PS: I am officially tired now. I think my legs might just, like, fall off after conditioning class tonight.
Category Archives: health
Ballet Lessons: Get Out Of Your Own Way
Little by little, piece by piece, Ms. B of Hard Mode Ballet Class is making a dancer out of me.
Not just a guy who knows how to execute a bunch of ballet steps, but a dancer — someone who executes a bunch of ballet steps with élan; who uses his head and his eyes and his port de bras; who relates to the music intelligently and expressively; who doesn’t grip with his neck, for frack’s sake.
In order to do that, one must learn one’s own body in depth: how to feel the minute muscles in the hip socket; how to knit the ribs together without collapsing; how to open the collarbones without throwing the shoulders back behind the hips.
One must also learn how to get out of one’s own way.
There’s a magical thing that happens when you learn how to get out of your own way: suddenly, things get easier.
In order to execute a high, smooth grand rond-de-jambe, you must know where to place your pelvis so you don’t block either your extension or your turnout. The first time you find that balance (perhaps after having had it and then lost it), it’s like magic.
Curiously, some dancers naturally find it early in their training only to lose it again as they begin to work more consciously on turnout, placement, and extension.
That’s pretty much what happened to me: I started really thinking about pelvic placement about a year ago — and at first I over-corrected, as is my wont. As I began to work into more advanced classes and to work towards higher extensions, I found myself inexplicably blocked at times: and then Ms. B got around to sorting my pelvis, and it turned out that I was basically getting in my own way.
Once I let my pelvis find its own neutral spot and stopped thinking so hard — once I got out of my own way — my extensions got better, my turnout got better, and I could start really thinking about other stuff.
Ironically, the whole source of the problem with extensions and turnout resulted from a conscious effort to place my pelvis so I could … like … better access turnout and alignment.
I think this makes a good allegory.
Often, in life, we get so concerned about being correct that, in fact, we over-correct. We try really hard to do things just right, and we find ourselves stumbling into unexpected road-blocks; tangled in the intricacies of the details.
In short, we get in our own way.
Sometimes, the best answer is to stop thinking, stop concentrating so hard on being correct, and get out of our own way. (This is, I am almost certain, a corollary to the rule, “Don’t make it happen — let it happen.”)
So there you have it. If you’re having difficulty in your dancing or in your life, maybe try loosening the reins and getting out of your own way. It might just help!
So that’s my Ballet Lesson for today.
~~
In other news, I apologize for my recent absence. I’ve had a sinus infection, and the first really noticeable symptom (besides, randomly, pain in my teeth) was a wicked fatigue that seemed to come from nowhere. I haven’t been posting because, in short, I’ve had nothing to post. I’ve basically been asleep, for the most part, for the past week.
I did do part of class (and part of juggling class) on Saturday, but I was actually too tired to write about it afterwards, which pretty much tells you everything you need to know. If I’m too tired to write, I’m probably too darn tired to do just about anything.
Progress (and a Wee Little Song)
At the beginning of January, we started cirque training.
You’ve seen pictures of that progress, so I won’t bore you with réitération…
Oh, okay. Just one little picture, if you insist.
Instead, I have a few thoughts about fitness.
Given that, physically, I am not always the best at starting healthy, I was concerned that I’d struggle with the new schedule.
The first two weeks, I found myself complaining more than usual. One day, though, I realized I was kvetching to Ms. B or Ms. T — both of whom teach five or six days per week and perform — about my two measly classes the previous day having left me a bit tired. Kvetching to someone who spends way, way, way more time busting her butt than I do (and does it on pointe).
That stopped me in my own tracks. In addition to training and working as a Dance-Movement Therapist, my long-term goals include performing, as much and as frequently as possible. I am doing as little physical activity right now as I’m likely to be doing for the next goodness knows how many years.
Anyway, I decided that I wasn’t going to whinge about it anymore*. The tiredness was part of the process of adaptation, and I knew that it would pass.
