Category Archives: balllet

Ballet Squid Chronicles: Monday Class, In Which I Am Less Squidly Than Usual

Aug 18

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This evening, our friend J. came along to try Ballet Essentials. She was one of three (three!) brand new dances today, so Ms. Margie dialed the pace of the class way down. For them, this meant a good foundational class; for me, it meant an opportunity to really focus on the details and on being lyrical and expressive and Letting It Happen.

The awesome part is that I was able to identify a couple of things I’ve been doing wrong.

I should note that, because puberty came very late for me, I am dancing in a very different body than I was when last I did ballet (though not all that different from when last I did modern dance). I’m broader in the shoulders, I carry more muscle all around, and the proportions of my body are just altogether different. I’m also chubbier, but that’s the result of illness-related weight-gain, which I’m now close to finished undoing.

Cycling has also really screwed up my muscle balance — or, well, that isn’t cycling’s fault, really. It’s mine, for not running or something to counter-balance the bike-engine muscles. I kept being like, “Oh, they’re fine.” Boy, was I in denial!

Ballet is just beginning to really overcome the imbalance in question. In short, my pushing-down muscles are great, but my pulling-up muscles are weak as all heck; no matter what anyone tells you, you really can’t get that much power on the upstroke using clipless pedals. Likewise, the muscles on the fronts of my calves are hypertrophic as heck because I ankle like crazy when I climb. This is great for explosive power (so not a bad thing for big leaps), but has to be balanced for controlled relevés.

For what it’s worth, things are shaping up. My thighs look so different than they did six months ago!

This (and, I’m sure, the inevitable process of just forgetting how things are done) has resulted in a few interesting faults in my technique.

For example, I think I’ve mentioned that my frappé looks crappé. (You see what I did th— oh, you’d rather I didn’t anymore? Got it.) Today I realized that the whole problem is simple: I’m overcompensating for muscle imbalances in my legs, and thus instead of bringing my working leg to coupé, I’m kind of bringing it to coupé-and-a-half. This means that instead of hinging from the knee to strike the ground, I have to activate my thigh.

I never noticed this before because we haven’t done frappé slowly at the barre until tonight. Tonight, I stared at myself in the mirror and went, “Oh. Wow. Okay.” And then I fixed it, and voilà! Frappé the way it’s supposed to be! (I was sad that we ran out of time and didn’t get to do Mazurka tonight. I was excited about seeing how it rolls now that my frappé is fixed.)

Your arms totally look graceful, though, BalletSquidDude.

Your arms totally look graceful, though, BalletSquidDude.

Likewise, I worked on the whole back issue. My balances were better (though we only did two-foot balances and coupé and passé on a flat foot — no one-foot demi-pointe balances). I did get a firm correction* once about my shoulders — as usual, I thought they were down, but they weren’t as down as they could be. Ms. Margie told us to take a look at our posture in the mirror so we know what it looks like when it’s right; I realized I have a whole lot of neck when my shoulders are really down 😉

I think my back will probably continue to be a bit of a challenge, but it’s getting better.

My body seems to be really into feeling its turnout this week. The whole “let it happen” thing is awesome that way (though some of it’s also that my “turnout” muscles are now sufficiently strong and active that I can feel and use them pretty effectively). I worked a lot on not gripping, just letting my turnout do its thing, and correcting whenever felt it not doing its thing.

After frappé, we did ballonné at the bar. I love the way ballonné feels, whether at the bar or otherwise, so that was fun. It looked pretty good, as well, with the turnout working. Present the foot, indeed!

During our stretch, I got very close to a full split on the left (which has always been my better side for splits). I think I actually could have gone all the way down (we’re talking a centimeter or two, here), but I hadn’t expected that and kind of freaked out! The right was pretty deep, too, but still about four centimeters or so off the ground.

I used to have hyper-splits both ways, so I expect to recover at least a full split. Also, splits are so much more comfortable when you do them turned out and don’t slide down on the bony-ass instep of your foot.

At center, we practiced port des bras, so I worked on making mine smooth, elastic, and pretty (because, seriously, I still do Port De Bro sometimes). We also did a little adagio combination, just chassé-pas de bourrée, chassé-pas de bourrée until we ran out of music, so I got lots of time to Let It Happen and make it pretty and use my arms and my head and épaulement and stuff. At times, it even looked like ballet ._.

Going across the floor, Margie tapped me to demonstrate the forward-traveling chassé, which felt pretty great.

I think J. did pretty well for her first class, though I really didn’t get to see much of her. She was behind me the whole time we were doing barre (Essentials is a small class, so we go two to a portable barre and switch sides of the barre instead of turning; this lets everybody use the mirrors all the time). When I did get a look at her (going across the floor, for example), she looked like she was getting the basic concepts, and the rest will come with time and experience.

So that’s it for tonight. I didn’t stay for the beginner/intermediate class because we had plans to do dinner with J. after class, but I did get to wave to Tawnee and Brienne as we were departing from the parking lot, at least. I’ll do Tawnee’s class on Wednesday, which will be my first Wednesday class in two weeks, since I didn’t make it last week due to the Great Bus SNAFU of 2014. I’m looking forward to it.

