In an effort to keep myself from sitting at home and obsessing about today’s audition, I decided to haul my hiney out of bed and go to acro class.
And this goofiness happened 😀
It started out as graceful half-highs with port de bras, then turned into the Creation of Adam, then turned into two guys going PULL MY FINGER!!!
Top, L-R: Jesse, Me
Bottom, L-R: Starr, Denis
Totally worth it. Hanging out with my acro peeps always puts me in a great frame of mind.
Now I only have an hour to obsess before I can go check in and warm up. Maybe I should take myself out for lunch…
In addition to submitting my audition registration forms, today I:
This was one heck of a good day, people. Now I’m going to bed so I’ll be well rested for class tomorrow 🙂
So I just submitted my audition registration materials for audition #1 for the 2016 – 2017 season.
Part of me is all like, “Don’t worry, it’s cool; we’ve got this.”
Another part of me is totally like:
Shamelessly stolen from QuickMeme, because that is how the internet rolls.
My goal was to get that stuff sent out before I go to Lexington next week.
I figured that if I didn’t go ahead and make myself do it now, I’d just keep procrastinating and attempting to further perfect my 100-word-or-less dancer biography until my head caught fire.
Sometimes good enough has to be good enough.
Remember this?
Anyway, I shall now spend the next three weeks and change occasionally alternating between having mild heart attacks over the upcoming audition and, like, basically feeling like I WILL OWN THIS THING because that’s what my personality is like when I’m not freaking out. I can rock that whole “wildly overconfident” thing like I was born for it.
Okay, I will also spend at least some time worrying that I’ve somehow screwed up my submission and that the registration forms will come through blank (even though I understand how desperately unlikely that is) and that my resume makes me sound either desperate or like an overweening ass and that my headshot is … I guess, just wrong in one way or another.
As such, I hereby submit the following arguments against my own obsessive anxieties:
Ultimately, I realize that I’m only anxious about this because I really, really want to do this — which is, of course, bad Buddhism, but I plan to harness the little bits of Zen practice I’ve kinda-sorta learned how to use to counteract that tendency.
In other news, I will try to get some video shot in the next couple of weeks. A friend of mine (going to nickname her Modern A, I guess?) and I just started work on a random choreography project together, so I got to see some video of myself dancing that we shot last night. My response was:
“Wow, that felt way worse than it looks!” (In fact, I am forced to admit that some of the moments in the videos actually look pretty good.)
We were creating phrases, and I was tired and kind of marked and flailed my way through a couple of quick recordings so I wouldn’t forget mine, and it looked quite a bit better than I expected a bunch of marking and flailing to look.
I figure that if I can feel that okay about my half-baked modern choreography efforts shot late in the evening after a full day of busting butt, I can probably feel okay about actual dancing shot when I’m actually awake 🙂
I took Monday evening class today because Ms. B (of Killer Class) was teaching. Also because I figured some ballet might help my mood (it did; I’m not all sunshine and roses, here, but I’m … Eh. Less awful?).
I’m glad I did. I struggled in my last two morning classes due to circadian rhythm disasters, but tonight I was on it (except I still don’t have my triple turns back, and for some reason my right leg didn’t want to coupé-balloné at the start of our medium allegro.
I got a lot of notes at the barre — detail work, now, refining port de bras and épaulement, mostly, and a “Nice, Asher!” during adagio.
Barre adage was good, too: working at relevé, I managed to finally lift my legs with the right muscles, and it was like, Boom! Effortless extensions at 90 degrees and above. This was a spectacular development, as I’ve been fighting with my à la seconde to a wildly unreasonable degree. My gluteus medius usually thinks it’s supposed to do, like, all the work, so it blocks several degrees of extension and then cramps. Tonight it was just like, “Oh, I’ll be over here, just call if you need me,” and the rest of the muscles were like, “Thank you. OMG, thank goodness that guy got outta the way.” And there was my leg, extended just above 90 from dèveloppé, and nothing cramped or strained or anything.
I continue to be surprised that I’m sorta, kinda becoming good at adagio. Also that I like it. As a kid, I thought adagio was boooooooring. Now I don’t — it has become a lovely opportunity for expression, not to mention a chance (in class, anyway), to check in with my body and pull everything together.
Speaking of which, my turns were sloppy at first, and then I realized that I was doing them with my “Cheetah eyes” turned off and my core all kinds of disengaged. Fixed that, and things got so, so much better.
After class, Ms. B said I look good! That’s a huge thing — I feel like I came back from Mam-Luft&Co a much better dancer; more so than I would ever have expected. That’s what I’m working for, so it’s good.
I’ve also been surprised by the conviction I feel about dancing: the audition I’m looking towards will mean, if successful, skipping Burning Man and returning early from Florida. I would do either of those in a heartbeat to be able to do this thing.
I guess that’s how you know you’re doing what you really want to do, though. All those decisions become essentially effortless.
So I’m filling out an audition registration packet for a local company that I know and respect, the AD of which I know and respect.
This is way more intimidating than filling out a registration for some audition for a company where I don’t know anyone personally; where nobody’s going to call me and go, “Asher, what the heck are you thinking? You are definitely not ready for this.”
Um, not that that’s going to happen here, either.
But that’s where the whole Impostor Syndrome thing takes me, apparently, in this particular circumstance.
Interesting.
YouTube: BOSU Balance Series
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