*It’s fair, of course, to give a heads-up when you come to class already cooked so your instructor can tell you to back off if you look like you’re going to hurt yourself.
The cool part — the Progress part — is that it has begun to pass.
The human body is an amazing thing.
A couple of weeks ago, I felt dead on Wednesday morning after one Intro Aerials class (or whatever it is we were doing on Tuesday evening).
Yesterday, I did a pretty zippy ballet class (sans grand allegro, admittedly, but I’m pretty sure “16 kajillion royales” is about an equivalent rate of effort) and a tough conditioning class. Today, I woke up ready to rock. Tonight, we’ve got another conditioning class (fitness & flexibility) and Open Fly, and I feel entirely confident that, while I may feel a little tired and whingy when I get up tomorrow morning, by the time I get to Ms. B’s killer class, I’ll be fine.
There’s some things worth noting here.
First, my body was never willing to step up to meet this kind of workload on the bike. I got sick a lot more when I was riding more. The weak link was always my respiratory system — the constant exposure to cold air or bad air quality wasn’t something this particular body was going to adapt to**.
**Oh no, a danging participle — someone get this sentence a dance belt!
Second, I’m still working on learning to respect injuries.
I think I mentioned whacking the medial epicondyle of my left knee — an injury which sounds like it barely bears mentioning (in its lesser forms, it does barely bear mentioning).
The thing is, I whacked it really, really hard, which led to all kinds of swelling and stuff, which can precipitate further injury if not dealt with carefully (especially in a knee joint; especially, especially in a hypermobile knee joint). I took it easy on the jumps and turns, took a couple days off, wore a brace, iced the bejeezus out of the knee … and, miraculously (ha), it’s pretty much fine at this point.
If I hadn’t respected that injury, I’d still be wrestling it — so that’s a good lesson, there.
Third, I’m learning to work a little differently when I’m tired.
Yes, pushing through fatigue is a necessary skill for any athlete or dancer — but that doesn’t mean you should do it all the time. Sometimes it’s better to back off, take the non-relevé option, work at 45 degrees, mark the grand allegro, and not get hurt.
It’s like that old song — you’ve gotta know when to tendu, know when to fondu, know when to grand jeté, know when to mark.
Or something like that.
So that, too, is progress, especially for anyone who comes from a competitive gymnastics background (in which the basic ethos about injury is, “If your body part is still attached, you can and will keep going”).
So there we have it. My fitness is progressing nicely, as evidenced by a reduction in overall tiredness.
I’ve also noticed improvements in performance, including ballet improvements that stem from cirque training: today I was doing what I’d like to describe as a “meditation on balancé,” which is to say a combination that goes:
balancé
balancé
balancé
balancé
tombé
pas de bourrée
gliassade
assemblé
…repeat on other side ad nauseam.
It turns out that all the core work is good for those balancés. They’re prettier if you don’t get all sway-backed.
Remember: we’re going for Swan Lake, not Geriatric Dairy Cow Lake. Not that Geriatric Dairy Cow Lake would be a bad show, necessarily, but I’m pretty sure that the technique involved is squarely in the purview of modern dance 😉
That’s it for now. Off to round up all the dance belts, get changed, find a food, and go kill myself at circus school some more.
À bientôt, mes amis!
…
You got to know when to tendu,
Know when to fondu,
Know when to grand jeté,
And know when to run.
You never run the combo
When you’re nursin’ a hurt tendon—
There’ll be time enough for dancin’
When the healin’s done…
…With apologies (and a tip of the imaginary hat) to Mr. Kenny Rogers, from whose ouevre someone should definitely create an epic ballet about life in the American West (but probably not me, because I have enough on my plate, what with Simon Crane and school and all that other stuff I seem to be doing all the time).
Wednesday Class: Less Tired This Time
Barre today was challenging: Brienne stepped things up a notch, bringing in changes of body direction in long combinations. I got many, but not all, of them.