Good night, everybody!

Notes
*Perversely, one feels happy about firm corrections in ballet. They generally mean that your teacher knows you can do better, and knows that you know, and also knows that you can handle it.

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Ballet Squid Chronicles: The Philip Glass Project — Possibilities

Aug 17

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So I’ve been listening to lots of Glass, and I’m feeling like his short piece “The Poet Acts” (from the soundtrack for the film, The Hours) and his longer piece “The Light” are going to work brilliantly.

I’m envisioning a pas de quatre for “The Poet Acts,” with no hierarchical distinctions, just a lot of fluidly-interchanging parts. I suppose if there were any hierarchical distinctions, it might not properly be a pas de quatre.

For “The Light” I’m envisioning something with a larger corps (recruiting and setting the piece on more than 10 dancers might be pretty much impossible; I’m not that organized and, you know, Burning Man, so it’s not like I can suck up everybody’s entire week, unless they really want to spend a week the desert trying to make ballet happen as much as I do) and maybe a couple of featured dancers who emerge from and are absorbed back into the corps at various points.

“The Light” is much longer than “The Poet Acts,” and there’s a lot of opportunity in there to play with lines, circles, and lifts. What I’m envisioning for the principals regardless of gender is something more like what Bourne does with the Swan and the Prince in his version of Swan Lake: less traditional; almost more catch-and-release than lift-and-support (or, heaven forbid, lift-and-separate, which is what happens when your lifts go badly, from what I’ve heard).

There’s also a lot of opportunity in “The Light” to make use of groups of dancers doing different, even opposing things.

I can’t help but notice how the percussive instruments in “The Light” actually remind me of Tchaikovsky in the context of ballet. There are brilliant little cues built in to the music. That’s one of the thing I really enjoy about watching the Tchaikovsky ballets — Tchaikovsky tucked these beautiful little cues in all over the place that are profoundly useful both for dancers and for the audience.

The funny thing is, this doesn’t seem like it should be much more daunting from a choreographic perspective than Copland, and I’ve seen Copland ballets (including Martha Graham’s “Appalachian Spring”).

So I think it will work, if I can give myself a crash course in creating and setting choreography on dancers.

I’ve got a year. How hard can it be*?

Notes
*Yes,  that’s supposed to be ironic, there.  Don’t worry; I’m not that manic.  Yet.

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Ballet Squid Quickie: Two Things Forgot To Mention

So last night I mentioned to our friend Kelly that I was planning on choreographing a sort of post-post-modern story ballet, if you will (actually, I’m not sure it’s post-post-modern at all in the technical sense; it might not even be modern — but here on the Innertubes we play fast and loose with our English all the time), to some of Erik Satie’s piano works and that I was planning on possibly putting up a small ad-hoc performance together at Burning Man next year.

Kelly immediately said, “Meh! It’s already been done. Now, if you can choreograph something to Philip Glass, I’ll be impressed!

I replied, “I could do that! I love Philip Glass!”

And Kelly said, “Ha! If your dancers can count!”

And thus was the choreographic gauntlet cast. So I guess I’ll be selecting something from Mr. Glass’s oeuvre (but NOT the whole of Koyaanisqatsi!) and trying to whip up some kind of little ballet for it next summer. The idea is to do some collaborative choreography, spend a little time rehearsing it, and throw out a little performance.

I might still see about doing selected bits from Simon Crane (that’s the working title of my Satie ballet, which is not, coincidentally, about a stunt man — though that, too, might make a cool idea around which to build a ballet). Maybe just a few pieces that give shape to the story. We’ll see.

Sorry I’m so chatty today. Just trying to put all this stuff down so I’ll remember it, and also in order to force myself to do it.

In other news, I find WordPress’s simplified post editor very annoying, and am irked by the fact that the “New Post” feature now defaults to it unless you go to Dashboard>Posts>New Post. Most irritating.

That’s all, really, I promise. I’ll shut up now.

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Ballet Squid Chronicles: Saturday Class Notes – It Came From Studio 5

Aug 16

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We went out last night, so I did this morning’s beginner class, and I did it on about 5 hours of sleep (not quite a record, but still enough to throw me off my game a wee bit).

I was not, however, the most sleep-deprived member of the class.  The same guy by whom I was so immensely intimidated a few classes ago — who is, in fact, a professional dancer — came to do barre with us this morning, and he hadn’t left his other job* ’til 4 AM.

He joined me at the end of the barre nearest the door.  It turns out he’s actually a rather nice person and not, in fact, at all intimidating.  As such, I decided to try to learn from him, though since we were across a portable barre, this time I just listened to his breathing and tried to emulate it.

Class was a mixed bag today.

There were moments at the barre during which I was really feeling and using the music.  There were other moments when I was all, “Frappé?  Whaddaya think this is, a Starbucks?” or “Port de bro?  Je ne comprends ce que vous dites. Je n’ai pas un frère.”

