Category Archives: balllet
Ballet Squid Chronicles: Coming Together
Did both classes tonight. I felt good throughout, with the exception of totally not having a couple of barre combos sorted in Claire’s class.
Pirouettes are becoming reliable. I did one double, from fourth, semi-badly (it could have been worse, which represents progress).
My coupé- and passé relève balances are becoming like my track stands used to be: they work until I realize they’re working, Wyle E. Coyote style 😛 They’re improving, though, so no complaints.
Combinations came off well. I’m still going on the first group all the time, and it’s still working.
After class, Claire asked how it was feeling (the dancing, that is), then said, “It’s coming together!”
So that was an awesome end to a frank roller-coaster of a day.
So that’s it for now. Keep the sunny side up, and don’t forget to salt your eggs a little.
Ballet Squid Chronicles: Radio Silence!
…But don’t worry, I should be back in action soon.
Class on Monday was nice (we just did Essentials, because OMG homework). Other than that, I’ve been plowing through a huge, huge pile of schoolwork since last Wednesday.
It so happened that a couple of math homework assignments, an upcoming math exam (with attendant exam prep assignments) , and the due date for a major phase of my Senior Seminar project all coincided — and also that the Senior Sem project part took much longer than I expected (I made a huge survey, guys!). I have been very, very busy.
My brain is cooked and I’m sleep-deprived, so I’m taking the evening off tonight. In fact, I’m not even planning on riding my bike home: I’m going to roll home on the bus, then maybe take a walk.
I plan to hit up Friday’s 10 AM class. That’s a straight-up intermediate class (instead of combined Beginner&Intermediate, like Monday’s class), so that might be interesting. If nothing else, I can keep my fellow students amused.
For what it’s worth, while there was a straight-up blizzard of math assignments, I should note that I’m really enjoying my precalc class. In particular, I like my instructor, who has a great sense of humor and high expectations. I knew I would like her when, on the first day, she said, “…And it can be hard to do the password retrieval thing for MyMathLab, so seriously — just write it down. Nobody is going to break into MyMathLab and do your math homework.”
I think I did reasonably well on my exam. Most of it seemed pretty straightforward. I’ve found that I like working difference quotient problems, and part of me will be rather sad to see them go (though they’ll return for the final exam, I’m sure).
Meanwhile, the giant ball o’ Senior Sem stuff is done for now. Survey is made, Institutional Review Board forms are prepared, and all that jazz. I even managed to finish an article notes assignment that I’d overlooked completely.
So that’s it. Might be quiet here for a few more days, though I hope to regale you with exciting tales of my foray into the rarified realms of Weekday Morning Ballet on Friday.
So, there you have it. Be well, and keep the bottom side down 🙂
Let’s Get (a) Physical, Physical
This week, I visited my doctor’s office — not for an actual physical, but to get a spider bite on my leg checked out (it had been growing more, rather than less, inflamed over the course of a week).
While there, a nurse weighed me and took my vitals.
My weight was down four pounds since my my last “official” weigh-in (which was in … June?); my blood pressure was 110/60, and my pulse — not a resting pulse, mind you, but a well-caffeinated, middle-of-the-day, just-hopped-onto-a-table pulse — was 52.
52!
Makes me awfully curious what my proper resting pulse rate is. I tend not to stay still long enough during the day to take a proper resting pulse rate. I haven’t remembered to check it in ages. Every night, I remind myself, “Check your resting pulse rate tomorrow before you get up;” every morning, inevitably, I forget.
Now, my blood pressure has always been fine, and my weight has been descending continuously* for the past several years (at varying rates of speed — usually quickly from January through the end of summer, then more slowly through the end of the year).
I’m writing all of this not to toot my horn, but to toot ballet’s horn. Even several years of riding my bike everywhere hadn’t coaxed my mid-day pulse rate down below 60. Six and a half months of ballet have done the trick. Simply put, I’ve always been a fairly athletic person, but ballet has transformed me into one seriously fit mofo.
And I cite ballet specifically because it’s been the biggest change in my life in the past year. My diet continues as usual — mostly “real food,” with room for various indulgences (including, apparently, all those pretzels). I actually ride my bike less now than I have in the past four years.