I continue to try to focus on using my inner thighs, though it’s a greater challenge while also trying to remember the direction changes and whether to go en croix and trying not to kick the taller of the two new guys, who stood beside me today.
I’m really glad they came back to class. I feel like their presence enriches the class; they’re both good dancers who work hard. Taller Guy* has impressive splits!
*For the record, they’re both taller than I am, maybe even just plain tall — but I’m right on the borderline between average and miniature. Still, I don’t know their names, so for now they’re going to be Taller Guy and Smaller Guy.
At center, we did a pretty, but hard, adagio with … erm, fondu devisé? Something devisé, (edit: turns out it’s divisé — divisé en quarts) short for anyway (edit: also, I have no idea what I was trying to type here; autocorrupt was cray this afternoon). My phone is being weird, so I’ll have to look it up when I get home.
Turns were better. I had doubles from fourth, though not as consistently as I’d like.
Our grand allegro combination was fun — Glissade, jeté, glissade, jeté, step-grand jeté, step-grand jeté.
I did it well enough at first, but as I got tired my legs kept wanting to put extra glissades in after the second jeté.
Still, I was less tired today than I was last Wednesday — much less tired, in fact – and I felt stronger last night in aerials class. My tuck dismount on trapeze and silks is no longer just an uncontrolled unfurling 🙂
I think I will be able to adapt to this training schedule, and since I wasn’t sure, I feel good about that.
There are more days in my life now on which I look at myself as I undress at the end of the day and I think this part or that part of my body is beautiful. Rarely, I even think the whole thing is pretty decent.
This is a huge step forward: I never used to have any of those days. I used to pretty much hate my body all the time.
Ballet and aerials are changing that in a way I never expected. I used to hate it — and, honestly, I often still do – when people would respond to my feelings about my body, which were the irrational result of deep-seated dysphoria, with so much pablum about how much my body could do.
I don’t think being reminded of that on a rational level helps any more than does telling someone with depression to buck up because at least they don’t live in a Siberian prison camp. That’s not, as it were, how any of this works.
But doing amazing things with this body, and discovering it to be strong and graceful and capable, has really helped — as has exposure to the wild array of beautiful male dancers’ bodies, into which my own body increasingly fits.
In short, ballet and aerials have altered the scope of my inner sense of how my body should look (a concept that’s more complicated and less rational than it sounds). Constant exposure to my own reflection, meanwhile, has adjusted my sense of how my body does look.
I suspect that I still often literally see a distorted version of myself, but the maybe the distortion isn’t as bad as it once was.
So that’s it, today. I’m going to go home, take a hot bath (in which I will read La Dame aux Camélias in the original, maybe), foam-roll my legs until they fall off, and then do some work stuff.
I used to think that my body dysphoria and anorexic thought patterns would never, ever, ever change. Now I’m not so sure, and that feels like a good thing.
À bientôt, mes amis!
Edit: PS, my ear behaved itself today. Woot!
Like Dancing While Drunk
Today, barre was fine, though I was tired and a little sore when I started and wasn’t super on top of getting all the combinations exactly right.
I wasn’t quite in, “Meh, close enough,” mode, but I was a little more forgiving of myself than usual. I still managed a few decent balances (yay attitude derrière!) and responded appropriately to corrections and so forth. This has been the first week in a long time that I’ve had a demanding physical thing every single day, and I’m using a lot of muscles that haven’t really been doing much, so I expected to be tired.
Still, I acquitted myself acceptably at barre.
Then, the wheels came off (it’s been a while since I had occasion to use that phrase, though).
I think I’ve probably mentioned the recurring weirdness with my left ear. It now occurs every class, but usually it’s at the very end, and it’s not too bad.
Today, however, my ear freaked out right as we transitioned to center — right in the middle of a nice little tendu-et-pirouette combination — and never let up.
Suddenly, I was more or less deaf on the left side, and the sound of my own breathing was impossibly loud. I largely pick up combinations by the time-honored “monkey see-monkey do” method.
