers' hands get anywhere near my chest … Or, for that matter, near the little bits of "fluff" that squelch out of the arm-holes of my gynecomastia vest, which somehow manages to be too big in the chest and too small in the shoulders, FFS.
I am seriously thinking about ordering a bigger vest and tailoring the crap out of it, just for ballet, so it will fit my broad-shoulders-and-tapered-torso shape. Only thinking because, let’s face it — I’m not that organized, and while I can do basic sewing-y repairs, I really don’t sew that well.
I found this all more survivable when I wasn’t dancing for a while, and my biggest concern was whether or not I could get away with wearing a t-shirt on the rare occasion that I got a chance to swim. Sure, I would actually swim a heck of a lot more if I could wear just a rash guard or whatever; there are a lot of pools that won’t let you swim with a full-on T-shirt, and your typical rash guard, when wet, turns into a giant billboard proclaiming, “ASK ME ABOUT MY GYNECOMASTIA VEST!” Which, you know, I DO NOT WANT.
But beyond that, before I started dancing again, I didn’t really have to worry about it (bizarrely, it’s never really been a big deal on the bike, even though cycling also involves skin-tight clothes).
It didn’t even freak me out as much when I was doing modern dance in high school — but ballet is probably the most deeply gendered of theatrical dance forms, and as gung-ho as I am about living My Big Queer Androgynous Life much of the rest of the time, in the studio I am just another dude who is supposed to learn mens’ technique and maybe someday do pas-de-deux without dropping anyone.
I would like to not find myself wondering, mid-pirouette, whether my vest is showing. I would like to not find myself constantly and surreptitiously adjusting the blasted thing because it does weird things during barre or adagio. I would like to not watch myself in the mirror while we’re doing little jumps and wonder whether that’s my boobs jiggling or just my shirt. Heck, I’d like to feel as if I can wear a fitted tank top when it’s hot in the studio. That would be really nice. Or a white t-shirt EVER.
Predictably, my health insurance company (which is otherwise pretty great) doesn’t want to cover what they reasonably consider a cosmetic procedure.
No amount of whining, “BUT BALLET, GUYS! COME OOOOOOOOON!” will convince them: clearly, my insurance company is not staffed entirely by compulsive dancers.
Their position is basically:
“Millions of dudes for hundreds of thousands of years have lived full (and also presumably firm, round** :V) lives with gynecomastia throughout human history, and surgery is expensive, risky, and can involve complications.”
I get it, I really do: this is my choice.
And in fact, while he is demonstrably a leg man (quick aside: Thank Heaven I’m a dancer/cyclist!), it’s a choice even Denis feels weird about: on one hand, he wants me to be happy living in my own skin; on the other hand, he’s simultaneously pissed off that we live in a world where the margins for what’s okay for a given gender are so narrow that I feel like I have to go under the knife and worried that Something Bad Could Happen Because Anaesthesia Is Terrifying.
So at the end of the day it’s my choice, and one we’re paying for out of pocket (Denis is not so stubbornly against the concept as to not be willing to pay for my surgery, which is very sweet of him), so that means waiting until we have saved enough money to feel like we can spend almost $8K on a thing***.
…All of which means, since our finances have been a little more restricted of late due to some of the vagaries of getting paid when you work in private practice, that I am saving my pennies and waiting.
Which also means that I am taking fewer ballet classes right now**** so I can take more ballet classes with fewer gynecomastia vests later. Which means that there’s a part of my brain that is convinced that I’M FALLING BEHIND!!!
EVERY MINUTE, EVERY SECOND, EVERY HOUR OF THE DAY! FALLING BEHIND!
NOOOOOOOOO!
(Yes, on one level, I’m totally making fun of my own internal histrionics, here. On another level, though, this is exactly how I feel. Exactly. Especially since I managed to make it to class basically twice over winter break, and I am well and keenly aware of how much progress I lost, and that two classes per week with an extra two per month is just barely enough to keep moving forward at a respectable pace.)
Part of me is convinced — since I’m not good at waiting, and we’ve had a couple of small crises in the past two years that have resulted in the surgery being put off — that waiting means This Is Never Going to Happen (for that reason, I’m planning to put down my deposit ASAP, once I finally decide which surgeon I’m using). Part of me is aware that we’ve run into a deadline: I need to get this done, for sanity’s sake, before I go off to graduate school. I really want to get it done this summer, before Burning Man, so I’ll be fully healed and recovered throughout fall and winter and can go be awesome at Sun King next summer.