At one point, after totally leaving out a part of a combination, I mumbled after turning, “And maybe I can get the combination right this time.”  Professional Dance Guy grinned and said something like, “Don’t worry about it. Just hold your head up and look like you know what you’re doing.  That’s what I do.”

So I did, because, you know. When Professional Dance Guy says it works for him…

Oddly enough, it did work.

I did much better remembering the combo**. It was a tendu-degagé-degagé-pique, and I was sort of automagically doing degagé-degagé-degagé-pique.

I still hosed up all my frappés on the next combo, but my grand battement — seriously, I didn’t know I could get my leg that high yet (until a few years ago, I could still pretty much swing it up and whack myself in the face; I’m getting back there).  Apparently I work well under pressure.

I think the highlight, though (besides grand battement) came in the form of 16 bars of free practice that Claire gave us to work on “whatever, as long as it’s ballet-related,” during which my entire barre decided through telepathy that we were going to swing the bejeebers out of our legs in sync.  We looked like a trireme going to war or something (though, had we actually been a watercraft, we would simply have found ourselves sitting in place, since there were four of us on the barre with two facing each way).

The “everyone at my barre doing a kind of whippy attitude en cloche” moment was pretty fun, too.  I think that may have evolved out of an effort to not kick the stuffing out of each-other while rowing our imaginary trireme, though.  The class was packed, so even angling would’ve potentially meant kicking someone .. and nobody kicks like a dancer***.

There were moments at centre, working turns, during which I was look, “Oh, look, if I pull my core together and really focus on nailing my passé, suddenly I can do this nice, controlled pirouette en dedans.”  There were other times that I was like, “Don’t look.   Just … don’t.  It’s better that way.” At any rate, my pique turns were good.  Again, I focused on opening the knee at passé.  I rediscovered my turnout a while ago; now I’m learning how to use it again. You know, to do other things than get my feet out of the way when I’m coming up the stairs or opening our pull-out freezer drawer and whatever.

Going across the floor, I messed up the first combination, then nailed it (it was very, very simple: just, “Sauté arabesque! Sauté pique!” lather, rinse, repeat — but because it was simple we were supposed to be musical and expressive and pay attention to our arms and stuff). I messed up the second one, then kinda got it, too. After that, I somehow memorized the third one (pique arabesque, faillé, pas de chat, pas de chat, tombe pas de bourée, glissade, whatever big jump you like) in the wrong sequence.

In short, I put the tombé where the faillé should have been, resulting in … well, it was just bad, okay? You can get from tombé to pas de chat, of course, but it’s harder and doesn’t look as nice.

So I ran the last combo the wrong way like four times, struggling to get from Point A to Point B, before I finally realized I was doing something completely different around the second step than everyone else, and that I should probably ask Claire to go over the combo again. Problem solved … ish. By then I was sufficiently confused (and tired) that my final two runs were sloppy and kind of awful, but at least less awful than they had been. I guess that’s something?  I’ll work on that combination at home this week (no tour jeté, so I can probably clear the floor downstairs and run it without whacking my arms on the ceiling).

If all else fails, I will disassemble the coffee table and mark it in the living room. Seriously. I have been thinking about removing the coffee table anyway (I hate it; it’s made of four huge effing pillars and a giant piece of beveled plate glass, weighs about four million tons, and is a giant pain in the neck to vacuum around — and it also encourages Denis to accumulate snow-drifts of papers in the middle of the living room, AHEM).

The real low point of today’s class, tough, was the little jumps. You know — the ones I’m good at, the ones I love doing, the ones I could do all day?

Yeah, I totally hosed those up as hard as I could. I didn’t actually know that I was capable of screwing them up that badly. We were doing a jump-jump-relevé combo, and mine turned into … something else. Something … horrible.

No one could say what it was or how it came to be. All they knew... ...was that it was bad.

No one could say what it was or how it came to be. All they knew…
…was that it was bad.

The ultimate problem was simply coordination. I was feeling a bit cooked, and my feet and legs just didn’t want to hear about sauté-sauté-releve. So instead it was all, sauté-sauté-bounce on releve and scare the crap out of poor Clare. By the time I got them fixed, we had moved on.

Also my adagio was rather awful. I’m not sure I even want to talk about it. It stated out beautifully, and then … I don’t know what happened. It fell apart. I fell apart. And then there was the promenade. At least one promenade was passably okay, which is enormous progress from the “Holy crap, I have completely forgotten how to do this!” moment I had when I first did Claire’s class a few months ago. My promenade still sort of resembles the flailings of a wounded moose, but, you know. Before it was even wrose, so I guess that’s progress!

So not my best class ever today — but everyone has bad days (probably even Claire and Professional Dance Guy), and I did get a really nice compliment afterwards. One of my fellow students said, “You have really beautiful feet. I wish I had feet like yours.” (I thanked her profusely, of course.)

So that about made my week. The rest of this week’s classes could suck (WHICH THEY WON’T, ahem), and I would still be able to say, “Yeah, but at least I have beautiful feet.”

This week’s imaginary t-shirt slogan?

“RELAX, DAMMIT!”