In Advanced class, though, significant steps don’t always get clearly demonstrated. If you can’t hear the instructor, it can be hard to tell if something is supposed to be some species of jete en tournant sketched out on the ground or maybe a pique turn (also sketched out on the ground) or even a balance turn, or what have you.
Really, almost anything can be demonstrated as just a sketchy little turn turn (including, apparently coupé jeté en tournant).
So suddenly I found myself desperately playing catch-up, trying to follow the combinations in the mirror while also doing them (which worked reasonably well, under the circumstances — certainly better than it used to). Worse, my entire nasopharyngeal region decided to join in the fun, so when I tried to ask a question, I sounded like I had barshballows stupped up by doze.
I was like:
“Sguze be. Duz dat zeggund pique gum bright auddove de baladzé durn, or ab I bizzig a zteb in dare?”
You might want to read that aloud for the full comedic effect. Don’t worry, I’ll wait.
…And we’re back.
So, the ear weirdness also made me dizzy (and slightly nauseated, which seriously didn’t help) — or, really, more like off-kilter. I generally experience a sensation that’s not unlike trying to stand on a boat that’s listing to starboard (which makes you lean towards port).
You guys, it is hard to promenade when it feels like the promenade deck is sliding into the trough of a wave.
The ear wasn’t as bad as it has ever been — when it’s at its worst, I can’t walk in a straight line, let alone dance; I stagger merrily sideways unless someone grabs hold of my shoulders. That said, this is the worst it has been in class.
So my turns were, um, interesting.
One of the combinations had double turns from fourth (which I have, of late, been able to do somewhat reliably), and I tried them, and … ehhhh.
Apparently, when your middle and/or inner ear are throwing a tantrum, you can totally make two rotations*, but there is absolutely no guarantee that you’ll have any idea where your axis really is, and your landings will be interesting. I actually stepped over myself somehow, at one point — as if I was trying to follow the pirouette with some kind of bizarre, inside-out coupé jeté en tournant.
*Presumably because you can still spot twice, and amazingly, that makes your body go around again, since it doesn’t want to snap its own neck.
This is what happens when your vestibular system says, “Wait, the floor is that way!” and your visual system replies, “Jeez, vestibular system, you need to lay off the sauce!”
After which, of course, your foot says, “Hey you guys, I found the floor; it’s right here where we left it!” and, if you’re lucky, it has done so without spraining anything in the process.
Likewise, trying to ballotté was just … ummmmm … yeah. It turns out that if you’re used to using epaulement in ballotté, it’s hard to make yourself stop even if it makes the whole world lurch violently*. (Seriously, have you ever tried to ballotté without epaulement? Has anyone? I have trouble even picturing that.)
*If there was an earthquake in your region around 10:10 AM Eastern Standard Time/GMT-5, my bad.
Who knew?
I thought about bailing, but stuck it out through class (The Show Must Go On, n’est ce pas?), including a lovely réverence which I performed almost decently, but with the blackest of scowls writ large upon my beetling brow because I was Concentrating. So. Hard.
Afterwards, I felt compelled to explain myself and apologize to Ms. T for being a complete disaster. She said something like, “No worries, we all have those days,” which made me feel a whole heck of a lot better.
Then I pedaled my bike slowly, miserably, and carefully (for fear of tipping over) over to Suspend to meet Denis for juggling class.
I would like to take a moment to thank G-d that Suspend is only like three blocks from advanced class! (And that advanced class takes place at the main studio downtown, and not at the school studios 8 miles or so from downtown).
Anyway, juggling started out a little tippy, then got progressively better as my ear settled down a little (when it’s doing its thing, being hot and sweaty and breathing hard makes it really go crazy).
By the end, I was able to keep three balls going for up to six throws at a time, which is much better than I expected to do. I also didn’t nail any aerialists (though I almost did, once, at the very beginning).
