So the audition was a bit mixed (kept reminding myself that almost nobody else had 100% of any individual phrase, either), but overall a complete blast — especially loved the partnering improv.
Also, I think my legs are going to fall off.
Category Archives: #dancerlife
Callbacks ‘n’ Sech
Today was a long day: class at 10:30 (with a smidgen of rehearsal afterwards); teaching at 1 PM; suspended meditation at 2; callback at 3:30 (ended a little past 6:30).
Class was … erm. Like, barre was great? And the rest of it was … yeaaah. Erm. I had issues. On the other hand, I did manage one not-very-good triple, and except for the points at which I actually screwed up, things looked okay.
All three members of my Ballet Girl Posse were in class, and two of them stayed after, so we ran through our choreography … and I actually learned all their names. YAY! So at least I’ve accomplished something today. BG was still around, so he ran us through our bit a couple of times, and we decided that we like fourth arabesque better for my bit of the first partnering piece (a series of supported fouettés).
I begged off the last ten minutes of the modern dance portion of the apprentice-teaching class because my legs were a bit angry at me and I was going to need them for the audition. I used the time to foam-roll the crap out of them.
During meditation, I fell asleep. Given that I am the world’s worst napper (seriously, I can normally only nap when I’ve been awake for at least 48 hours straight), that’s saying something. Evidently, I was pretty tired.
The callback turned out to be the highlight of the day. It was more like a dance-and-theater workshop than an audition—we did some partnering stuff, then learned a dance and performed it in groups, then played theater games and ran some sides. Honestly, it was a hell of a lot of fun with a great group of people (both judges and fellow auditionees), and if every audition was that much fun, I’d audition for everything.
It turns out that I know the guy who’s directing the production. I met him at a party (which happened to be at his house) and felt instantly very, very comfortable with him, which speaks very highly of him. Also: proof that my world is incredibly tiny, heh.
We’ll hear back in a week or so about roles and such. Fortunately, I have too much going on to have much time to chew my nails about it, though I don’t have class with BW on Thursday this week.
Regardless, BW gave me homework—jumping rope to improve my cardio as well as the usual Turns Homework and … erm. I’m supposed to be doing something else, too, I think? Fehhhhcccckkkk. I can’t remember. It’s in my notes somewhere.
Anyway. I will miss BW’s class this week, but I suspect my body will welcome the extra rest. The fitness is returning, but my body hates me so much right now.
One Moar For The Road
In the interest of reminding myself that, yes, I have progressed in the last six months, I cringed my way through the videos from last year’s ballet intensive the other night. Here are some screen shots so we can commiserate or what have you.
First one is definitely from Albrecht’s variation (with Don Quixote hands because #fml); second one is also, I think, but from the opening sequence with the gigantic sissones ouverts of doom, maybe? I think it’s also the part where I’m going, “Oh, shizzle, I’m way down stage from my mark!”
I used up too much of my ballet mojo in class and rehearsal, and my legs were dead (note complete turnout failure and shoulder feckery), but I did manage to swing the straight-pirouette-right-into-attitude-turn bit through sheer force of all our a minor miracle or something. And, yes, I looked 12 years old the whole time. I promise I’m not really 12.
I’m including this one as proof that you REALLY should always pull your tights up until the word “Nutcracker” takes on an entirely different meaning. Dat sag, doh. (Big obnoxious box is a screenshot-process artifact; stupid tablet.)
Off to Rep!
Remember That Audition Where I Fell Off The Trapeze?
The most interesting man in the world doesn’t always fall off the trapeze, but when he does, it’s during an audition … and lands him a callback!(1)
- Okay, so falling off the trapeze may have had exactly nothing to do with it. But still! I got a callback!!! YASSSSSSS!
Pretty much a perfect depiction of how I’m feeling right now 😀
Very Funny, Universe
Before tonight, I had managed never to really fall off the trapeze before. I’ve dumped myself off handstand-style once, but that doesn’t really count.
Tonight, I managed to take a legit fall—during my audition.
In retrospect, I made the wrong call abotu my music: instead of just going for the piece I’d intended, “La Mer,” which was a little too long, and letting them cut it off, I opted for “Beyond the Sea” (Bobby Darin’s version).