Part of me is really ticked off that my “four to five classes per week” plan has to stay on hold until the end of the semester (when, presumably, I can contribute a little more to the household income stream and thus pay for my extra classes without endangering the growth of the pool of funds being saved for surgery).
Part of me is aware that this is First World Problems All Over the Place.
Part of me keeps saying, “Okay, but it’s only ’til May.”
Part of me admits I have absolutely no idea what kind of gainful work I’m going to find that will allow for our travel plans (because Burning Man choreography project!).
Part of me just thinks that this is really all too much to think about in the first place.
So there you have it. Possibly the most stream-of-consciousness post I’ve ever composed: Dances with Moobs.
Ballet Squid Chronicles: Onward and Upward
Tonight, Claire sorted my fourth position (which was too wide), silenced my too-noisy pique, and gave us all a number of general corrections about keeping our weight moving forward and upward.
This latter point makes adagio both easier and prettier. Emphasis on easier. Much less “construction crane,” much more “graceful swan.” Or, you know, fairly graceful turkey.
We did some nice choreography, lovely little jumps, and then I pulled the &#@! out of my right gastrocnemius soleus (thanks, Denis!) doing a petit allegro combination across the floor — pulled it so hard I couldn’t jump on that leg for the remaining five minutes of class (I was able to do pique turns using the right as the supporting leg, but not the left).
Brienne was in class tonight and showed me how to roll it out on a lacrosse ball. I think that, some naproxen, and a little RICE should sort it.
So there you have it. Your Humble Ballet Squid has finally succeeded in injuring himself during class, but not so badly he won’t be back in action this weekend.
In other news, Paul Taylor on Friday! Wooooohoooooo!
Ballet Squid Chronicles: Back In My Element
I took Claire’s class this afternoon, and I’m starting to feel like I’ve got my legs under me again. Which is good, because at the beginning of class, I wasn’t so sure. For some reason, I kept dégage-ing when I was supposed to tendu and vice-versa. D’oh.
Claire also gave me some hands-on mid-torso corrections, getting the pelvis tucked back under while bringing the sternum forward. I was once again over-correcting for my tendency to hollow my lower back, throwing my shoulders back and compensating in the mid-torso. The core work this month has made it a little easier to keep my torso pulled together when I remember to do it. Now I just need to remember.
The hard part is knowing that what feels like a straight torso isn’t, in the same way that I had to re-train my proprioception with regard to my wrists and arms. (This is an interesting side-effect of that benign joint hypermobility thing; it makes your arabesque awesome, but your proprioception kind of wonky.)
Anyway, in today’s class I realized that if I rein in the size of my movements, I can get prettier technique out of myself. I guess I should know that by now.
Also, I need to get back to having confidence in myself as a dancer and
not thinking so much. I kept reminding myself to just dance, that the combinations would come, and when I did that successfully, things came off rather nicely.
In other news, I found a Pilates class I can probably work into my schedule, so I’m hoping to give that a try some time soon. I don’t want to add too much to the rotation until I’m really on top of things, though.
So that’s it for now. More to come.
Cue Rocky Theme
I’m cautiously optimistic that I’m recovering from this week’s episode of depressolepsy.
I got to sleep without any trouble last night (regardless of the caffeine). I woke up once at around 01:30 to stumble, zombie-like, to the head, and then to stumble onwards into the kitchen, where I ate one quarter of a baguette because I was starving.
This morning I’m up and about and feeling mostly human: predictably, my ankles are stiff (they always are after I take a break from ballet and then return to class), but otherwise I’m making it.
I am debating whether I’m ready to jump back into intermediate class tomorrow morning. It might behoove me to do Saturday’s beginner class instead for a couple of weeks in order to get back on form, even though that will mean following a W/S/S schedule for a bit, which seems a little weird.
In other news, I broke off the Karakoram’s wing mirror yesterday, so I snagged a replacement from Bardstown Road Bicycle Company. It’s a “Mountain Mirrycle,” and it is hands-down the single best bike mirror I’ve ever had.
So that’s it for now. Today is for homework, chores, and going on a date with my husband (woot!).
Ballet Squid Chronicles: Saturday Class Notes A La Monday
On Friday night, I went out with the of my bike peeps on what the bike world calls an s24o (edit: that’s short for “sub-24 hour overnight”).
We loaded up or bikes with camping stuff, met up at Great Food Brewing Company at Dundee Loop, then rode across town (back towards my house!) and out to Jefferson Memorial Forest. There, we made camp and enjoyed beer, camaraderie, and various rehydrated foods (I had a spicy shrimp Bowl Noodle!).