Oh, here it is. I look like the dog that goes, “You … you mean the maple kind?” in that one voice-over video. Also, these are the best socks.
Denis snapped one great shot of me that looks like … well, basically, me standing there and waving my hands around with a look of rapt concentration on my face — or at least, that’s how it looked on the tiny screen of his phone. I’ll have to gank a copy from facebag to post here.
For some reason, I assumed I’d be terrible at juggling, but it turns out I’m not. Who knew?
After, during open fly, I just foam-rollered myself into oblivion for a while. At moments, this just involved me lying there on the floor, doing nothing, with a foam roller under some part of my body.
Then I spotted Denis through his first two headstands ever and got him to spot me in a couple of handstands just to see if I can still do them. Seems as if I can, even while still slightly tippy, though the tippiness makes correcting really hard if I get out of alignment.
At this point, things have calmed down enough that the listing sensation is mostly gone. I think I’m going to duck out of conditioning class tomorrow, as I feel like a rest day is in order (not so much because of the ear, but because I am just freaking tired).
Then I’m going to try to get an appointment to see my doc about this, because it is driving me crazy. I have reached a point at which I can cope quite well in class if it doesn’t get too bad, but today was just terrible.
Oh, one last bit: turns out the application I thought was due on the 15th isn’t due ’til March 15th, so that makes my life a hair easier, anyway (which is good, because I’d really like to see if I can get my ear sorted before I shoot any more audition video).
So that’s that. I still have some evaluation stuff to do, because procrastination and other such balderdash. Second interview is Tuesday afternoon.
Ballet, Meet Cirque
Acro-Balancing tonight. It was fun, although quite challenging at times.
I discovered that being all legs makes mounting more challenging, but balancing easier when you’re the flyer. It makes being the base kinda weird sometimes — thigh stands are okay, but short arms and long legs makes a steep mount in foot bird or candlestick.
Ballet also makes a lot of it easier — if you have a good arabesque, you know how to use the muscles in your back for the foot bird.
This was just before Denis got wobbly on me. He thinks it's gorgeous; I, of course, notice that my feet could be more pointed, my legs aren't even, my neck is tense, my...
I also discovered that I can still do a tripod headstand forever and ever and do cool stuff with my legs during. I’ll have to see if I can get my handstands back. They are awesome for for stability and balance, and I think that would be handy (no pun intended, I swear) for partnering.
To Build A Birdhouse: Why “MyPlate” and All The Lifestyle Guides In the World Aren’t Enough
(Or, well, some of the reasons, anyway.)
I’ve been reading some really good articles about re-framing our cultural conversation around body size and, for once, reading the comments*, and I’ve discovered that, when it comes to talking about things like diet an exercise, many of us lose sight of one really critical idea:
Knowing about a thing isn’t the same
as knowing how to do that thing.
*You guys, deciding not to even look at the G-d-forsaken comments except in special cases has been one of the best decisions I ever made.
I repeat:
Knowing about a thing isn’t the same as knowing how to do that thing.
…And it really isn’t the same as knowing how to do that thing in a way that works for us, that feels good (which is far, far more important than we like to acknowledge), and that lets us keep doing it indefinitely.
If it was, a lot more of us would look exactly the way we want to look (within the limitations imposed by our genetic makeup, anyway — some of us build bigger muscles easily, some of us have long and elegant muscular insertion points, etc.).
At the Opening of the Year: On Failure, Success, and Sustainable Change, Part 2
Yesterday, I wrote about my successes, both unqualified and qualified, in 2015.
Objectively speaking, some of my so-called “qualified successes” could also have been called “failures.” I’m okay with that. Though failing is often hard when you’re doing it, it’s rarely the end of the world, and you can usually learn something from it.
I should mention that it’s not always easy to do that — there are few cultural phenomena as spectacularly annoying as the phrase, “Turn that frown upside-down!”