What this all indicates to me, in the end, is the importance of finding a kind of physical activity that works for you, that you love — and maybe one that challenges you to push your own physical boundaries. I love ballet even more than I love riding bikes (there, I said it!).
Ballet forces me to push my body’s boundaries — I can’t just jump around on my legs; I have to use my arms, too. I can’t just do endless amounts of endurance exercise; ballet requires bouts of high-intensity jumping around (and also getting up, getting up, and getting down).
If I really want to improve, I have to be willing to gain some upper-body strength. And if I want to perform some day, which I totally do, I can’t neglect endurance exercise — read any good treatise on physical conditioning for ballet, and in the first chapter (or thereabouts) you’ll discover that class alone doesn’t condition dancers effectively for the aerobic rigors of performing on stage. Dancers who add in some kind of aerobic endurance training fare better than those who don’t.
All of this amounts to the equivalent of (at present) three 60 to 75-minute long high-intensity interval training sessions (with some flexibility stuff thrown in) coupled with the usual assortment of aerobic endurance workouts that I get through commuting by bike.
Overall, it seems to be working brilliantly as a health-maintenance and -improvement plan.
So there you go. Ballet really is good for you.
So go take two classes and call me in the morning 😀
Note
*I should note that continuously descending weight is not, in and of itself, a marker of improving health. You can be healthy and be much heavier than I am. For me, it’s simply an indicator that my body is returning to its own norm, which suggests that it’s “functioning as designed.”
PS
By the way, the spider bite is fine. The doctor who examined it said I should worry if it doesn’t start to diminish in the next few days. That made Denis feel better, which made me feel better.
Ballet Squid Chronicles: Analyzing Last Night’s Class
I’ve been being lazy all morning and trying to finish Felice Picano’s Like People In History (and playing with AT&T uVerse’s Interactive Workout feature — we finally got uVerse in our neighborhood, so Denis made the jump), so I feel that I can take a few more minutes (or, you know, an hour and a half…) to avoid my homework and talk about ballet instead.
This morning, while waiting for my breakfast/lunch to finish microwaving cooking, I tried to run through some of the combinations from last night’s class, and I think I figured out part of the problem.
Besides the usual problem of putting changes of feet in places where they don’t belong (G-d bless Tawnee for noting that; because I don’t always realize I’m doing it until the next morning, and I was able to fix it a few times), I realized I made one enormous mistake: I kept sissoneing the wrong way.
So: when the combination went sissone devant, I kept going sissone derriere. The problem was in the translation: Tawnee initially gave us the counts in Ballet Frenglish, so it was “sissone front, sissone back,” etc., which is totally valid, but somehow my brain decided that “sissone front” meant that the, um, kicky leg* goes forward.
Even though I freaking well know better.
In case you’re wondering, “sissone front” doesn’t mean your kicky leg goes forward. It just doesn’t, y’all. When you sissone devant, you sissone to the front. This means that your back leg is the one that makes a pretty, pointy reachy gesture — and it does so to the freaking rear. Your front leg, meanwhile, kind of points downish, like this:
Obviously, your arms and core shouldn’t quite look like this — but presumably you have bones in your arms and spine, which makes things much easier. Edit: obviously, you should also maintain your turnout. I was a bit lazy with my image modification software, apparently O.O
So every time everyone else sproinged** forward, I sproinged backward, and vice-versa (amazingly, nobody crashed, probably because Brienne, who was taking class with us, was behind me and is a genius). And somehow failed to understand why I was doing this. And, of course, having done it once or twice, I fell into Stupid Zombie Robot mode and did it a bunch of times. Seriously, there are times that I totally know I’m Doin’ It Rong, but somehow can’t stop myself***. Does this happen to other people?
And now I totally get it: my brain was still in barre mode! So when Tawnee said “front,” my brain interpreted it as it would “tendu front” or “close front” — front leg reaches — and so on and so forth.
I am actually rather pleased with this revelation, because I think it probably explains a lot of the bizarre things I do from time to time in ballet class. I definitely have a bit of language-action disconnect in general, and I hadn’t really thought about how it applies to ballet.
So, anyway. That’s something I’ll have to think about and work on.
Notes
*In sissones, the kicky leg — that’s the technical term, I am sure — is Very Important.