Notes
*Louisville unfortunately doesn’t really have a large enough arts-funding base to keep its professional musicians and dancers fed and housed without second jobs.
**Didn’t we just talk about this last post? Not thinking so hard? Letting it happen? Etc? Sheesh.
***True story: I used to do Muay Thai for a while. I loved it; in some ways it was very much like ballet — you know, if you were actually allowed to kick your partner in the face in ballet. One time I had been having kind of a slow day warming up at the heavy bag, but finally woke up by the time we got to partner kicking drills. I threw a high kick that whizzed past my partner’s ear. He was taller than I was. Our trainer looked and me all bug-eyed and said, “Jeez, where was that high kick on the bag?” In the end, I had the best high kick in class, and there was one reason for that: grand battement. That was some consolation, because I largely sucked at all the boxing parts of kickboxing.

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Ballet Squid Chronicles: Monday Class Notes — Suddenly, We’re Dancing!

Aug 11

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Today I did the Monday Double Header — Margie’s Ballet Essentials followed by Claire’s Beginner/Intermediate class.

Essentials was well populated, and we’ve gained couple of new students. We did a fairly low-intensity class (Margie was under the weather), so we got to focus on technique — which meant I got to focus on not focusing so darned hard!

My goal for the day was to practice the two big lessons from last week — Jim’s “Watch your mouth!” and the “Don’t make it happen, let it happen” philosophy from Ballet Talk for Dancers.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, this two-pronged attack on tension and over-focus works really well. “Watch your mouth” becomes shorthand for “Relax!” which leads naturally into letting it happen.

This let me move much, much more freely, though at times I still lost count during little jumps (in Margie’s class, this was because I was thinking about feet — specifically, observing how everyone’s feet looked — instead of just doing my thang; in Claire’s class, I’m guessing I was just having a tired moment and hadn’t yet caught my second wind).

Claire’s barre was lovely, and I got to share a bare with the wife of our friend Nicolas. Nicolas is one of the Saturday Ballet Essentials regulars.

Nicolas’ wife (whose name, sadly, I cannot recall just now) is a very good dancer. She does the advanced class and the daytime intermediate classes as well; this is the first time I’ve done class with her. I found myself mostly able to remember the combinations (another thing I decided to work on today — no following!), so I watched the way her back and arms worked and tried to emulate it.

I think it actually made a big difference; my barre was much prettier than usual. It was definitely more “port des bras” and less “port de bro.”

(You guys, true story: I was totally going to put a picture of men doing port des bras badly, here, but now that I want one I can’t find one.)

Better still, Claire gave me another amazing correction. I’ve been overbalancing myself when in coupé and passé en relevé and I couldn’t figure out why. It turns out I was A) still hollowing my lower back and B) my head was tipping back beyond my center line. This threw the whole column off, causing me to be tippy.

Claire’s correction worked like a miracle cure. As before, it felt weird, but holy cow, guys! It worked!

Suddenly I was on my leg, balancing on a nice high demi-pointe in passé, and just, like, there. Wow.

I think the hollow back thing is also the source of my squidly-middly problem, because my grand battement in Margie’s class was questionable, but in Claire’s class I did it pretty well at the barre and then used it in a combination, without the barre! OMG grand battement without barre and without falling over, you guys!

And I did not even die (though I was so shocked that it worked that I proceeded to totally fumble a simple little arabesque immediately thereafter)!

And then, of course, I had to demonstrate how awesome I was by picking up the wrong freaking leg while doing turns.

Wait, let me back up.

So across-the-floor went really well at first. In my new “letting it happen” mode, I wasn’t freaking out about the combinations.

Instead, I walked through them (even when nobody else was), recited them to myself, marked them, and put myself in one of the first few groups* so I didn’t have time to A) stress out, B) forget the combo whilst waiting in the “wings,” or C) confuse myself by thinking too much (cue Jaws theme: How are we getting to piqué arabesque? What comes aftertombé-pas de bouree?? Do I even remember how to tombé??? And whatdo I do with my arms again?!).

Still, it was better than last time.

Still, it was better than last time.

So we did a couple of lovely runs on our first combination across the floor, and then we did … um … something with pirouettes from fourth en dedans.

And on the first pass, I did fine.

And then, on the second pass, Heaven help me, I did some horrible thing where I somehow picked up the wrong leg entirely and still attempted to turn en de dans. Claire called out, “The other leg!” and I said, “Oh, right!”

And then I did it wrong.

AGAIN.

I have only two questions: Why me? Why now???

I have only two questions: Why me? Why now???

But at least my piqué turns were okay, I guess?

I’m guessing I wasn’t the only one who was DOIN’ IT RONG, though, because then we all got to practice pirouettes from fourth en dedans. Of course, it wasn’t until I got home that I mentally ran the audio description of the combo that I’d hosed up and realized that was exactly what it called for (so why did I do it right the first time and wrong the second time?!).

But, anyway, after that, we did some leapy stuff, and that was good.

Claire suggested that we end a run with either jete or saut de chat and I only heard the “…de chat” part, and while mentally sorting it out I said, “Oh, saut de chat, not pas de chat,” and then Claire said, “You can do pas de chat if you want.” So I did it that way once, then with grand jeté a couple of times.