Frankly, sometimes you need to frown for a while. Sometimes you can’t just “turn [it] upside down.” Sometimes you need to feel what you’re feeling, get mad at yourself, or sad or hurt or whatever you feel. Sometimes you need to sit down in the middle of the pathos of human existence and weep, or howl, or scream your fury down the throat of the universe.
After, or sometimes even while you’re still there, you snatch whatever lessons you can from the jaws of defeat and move forward. In the words of Chumbawumba, “[you’ve] got no job, but [you’re] an opera fan.”
Wait, that’s not it. It’s: “[You] get knocked down, but [you] get up again.*”
*Somehow, it seems terribly appropriate that I’m citing a song about being too drunk to walk to the bogs without falling on your face. Egads, what an analogy.
Anyway! Moving right along.
Motivation and sustainable change are among my major research interests — because, while we talk a good game, we really still don’t understand them too well, and they’re enormously important in things like public health and personal growth.
Two Weeks Without Class: Insomnia and Inarticulate Paranoia (Or, My Brain Hates You Right Now, But Don’t Worry, It Hates Me, Too)
I have had insomnia all my life.
Mostly it’s the simple kind — function of a skewed circadian rhythm; hours off the daily solar cycle, weak and unsteady, but amenable to hard physical effort. Mostly, when I dance, I sleep. (It also helps if I take my Adderall correctly.)
Sometimes, though, it’s complicated either by hormonal anomalies, mania, or both — and then it’s strange, hard. Not so much that I’m not tired as that my alertness stays turned up to 11 no matter how tired I get. I close my eyes and my brain goes whirling on, or worse, I feel wide-awake, like I could go run a marathon or dance the tarantella or something (which I could, if I knew how to tarantella, to be honest — though if I tried to run a marathon, I’d probably just strain something because Dammit Jim, I’m A Dancer, Not A Marathoner). When I open them, sometimes I can tell my body is tired. Sometimes, I can’t.
This is far less amenable to exhaustion, obviously. In these spells I can take a hard class on four hours’ sleep, walk home from the grocery store, clean the house, make dinner, run up and down the stairs doing laundry, and still I find myself wide awake at 2, or 3, or 4 AM. Sometimes I’ll finally drop off around sunrise only to awaken at 9.
Sometimes, though more rarely now than in the past, since my schedule allows a great deal of freedom, I just don’t sleep at all. Once, I didn’t sleep for eight days. That was a bad time.
I’m having one of those spells. Hormonal weirdness coupled with mania (happy winter, y’all) coupled with no ballet class coupled with a bout of mild, inarticulate paranoia, as I’ve been calling it: not that “I can’t leave the house because the CIA has planted listening devices in all the telephone poles” kind, or even the “people are laughing at me” kind, just the kind where my brain days, “NO CAN HAZ PPL PLZ. KTHXBAI.”
Hataz gonna hate.
So, anyway. Insomnia: I has it, is I guess what I’m saying.
I’m less disturbed by it now than in the past, since I realize that class will resume and I’ll get it back under as much control as it’s ever under.
For now, though, it’s weird and it sucks.
In other news, I’m writing my arse off at the moment, making up for lost time, but still way behind on posting stuff.
It’s coming, though, sooner or later.
Two Weeks Without Class, Day One: In Which Your Humble Author Makes Announcements and Reflects On Problems
First, the announcements.
The Charitable Sub-Committee of the Women’s … Oh, wait. Wrong announcements.
Here we go.
First, partly as a function of Item The Second (see below), it looks like I’ll be able to add a fourth class to my schedule in January. B. and I are cooking up an idea which will be amazing if it pans out, but I am desperately trying to keep mum about it.
As the Druids supposedly said:
To know, to will, to dare, to keep silent.
In other words, don’t tempt G-d, fate, or the faceless perversity of the universe by blabbing your exciting plans all over the place. Pride goeth before the fall, etc.
Come to think of it, this gets really long, so here — have a More! tag:
danseur ignoble 