It turns out that the tempo of Darin’s “Beyond the Sea” is actually quite a bit faster than the recording I have of “La Mer.” I was tired and attempting to adapt, and somewhere along the line my brain decided halfway into an egg-to-pike inversion that I was actually doing the arabesque roll to sit that comes at the end.
Uh-oh. Here comes the Failboat.
Since one wraps one’s arms for the inversion in question, it’s not possible to do the roll in question without breaking said arms. I’m more afraid of breaking bones than of falling, so I basically just let go.
Allll Aboooooaaaaard!
Apparently it was a pretty spectacular fall—and a technically-correct one 🙂 I tucked and rolled, and as a result the only parts of me that hurt are my forearms, which is what happens when you wrap your arms and then do crazy shizzle.
I popped back up and was ready to hop back on the trap before they even had a chance to cut the music (though they did, in order to make sure I was okay). I sorted my way through the rest of the trap routine, though I didn’t do the arabesque roll at the end; my arms weren’t digging that.
Ironically, the rest of the audition went pretty well, and apparently my trapeze improv looked pretty great (the fall was evidently quite exciting as well :D).
So, that’s my life for you. When I do finally manage to fall off the trap, it’s in the middle of an audition.
At least I didn’t fall down during the dance portion? I did fall down during the acting part, but that was on purpose.
So there.
~
Oh, also, ballet was good today, petit allegro was far less bad than usual, and we discussed rehearsals for showcase, etc.
We also had a Physical Theater workshop, and afterwards I was chatting with the teacher, and she said something like, “So, you dance ballet?”
And I said something like, “Yeah, a little modern, but ballet is really my first language and my first love.”
Then she said, “I could tell—the legs!”
😀
And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to Eat All The Food.
Enough!
I know I have danced enough for the day when…:
A. class is over.
B. the third class of the day is over.
C. I have officially burned enough calories that I need to eat breakfast again. And lunch. And dinner.
D. I lie in bed reading and can still feel my muscles firing while my brain works through the choreography.
E. My legs are on fire, O G-d, whhyyyyyyyy
…The correct answer, of course, is, “F. NEVAR.”
(In reality, this post was inspired by the thought, “I’ve only put in six hours today, my legs should definitely not feel this sore.O NOES I HAZ AN OUT OF SHAPE!”
Yes, I am ridiculous. Also, pretty sure sure there’s ground glass in my turnouts.)
Audition-Day Hijinks!
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…
How to Survive Your Dance Intensive for Grown-A** Adults (Version 1)
Now that I’ve got a whopping two (2!! Like the number of exclamation points I just used!!) adult dance intensives under my belt, I have lots of facts intel opinions about things you should do to make sure you get through in one piece — and, of course, as your faithful Danseur Ignoble, I am duty bound to share them.
You know, for the good of humankind, or at least dancer-kind, and all that stuff.
So, without further ado, here they are.
~
First, know that you’re capable of more than you think you are.
Let me say that again, with fancy formatting:
You are capable of more than you think you are.
In Which Things Are Accomplished
In addition to submitting my audition registration forms, today I:
- tidied and vacuumed my living room (oy vey)
- got promoted to Trapeze 3 (BOOYAH!)
- got oversplit back on the right side (though I suspect that me try to figure out how to get a yoga block under my front foot while in a full split probably made for a pretty hilarious floor show)
- hung out with friends and ate ice cream
This was one heck of a good day, people. Now I’m going to bed so I’ll be well rested for class tomorrow 🙂
Aaaaaaaaaaugh!
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:
- Regarding the forms being blank: “That’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works.”
- Regarding my resume: the whole point of a resume is to tell people what’s good about you, basically. I’ve been able to do that in this resume without having to use subjective descriptions.
- Regarding my headshot: it’s my head. It’s a shot. So … um … pretty sure it should be okay. It’s not like I sent them someone else’s head, or my butt, or something. (If I was sending an audition picture to my trapeze teacher, though, I would totally send a picture of my butt, because she is all about our butts.)
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 🙂
danseur ignoble 