The pas de chat version turned out to be fun. Especially since last week I couldn’t seem to wrap my brain and body around glissade, pas de chat, but this week, I let it happen, and there it was.

A couple of my classmates also tossed in pas de chat, which made me feel kind of great ^-^

In other news, Jim only had to call me out on making faces once! I did it a lot more than that one time, of course, but a lot less than I was before last week. So there we go. I am at least working on becoming a Smiling Squid instead of a squid who sucks his lips into his mouth and bites them while doing leaps. Because that just looks dumb, and it also makes you really tense.

So there it is. I discovered a couple of good ideas, and suddenly instead of struggling through the choreography at the end of class, I’m freaking well dancing! And looking decent enough at it that I no longer hope I won’t catch sight of myself in the mirror.

Okay, this is long enough, and I still have a couple other odds and ends to clear up before I can stuff some Triscuits in my face and go to bed (in that order). So, you know the drill. Sunny side up, leather side down.

Good night, everybody!

Notes
*Class was huge today, y’all. We used all the barres. We were also packed into the small studio. The group was so big that even though we angled ourselves at the barre, I still collided (lightly and briefly) with another dancer while doing grand battement. It was so big that someone who came in just after me paused and said, “Is this company class?”
…And, of course, even though I was pretty sure she was joking, the really nerdy part deep inside me went, “Yaaaaaay! We look like company class!”

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Ballet Squid Quickie: Denis Is Officially A Dancer

Aug 11

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Today, Denis went to see our lovely doc, Dr. B, for a checkup. He reported some pain he’d been having in his right foot*, so she x-rayed it.

Fortunately, no broken bones or anything appeared. Dr. B said it’s probably mild arthritis, and said it might eventually (far down the line) interfere with his dancing.

Denis said that when that day comes, he’ll probably go for cortisone injections before he’ll quit dancing, and that he intends to keep dancing for as long as he can.

In this bizarre “only dancers and athletes think like this” kind of way, that made me so proud ^-^

I think I can officially call him a dancer, now!

Via Pintrest via The Googs. For some reason, I haven't located the original source for this one yet.

Via Pintrest via The Googs. For some reason, I haven’t located the original source for this one yet.

Notes
*Denis observes that he’s probably had issues with his left foot for a long time, but never really paid attention to them until dancing irritated the joint in question. Evidently, the same spot has long been a spot where his shoes rub, but only on the left.
Also, though I initially said it was his left foot, it turns out that left was wrong and right was right. D’oh!

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Ballet Squid Chronicles: For the Coming Year

Aug 10

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…By which I mean the coming academic year, of course.

The other night I had a chat with Denis about my plans for the upcoming year.

Since I won’t be doing the honors program, I mentioned that graduating in December is an option again. He pointed out that if I graduate in December, I should be able to find a part-time job that will let me save up for corrective surgery for my gynecomastia.

Coincidentally, this will also let me add MOAR BALLET! to the schedule, which will allow me to be better prepared when I apply to grad school. Perhaps four to five classes per week will help me tame my tentacles*?

As such, I’m seriously considering it. I feel like I keep making these declarations — “I’m going to do this!” — and then changing my mind … but maybe that’s normal?

Anyway, I feel a tad nervous about wading back into the world of work. I don’t want a 9-to-5-behind-the-desk kind of job, which leaves me really a bit uncertain about what I might do. I’d ideally like to find something that’s somehow related to my future career path (something somehow connected to dance, or to psychology, or even perhaps to fitness), but I don’t really know what’s out there for which I’m qualified**.

I wouldn’t have any objection to a stocking or warehouse job for the time being. Likewise, a part-time office job would probably be fine.

For what it’s worth, I also have the option of not working. Denis isn’t forcing me to find a job. It’s just that we’ll be able to fund the surgery*** and things like ballet camp (I totally want to do Sun King next year) more quickly and easily if I do work.

Plus, I don’t entirely feel like it’s fair to ask Denis to pay for all of my ballet training, even though a portion of it can be written off as an educational expense. He’s happy to fund my passions, but right now, we’re working on Paying All the Debt! so we can work our way towards a less encumbered way of living. I’d like to help with that process instead of doing everything in my power to make it take longer 😉

Likewise, while Denis has repeatedly offered to pay for my gynecomastia surgery, he is deeply uncomfortable both with the notion of me going under the knife and with the statement it makes — that we live in a world wherein our notions about gender and bodies are so deeply entrenched that people who don’t fit, in one way or another, feel like they have to risk their lives in order to live their lives.

I am kind of with him on that, but I also know that it’s holding me back in a way that, say, being bald isn’t holding him back. He never chooses not to do something because he’s bald: I often choose not to do things (like swimming, no matter how much I love it, or auditioning for plays) because of my gynecomastia.

For all that, I might discover that I like the “office/warehouse worker by afternoon, dancer by morning and night” lifestyle. Who knows? I feel like it’s really hard right now to say where my particular journey is taking me.

All I know is that I want bikes and ballet to be there; to be part of the journey.

And Denis.