**Also totally a technical term.
***My first memorable experience of being stuck in Auto-Rong mode? I was maybe nine or ten and was riding Marquis, the horse that I leased, in the ring at my barn. I had just dismounted, and some loud noise happened. Marquis panicked and bolted, and even though I knew that chasing a horse was a completely stupid idea, my body automagically gave chase while my brain went, “NONONONONONO! Don’t chase him, stupid!” I literally could not stop myself from chasing Marquis. Nor could I explain the concept when my riding teacher (very reasonably) chewed me out about it; in fact, I didn’t even try.
Ballet Squid Chronicles: In Which I Can’t Even Even
I guess tonight wasn’t entirely a wash.
They say you’re only learning when you’re making mistakes.
Tonight I must’ve learned a lot. I was like “MAKE ALL THE MISTAKES!”
My strengths were … Um, well, my sauté arabesque always looks awesome. All elastic ‘n’ ballonny and stuff*.
But I think I did literally everything else wrong at least twice.
Oh, I also managed like two good pirouettes out of, I don’t know, maybe a million? As we’ve established, I can only count to four. There were more than four.
So, um. We’ll chalk this one up to experience. Even Nureyev had bad nights, I’m sure.
Notes
*Oh, except got the part where I totally got called out for leaving my shoulder behind. My shoulder was all like, “Dude, just cause Mom makes me hang out with you doesn’t mean I’m not gonna pretend I’m with these other people instead.”
PS
I also did full splits. Both sides. Unexpectedly. My legs were just like, “Oh, do you wanna go all the way down? Okay, no probs.”
Yay!
allet Squid Chronicles: That Moment In Ballet Class…
…When you are getting ready to go across the floor, and the music comes on, with its little introduction, and you automagically do the little opening-my-wings-in-preparation-for-flight gesture thing, and you realize you don’t remember when you started doing that, but you take a surreptitious glance at the rest of the group and, ohai! They’re all doing it, too.
And you all kind of look like dancers*?
It’s a good moment, n’est ce pas?
Notes
*Kind of.
Ballet Squid Chronicles: Sisson Double
Tonight, among other things, we did sissons (on purpose, even!) and also the sisson doublé variant. It took me a zillion tries to get sisson doublé to make sense, and then it did. The change-o-leg in the air was what was getting me.
Like, sissons are basically jumps from two legs to one, but normally you sproing and land without changing legs or directions. Sisson doublé does both (the turn takes place in the air, which looks cool), but is still a jump form two legs to one. I like the way it lands in attitude. And how I don’t fall over*. Yay!
This was most gratifying, after doing renversé something remotely like right a few times and very, very wrong a whole bunch of times and not doing pirouttes-from-fourth-to-coupé right, like, ever at all. Frustrating. My pirouettes just sucked tonight (my sous-tenu turns were fine).
I wasn’t feeling too hot at the beginning of class (digestive issues, fleh) but actually felt better by the end of barre. Thus, the beginning of barre was uninspired, but the end was mostly okay.
Adagio was mostly pretty, except for the moments when I got distracted by the mirror. Um, yeah. Maybe I should wear a blindfold for adagio?
The little jumps were lovely and easy by the time we got to them. I even counted to four correctly. Huzzah! I am so ready for my maths exam next week! Bring on the Counting Numbers Less Than Or Equal To Four!
Across the floor, all my glissade-pas de chats looked pretty good (I’m, even the ones that were supposed to be glissade-saut de chats, because I can’t hear very well, because allergies). Apparently, according to the Powers That Be, pas de chat doesn’t really fly in men’s technique too often. Too bad, because I really kind of love pas we chat. It can look joyful, athletic, floaty – whatever. It’s a nice step, and I have always thought so, so there.
In other news, it’s been a while since I mucked around in MSpain and made a silly drawing, so here you go — from Act II of Zombie Giselle:
Your call as to whether the ninja is after GiZombie or Albrecht, here. Presumably, by this point, Hilarion’s braingz have already been eated. Also, needs moar scenery.
I feel like someday I should post a real drawing, and I’m sure I will have plenty of time, um, next year. After I graduate. Before grad school.
So, there you have it, folks. GiZombie: Scene from Act II.
Finally, I actually managed to complete everything on my to-do list today for the first time in Untold Days. So go me! (And, yes, I totally pad my to-do list by including things like ballet class, so I can feel like I’m accomplishing stuff.)