Eventually, we tottered off to our several temporary beds, wherein we shivered for various amounts of time and got more or less sleep. I actually warmed up fairly fast and slept pretty well, thanks in part to my Klymit Static inflatable pad, which is super-comfy and harder to roll off of than most. I didn’t sleep long enough, though.
On Saturday morning, we all made hot drinks (mostly coffee; I did tea), packed up, and rolled back out. I peeled off early to get home in time for ballet class.
Denis and I had an opera in the plans, so we just did Essentials. Since we’ve just started a new ballet year, class was very basic — which meant it was a great opportunity to really focus on technique.
We were also in Studio 4, which has a wood floor (more slippery than Marley!) and one very tall portable barre (my most favoritest barre ever).
Barre was simple, which was good, because I was bushwhacked from riding bikes and not sleeping very much. There was definitely a point at which I got the “You can point better than that” tap on my toe and discovered that, in fact, I kind of couldn’t. The flesh was willing…ish, but the mind was cooked. My brain just couldn’t even (I should note that I was pointing those toes … just, you know, not quite as much as usual) .
I did find that, even though I was tired, my core was much steadier during grand battement than it was before I started doing the Plank Challenge. My extensions during grand battement were also higher, even though I only had a full split on the left on Saturday.
I guess my core strength is improving!
Going across the floor, we just worked on chassé avant. Margie provided us with a helpful mental image: when your feet meet mid-chassé, you should basically be in a mid-air sous-sous (like you would during soubresaut).
For some reason, I’d never really thought of that before, but it does two cool things!
First, it makes your chassé prettier.
Second, it adds to your momentum, so you travel farther on each chassé. (Sadly, Studio 4 is tiny, so traveling farther wasn’t necessarily a great idea!)
We also worked on very basic port des bras, so I focused on making mine prettier (that is, neither squidly nor hieroglyphic).
So that’s it for now. Moar class on Wednesday!
Ballet Squid Chronicles: Ballautopilot
Today, halfway through some barre combination or another, I suddenly found myself doing something completely different.
Why?
Because the beginning of the combo was exactly like one we often do in Claire’s class, but the last third or so was different. Apparently my ballet-autopilot — ballautopilot, if you will — had kicked on. (Please tell me I’m not the only person whose ballautopilot that sometimes goes awry!)
The same thing happened again, incomprehensibly, as we were going across the floor. This was Essentials, so the allegro combo was simple: glissade-pas de chat(1), glissade-pas de chat, tombé-pas de bourree-glissade assemblé.
For some reason, my ballautopilot decided it needed to end with “glissade-sisson,” even though nothing ends like that, ever. So there’s no rational explanation for that one, except that apparently my legs like to sisson, and I was thinking about something else (specifically, my arms).
In other news, I managed another of those lovely and enjoyable double-pirouettes that happen when you get most of the way through your first rotation and then go, “Hm, I think I’ll just go on around again.” And then you do, and then you close back and look like you’re an awesome dancer when, in fact, you’re much more half-baked than usual this week because you’ve been out of class so much lately.
In still other news, this week I decided to try a fouetté en tournant, just to see if I could do it, in my kitchen (because everyone knows that the kitchen is where you practice your turns).
You guys, it turns out my kitchen is not actually big enough for that. Whipped out the leg, and WHAM! Right into the stove(2).
So I guess I won’t be practicing fouettés en tournants in my kitchen anymore. I will have to add them to the (ahem) rotation (see what I did there?!) of turns I practice before class, like the stepover-stepover-pique-pique combination from Tawnee’s class that’s one and a half piques too long for my kitchen, no matter how diagonally I travel.
In different news entirely, my husband is incredibly sweet and, as a surprise, took me to see Big Hero 6 today. It was brilliant, and if you can, you should run out right now and see it before its theatrical run closes. And if you are feeling weepy this week (which some of us do sometimes, just sayin’), I recommend that you bring a packet of tissues and a friend.
Notes
- I would like to point out that my glissade-pas de chat sub-combo looked stellar today, unlike my grand battement, which involved high extensions and a jiggly, jiggly, jiggly core. Must be jelly, &c.
- Fortunately, this was loud, but not painful in the least. I specifically planned it so I wouldn’t crack my leg on the dishwasher door, which would probably have hurt, since said dishwasher door was propped open to let the dishes cool off, with its pointy edges out and ready to rip my legs off.
danseur ignoble 