And, you know, maybe the stationary trapeze.

My butt looks huge in this picture.

One last bit.

In the interest of improving my dancing, I’ve realized I probably need to add at least some small measure of regular strength training (especially core work), daily stretching, and some focused work on static balance to my daily routine (Ha! Daily routine! Now that’s comedy!)

I suppose I should probably come up with some concrete plan for this. As such, once I do, I’ll post the plan in question.

Notes
*The arms are getting better, I swear, but consistency really helps.
**Our ballet school was recently hiring a front-desk person, which would’ve been a good fit, but the schedule would have been impossible for me until I graduate, so I didn’t apply.
***Last I checked, most insurance companies still consider gynecomastia correction “cosmetic,” rather than “reconstructive.” I’m not sure I disagree.

I look at it this way: surgery with general anaesthetic carries some serious risks (including death); living with gynecomastia for the rest of my life isn’t likely to cause me physical harm, and thus far is not directly responsible for any of my moments of suicidal thinking.

As a dancer, though, it does interfere with my confidence considerably. Likewise, it makes me super-shy about things like swimming. Also, dancing in a gynecomastia vest kind of sucks, but being the boy in class with sizable moobs sucks even more — so, yeah, there you have it.

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Ballet Squid Chronicles: Saturday Class Notes

Aug 9

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I feel that I was, well, very squidly in the middly today — like there were no bones between my pelvis and my shoulders.

Last night, I went running. Or, well, it started out as running. The goal was to run to the RedBox at ValuMarket, retrieve two movies, and run home — only I discovered that, after about six months back in the ballet studio, my feet have reshaped themselves enough to change how my running shoes fit.

The Minouras are still comfortable, don’t get me wrong — but I can no longer wear them without socks! I gave myself a bunch of blisters — not the biggest ones I’ve ever had, and not the worst ones I’ve ever had, but there were a lot of them, and dancing on burst blisters is no fun. Walking home kept them from bursting and peeling, which made class much, much more comfortable this morning than it might have been.

There are actually four on my left foot;
you can only see two at this angle.

Also, look — I have ankles now!

Anyway, I ran the outbound leg of my trip and walked back, then stuck fancy bandages all over my feet while we watched two movies (Grand Budapest Hotel, which was very lovely, and The Lego Movie, which was actually better than I expected it to be).

I arrived home at 8:25 PM. Needless to say, we stayed up later than we should have.

Staying up late meant taking my sleep aid even later, and I was still feeling it this morning during class. I felt a touch groggy, a bit slow, and like I was having a hard time keeping everything pulled together*.

That said, I think that working through the fog is a good lesson in and of itself. Say I actually get a chance to perform some day: there are going to be days that rehearsals happen when I’m feeling groggy and not entirely with it. Likewise, if I work in Dance/Movement Therapy, there are going to be days that I’ll need to be in the studio and “on” even though I haven’t slept well or whatever.

As dancers, we have to learn how to work through grogginess and harness every scrap of focus we can find.

Going across the floor, I felt like all that focus-retrieving effort paid off: while I didn’t feel like my sautés and leaps were exactly spectacular, I was able to get my arms in sync. This was an improvement over the beginning of barre, during which I couldn’t seem to remember what my arms were supposed to do at all.

I also managed one or two decent pirouettes (which we did before clearing the bars). Margie gave me a couple of excellent corrections that amounted to: pay attention to when and where the working knee arrives in passé and let your shoulders carry your head (or, don’t lead with your neck!)**.

Denis said I looked really good going across the floor, which was nice. I tend to focus hard on my faults and I don’t always appreciate what I do well. Instead of seeing a grand jeté that looks pretty nice, I see one that doesn’t look perfect. C’est la vie.

Probably the highlight of today’s class, though, was really feeling and using the music — bizarrely enough, this happened during our barre stretch. I feel like I’ve got the basics back in my body enough to start working on musicality and interpretation more, especially during our Essentials class. In the advanced beginner and beginner/intermediate classes, I still feel like I’m focusing on getting the steps back into my body.

The really cool thing is that every now and then I have a moment — like Monday’s tour jetés, Wednesday’s one really good pas de chat, a lovely glissade I tossed off randomly at home today — in which something suddenly clicks and my long-unused muscle memory wakes up and says, “Hey, I know this!”

I hope I’ll be able to keep the glissades turned on. The glissade-assemblé mental block still surfaces from time to time, so I practice glissade-assemblé at home all the time now in an effort to correct it.

For what it’s worth: different teachers and different dancers have different feelings about practicing at home. I find it works well for me. I’ve very much a kinaesthetic learner, though: my body leads my mind, rather than vice-versa (in short, I don’t think too well when I’m sitting still!). As such, I rely on a process of successive approximations followed by increasing refinement … which is to say, I learn faster if I repeat things a lot.

If I leave the studio feeling like I don’t have the first layer of approximation solidly modeled (a good mental 3D “video” coupled to a basic kinesthetic understanding), I won’t generally practice a given movement outside of class. Once I have that first layer down, though, I am pretty good at building upon it without adding errors. This usually means that I’ll give something at least a couple of classes before I start working on it at home.