So that’s it. Good night, all!
Notes
*Today I did a tour en l’air to see if I still could. I didn’t fall over, but I did over-rotate and almost turned my ankle. So that was dumb.
Ballet Squid Chronicles: A Case of the Wilis*
-
*You know it’s gonna be bad when I lead off with the bad puns.
This morning, we just did Ballet Essentials. We didn’t have time to do both classes and still eat before today’s ballet (this was a shame, because Margie was teaching the Beginner class, and it’s a rare treat to get to do Beginner class with Margie).
Margie gave us some long and interesting combinations at the barre, which I enjoyed, and we did grand battement and beats while lying on the floor (we also did grand battement at the barre). I had forgotten about things like doing beats while lying on the floor — we used to do that as a conditioning exercise when I was a kid. I might add that into my daily conditioning rotation, because I’d like to get beaten jumps nailed down again (beyond the cabriole, which I seem to have down). We also did piqué turns, which I enjoy immensely.
After, we grabbed lunch, then headed over to the Kentucky Center for the Performing Arts to see Giselle.
I enjoyed the production, which I feel was quite well done, especially considering that we’re a small company in a part of the country that doesn’t really know from ballet, so we’re always working with limited resources.
The copious Ballet Mime was handled well and seemed less silly than it often does (I am forever reminded of Adult Beginner’s hilarious Giselle review and find myself giggling about “eggbeater above the head” — though now I can’t find the original post o_O). The ensemble and corps numbers in the first act were a particular treat (but, frankly, I’m a sucker for good ensemble or corps action), as were some of Albrecht’s 2nd-act solos.
Update: I was confused about which of AB’s posts had the “eggbeater-above-the-head” reference. You can find it here
Giselle’s infamous hops-en-pointe — which can either be pretty impressive or pretty much “WTF?” — came off quite nicely. Denis was inspired to ask questions about pointe technique (he noticed that nobody else en pointe ever seemed to “move around on one foot,” and after a while I figured out what he meant).
I’m not sure whether or not it was intentional, but in this production, Albrecht came across less as a roving Count Jackwagon than as a nobleman torn between love and duty. Likewise, his fiancée didn’t come across as a jealous biznatch or appear to blame Giselle for Albrecht’s waywardness (thank you, Louisville Ballet!). It’s a shame there wasn’t more opportunity to develop that particular angle, which seemed a little more nuanced than the usual “Smarmy McDickface & Wig-Snatching Harpy” angle.
Giselle, meanwhile, came across as … well, Giselle — a sparkling young girl who just wants to dance, even though her Mom doesn’t want her to because she doesn’t want her daughter to keel over dead from a heart attack (this, by the way, is the only bit of Ballet Mime that really fails to work — I don’t know about you, but when I picture miming, “No, you’ll die of a heart attack!” I don’t really picture a karate chop to the torso).
In the second act, the Wilis did a lot of Graceful Zombie Arms, which made both Denis and me comment on how someone needs to do an updated version of Giselle that cashes in on the current zombie craze, because that would frankly be awesome (Mr. Bourne? Are you out there? We have a ballet for you…). Hilarion (danced by Eduard Forehand, who did not get to dance nearly enough) did an excellent job looking frightened, tired, and finally exhausted when the Wilis were dancing him to death, and our Myrtha was gracefully imperious in a way that worked pretty darned well.
Speaking of Myrtha, some unintentional mirth occurred when Something From Above broke loose and floated to the stage in the midst of one of the big first act scenes with Everybody Including Half The Opera Company (comments on the wandering noblemen from Denis and Kelly went like this — Denis: “See? Fat guys can do ballet!” Kelly: “Look, they borrowed half the Opera company!”**)
The dancers handled it with grace and professionalism (by, of course, ignoring it completely and continuing as if it wasn’t totally in the middle of the floor and in everyone’s way). Eventually a guy with a big robe managed to spirit said Unintentional Prop off the stage. Fortunately, whatever it was didn’t appear to be heavy or sharp and nobody was injured. This makes two out of two recent dance productions that involved Stuff Raining Down From Above (at U of L’s Dance Theater performance in Iroquois Park, a light in the rigging exploded and dropped what appeared to be a very large filament).