There are some steps I can’t practice at home (no room for tour jeté in the house — upstairs, there’s too much furniture; downstairs, I’d smack my arms on the ceiling; outside, our yard is way, way too un-level), but I seem to be good at improving the steps I can practice.

I will say that two classes per week plus some practice at home doesn’t work as well as three plus some practice at home. I’m sure four or five classes per week would be awesome, but it’s not in the budget right now.

I don’t think everyone necessarily should practice at home (and I might not bother if I was taking class five or six days per week). I think it’s up to each of us to determine for ourselves (ideally with the guidance of our teachers) whether solo practice is a help or a hindrance.

For me, a bit of practice at home seems to work, as long as I’m conscious about it.

This is getting long so one more random bit: during Wednesday’s class, Brienne ran all the across-the-floor stuff quite beautifully, and I found that really helpful (not that I managed to get my crap together during class). She has a very graceful, athletic, bounding style, and it’s been handy to be able to picture how she performed our choreography so that I can use it as a model. Pretty cool stuff.

Oh, one really last random bit: I managed to actually watch my mouth (thanks, Jim!) a bit during this class. I did catch myself making faces from time to time. Whenever that happened, I made myself smile***, which has the rather magical effect of loosening everything else up along with my face. Good to know.

Notes
*I re-learned, yet again, about the importance of being solid and connected from the ground up. I’m guessing that the large muscles in the thighs that do a lot of that work were still recovering from the run, as well, which probably didn’t help.
**I was sort of hyper-spotting; snapping my neck around in advance of my turn. This throws everything off and makes for a messy finish.
***Because you have to do something. Denis and I routinely debate the whole, “Smile, you’re performing!” idea — he thinks dancers should basically smile all the time; I think they should smile when it’s appropriate to the music they’re interpreting.

For me at this juncture, though, attempting a beatific smile is better than just trying not to make faces!

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Not About Bikes or Ballet: Telecanter’s Receding Rules; Also, Books (About Ballet)

Aug 8

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The first part of this post comes to you by way of one of the new banners I cobbled together last night from some clip art.

If paying for it isn’t in the budget, I like to use public-domain images (or my own original art) for things like banners. Once in a while, I’ll shamelessly gank a base image for some other, grander transformation project, but it’s easy to properly credit the source in those cases.

My ballet squid is no exception — and the squid part came from Telecanter’s Receding Rules. If you’re a fantasy author or a tabletop RPGer, Receding Rules is an awesome resource. Not only will you find reams of public-domain clip art that you can use to make, among other things, ballet squids (how’s that for a random encounter?), but Telecanter’s thoughtful suggestions for building tension and excitement into tabletop role playing games translate really nicely to the realm of fantasy writing.

As a writer who occasionally finds himself in need of a random, foreboding-but-mostly-harmless encounter for some character or another, I found Telecanter’s post, “Discretionary Monsters,” particularly edifying.

In short, if you’re a writer or a gamer (or a lazy blogger in search of some clip art), you might want to give Telecanter’s blog a look.

Books
Amazon knows I am both a bibliophile and a ballet nerd, and as such has fiercely honed its ability to recommend books against which I can muster little resistance. Thus far, I’ve been fairly good about resisting for the most part — I’ve only purchased five (four are Kindle books, which — thanks to their generally-lower price points and the problem of instant gratification — are much harder to resist).

Only five.

Heh.

It began, of course, with Apollo’s Angels, Jennifer Homans’ thoroughgoing history of the art form. This book has already been reviewed by every ballet blogger on the face of the planet, so I’m not going to devote a ton of time to it here. The bottom line: if you like history and ballet and there’s enough geek in your blood to let you appreciate the academic tone, Angels is worth the read (regardless of Homans’ thesis that ballet is dead). I made it to the eighth chapter before the flurry of late-semester school stuff snowed me under; I haven’t picked it up again yet because I’ve been in Irresponsible Non-Academic Mode all summer.

Somehow, this led to Winter Season, the brief but highly-engaging journal of a NYCB dancer near the end of the Balanchine era. Toni Bentley’s voice is clear, engaging; perhaps even effervescent. There is an immediacy to it that makes the book a quick and compelling read.

Of course, since it was brief, I had to find another ballet book to chase it with. This led to Stephen Manes’ Where Snowflakes Dance and Swear — a sort of “embedded field report” about Manes’ time observing the Pacific Northwest Ballet. It’s as enjoyable as the title suggests; but nonetheless a book you can read episodically. I have been enjoying it in dribs and drabs (between mystery novels — a recently-acquired taste — and ballet classes).

The most recent addition to the pile is Ramsay Burt’s The Male Dancer: Bodies, Spectacle, Sexualities — a book that has proven to be even dryer and more academic in tone than Apollo’s Angels (it’s okay, I’m totally into that kind of thing: I’ve got this, I’m a Professional Student). You can tell it’s going to be very academic without even cracking its virtual spine, since the “cover” is surpassing plain, with an abstract design in blue topped with plain white text (it’s also marketed as a textbook). This one is definitely not reading-in-bed-after-you’ve-taken-your-Trazodone material. I think I bumbled my way through about eight pages before giving up last night. It seems very promising (if not ballet-specific; Burt also addresses the broader world of theatrical dance), but also very dry.