Likewise, there was a brief issue with the music (unfortunately, recorded music is the order of the day in Loutown, at the moment) — a spot where the speed of playback wavered briefly. Fortunately, this happened while no one was dancing, but it grated on my musical ear a bit. I’m not sure it was widely noticed.
The lighting design was the production’s most significant weakness. The set-pieces and backdrops were quite nice, but a great deal more could have been done with lighting both to enhance the spookiness of the Wilis and also to drive home the whole point that it’s the arrival of the dawn that breaks their power. Denis suggested that the lighting issues, however, may have derived form the failure of whatever failed up in the rafters.
One last bit! Apparently, there was some confusion getting my subscription set up, but the folks at Will Call handled it very gracefully and gave us really great seats for this show. This is one of the perks of subscribing to a small company — the subscriber base isn’t huge, so every subscriber is treated really well.
Next on the roster for the season is The Nutcracker. I believe PDG is dancing in that (along with ever other professional- and semi-professional dancer in the Greater Louisville Area, from what I’ve seen :D), so I’m particularly looking forward to that. Claire is in Giselle, but I don’t know if she was in this cast (if she was, I couldn’t pick her out) and/or if she’s still sick. Likewise, I’m hoping to see PDG2 and Brienne in some shows.
While it’s unfortunate that our company can’t really support too many professional performers on a full-time basis, it’s also kind of cool to take classes from (and sometimes with!) dancers who we get to see on the stage.
Anyway, I need to go do my math homework, so that’s it for now. More to come (if nothing else, Monday class notes).
Notes
**They couldn’t hear each-other, so I had to convey comments from one to the other. Also, I am very much of the opinion that fat guys (and gals) can indeed do ballet!
Ballet Squid Chronicles: Advanced Topics in Counting to Four
Class was decent tonight. Or, rather, class was great, and I was decent. My balances and développés are coming along.
Sometimes my core fell apart at the barre (usually when I was really concentrating on using my feet). Sometimes my arms got confused doing pirouettes. Sometimes I did nice pirouettes. This is becoming a pattern.
My petit allegro is getting better, provided I count correctly (see below). Tawnee likes to give us combinations that end with assemblé, assemblé, assemblé, assemblé. Those can get interesting. I have to look at pictures in my mind what that should look like before we do it again.
I rather fell apart doing little jumps. I blame math class. Clearly, I used up all my numerical faculties this morning in precalc. I could do the jumps, obviously, but apparently I couldn’t count to four at the same time. This was worse than usual. Counting is hard for squids, you guys.
That said, going across the floor, I thought my big jumps looked pretty good. They get rather better when we’re instructed to travel – then I remember to use my plié and my working leg automagically kicks itself higher. Amazing.
I’m still all about saying “Damn the torpedoes!” and going in the first group. Sometimes I don’t have the combination down perfectly (“Oh! There’s another sauté arabesque! Who knew?!”), but I strap on my imaginary super-cape and go like I have it down cold.
In the process, I’ve found that if you don’t stop to look sheepish when you forget a step, you will generally remember the next step and you can just roll on. I should have already figured this out by now (it’s, like, the first rule of all performing arts: if you make a mistake, just keep going like nothing happened).
I guess the goal is to improve incrementally every day, and I think I might actually be succeeding. Taking class three days per week really helps. I am very much looking forward to next semester, when I hope to up the ante to five days per week (I’m guessing one will have to be a conditioning class or plays or something, since there are no ballet classes Tuesday, Thursday, or Sunday*).
So that’s all for tonight’s class. I have an ocean of homework and housework and finances for the next two days, so radio silence will likely follow until Saturday, when we will be doing class and then going to see Giselle. I’ve heard our new AD is pretty creative, so I’m looking forward to that.
Notes
*Except company class?
The Glass Project: Part II
I’ve been thinking about how to implement my collaborative choreography project thing.
I’ve chosen the music (both pieces by Philip Glass: “The Poet Acts” and “The Light”*) — because even a collaborative project has to start somewhere.
Initially, I thought, “Eh, what the heck, I’ll just come up with some stuff over the next few months, recruit some dancers when I get there, and wing it from there.”
…And while this is very much typical of my fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants style of doing, um, basically everything, there are some major logistical problems, here.
First, while I have no problem whatsoever with the idea of teaching a few basic steps to some total n00bs game enough to step onto my little stage, I would like to collect at least a few people who know from ballet.
I would also like some of them to be better dancers than I am.
As much as it would be awesome to think that I’ll be ready for prime time by August of 2015, I can identify at least 1 week I will totally not be able to dance, plus another 3 – 4 during which I’ll be partly incapacitated. Thus, while I expect to have my waterfowls in a much closer semblance of a linear array than at present, I also don’t expect to magically transform into David Hallberg — or even Eduard Forehand, PDG, or PDG2 by then (though miracles have occurred).
With 50,000+ people in attendance at Burning Man in any given year, the odds are good that at least a few people will be attending who know their turnout from their detourné. Thus, trying to get in touch with a few of them a few months before the gates open (even though whether or not one gets tickets can be a bit of a crapshoot) sounds like a better idea than spending the first day back Home cruising the desert for would-be dancers.
Fortunately, through the Power of the Internet, it should be possible to do this thing.
Second, That Thing In The Desert is only a week long, and as I may have mentioned before, it seems unlikely that tons of people are going to want to spend a week playing Let’s Pretend We’re At Summer Intensive between (or, worse, during) dust storms. Sure, that sounds like my idea of a good time, but we have probably established by now that I’m not exactly normal (to be fair, neither is anyone else who goes to TTITD).
Thus, it’ll be good if most of us walk on with some sense of what we want to do — a few combinations strung together, or whatever.
I’m not yet entirely decided on how to do that part.
Do I say, “Come with with x number of measures, and we’ll fit them in somewhere?” Or do I say, “Come up however much stuff you want, and we’ll throw it all at the wall and see what sticks?”
Or do I say: “Here’s a theme: redemption. Bring something with you that you feel evokes that idea.**”
Third, I’m going to have to consider logistics. Maybe someone else will have a stage we can borrow; maybe somehow my camp will manage to make one happen. Even then, a proper spring floor with a nice surface is deeply and abidingly unlikely (that stuff’s expensive, y’all, and the Desert eats everything).
As such, I probably want to come up with choreography that can be performed pretty much literally anywhere. So while I may have visions of grand jetes en tournant, in reality we might need to eschew really big leaps in favor of not destroying everyone’s joints and so forth.
Fourth and last (for now) — I realize that this is going to be a real test for me.
I am not a collaborator by nature. I’m a control freak. Like most artistic people, I very easily become entrained in the wake of my own vision, and that can make it hard to work with other people.
On the other hand, dance is by its very nature a communal art form. Dancers are constantly collaborating, whether we realize it or not. Every time Brienne gives us some horrible fondu combination designed to cull the weak from the herd or some beautiful adagio designed to make us all look like we just arrived straight from The School of the Celestial Ballet or whatever, and we take it and make it our own.
We listen to the music (which someone else probably wrote) and run through the combination (which Brienne invented), but we interpret it through the lens of our own being. And if we are fortunate we do so without kicking the person behind us (which I totally did in class today; sorry, girl behind me — I hope that weird little high-five between the edge of my foot and your hand didn’t hurt).
I am (amazingly enough) actually reading Ballet Technique for the Male Dancer, and Tarasov stresses over again that dancers shouldn’t just copy steps. He explains it better than I do, and it’s nearly 3 AM (yaaaay, isnomnia!), so I will have to dig up a solid quote later.
But, anyway where dance is concerned, I am already collaborating, just as I have collaborated as a musician with other musicians as a member of an orchestra, a string quartet, or a choir. I think I am mature enough now to come into this thing with a good basic mini-ballet set to go, but also ready to accept and interpolate the ideas and idioms of others.
So there we have it. A thought overflow holding tank for the Glass Project (which now needs a name, I suppose).
Having recorded all of this, perhaps now I’ll be able to sleep.
That’s it for now.
Be bold, my friends.
Notes
*I will say that even this isn’t set in stone. “The Poet Acts” is pretty much a given, but “The Light,” which is much longer, may or may not make the final cut on the Playa. I have other pieces in the queue for which I’m constructing choreographic skeletons, just in case.
**And try not to make it too hard, because there’s no guaranteeing we won’t get 15 game noobs and 3 people who at least know how to tendu.
danseur ignoble 