I suppose I’ll keep working on it while I wait for Ballet Technique for the Male Dancer, which is sort of the hard-won prize of the lot. Amazon recommended it; several very good reviews confirmed its promise — and then I realized it was out of print and, at the time, around $80 for a second-hand paperback copy in “good” condition. I popped it in my wish list and assumed that was never going to happen. Since then, for whatever reason, a number of copies have surfaced for around $40. Last night, I took a deep breath ($40 is like 3.1 classes!) and bit the bullet. Unfortunately, since Ballet Technique for the Male Dancer is an actual physical, printed book, I will just have to wait ’til it gets here.

Anyway, that’s it for the moment. That last little blurb isn’t so much a review or a recommendation as an expression of my existential angst in the face of having to WAIT FOR A BOOK (ZOMG!)*.

No class today; tomorrow, we’ll be doing Essentials and possibly a random tandem ride.

Notes
*Yes, I’m making fun of myself.

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Ballet Squid Chronicles: Attack of the Pros!

Aug 6

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Tonight I took Tawnee’s beginner class for the first time.

Her teaching approach is closer to Margie’s — slower-paced, with a lot of focus on precision and clean technique (and occasional hands-on assistance — at one point, she grabbed my leg mid-extension, turned it out a bit further and simply lifted it painlessly into a much higher extension: she then said something like, “There’s your turnout,” to which I mentally replied, “Wow?” — because, seriously, I had no idea that A) I could get my leg that high in an extension à la seconde and B) it wouldn’t hurt at all*).

Bizarrely, I was the most advanced regular student in class for once … though I did not acquit myself accordingly once we left the barre (I promptly forgot how to count and how to remember combinations, and I probably made faces as well).

Then the Pros showed up.

Brienne (my teacher! In class with me! OMG!) and a fellow who I’m fairly certain is at very least quite an advanced student came to do class as well (he said off-hand as he entered, “I was going to do company class but…” and I missed the rest).

So our little band of four became a band of six, and I found myself alternately standing behind, then in front of, a really well put-together guy whose technique was pretty solid. (Also, his arms were beautiful. Just sayin’.)

So. Um. Apparently, I can be intimidated**.

Obviously, it wasn’t too scary standing behind him (if anything, it was edifying). What was intimidating was standing in front of him.

If you dance, you know these feels.

If you dance, you know these feels.

Needless to say, I suddenly found myself very, very focused on remembering the combinations and executing them with the best technique I could manage.

Which, of course, led to thinking. Which occasionally led to screwing up, because thinking + dancing = bad dancing. Sort of. Sometimes.

Also, I apparently respond to intimidation by forgetting to pull up my knees, then pulling them up like my life depends on it. This was an informative insight, as the mid-section jelly phenomenon I’ve previously described seems to pretty much stem from loose knees (who knew? — loose lips knees sink ships dancers!). Once the knees pull up, everything else is like, “Oh, better get in line.”

Else, jelly.

I guess this shouldn’t be some kind of ground-breaking discovery, but there you have it. Each of us comes to understand the whys of ballet in his or her own time.

Anyway, while I executed one totally lovely pas de chat (if I do say so myself — and I do), I was largely of useless at centre (I kept losing track of my legs, and my arms, and the combos, and probably everything else).

I think I might actually have overdone it with the caffeine, which might have contributed to flighty-brain syndrome.

Perhaps I should cut back***?

Surprisingly, the roughly 20 fast miles on the bike didn’t really seem to phase me. So there’s that.

Anyway, even though I feel like I was a mess during enormous swathes of this class, I actually don’t think it was that horrible. Compared to the first few classes when I was just starting back, I’ve come a long way in a short time.

So that’s it for tonight. No stunning insights other than, “Oh, if I tighten my knees, things work better,” which I think I’ve covered before.

Pull these muscles up. Then pull them up some more. Then a little more. Then unlock your knees, and you're good to go.

Pull these muscles up. Then pull them up some more. Then a little more. Then unlock your knees, and you’re good to go.

^^^Remember this one?

So, um, sunny side up, leather side down; head in the air, wheels on the ground (yeah, I know it’s “feminine rhyme,” but whaddaya want?).

More to come.

Notes
*Actually, I should have known this — I think it was one of the times that either Margie or Jessica taught the Saturday beginner/intermediate class that we did basically the same thing while stretching — manually turned our legs out a bit further and discovered that, ohai, we could tuck them behind our ears while standing. At least, I could.
**Also, blubbery. I am way leaner than I was a couple years ago — lean enough to look pretty good on the bike these days — but seriously, ballet kit hides nothing. And ballet is one of the areas where Other People Can Be Fat And Look Fine But I Can’t because of my stupid brain and its stupid double standards.
***Yes, I should cut back. Caffeine and bipolar go together like horseshoes and hand-grenades, as we like to say around here.

Posted in balllet, class notes

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