We have a new lyra teacher on Tuesday evenings, and she’s lovely and gives a great class — but I’ve decided that I’m going to bow out of that class, because Ballet.
Basically, there’s too much in that class that trains the muscles I’m trying to de-train a bit (hello, quads; greetings, hip abductors), and the result is that Wednesday morning is a struggle to counteract those effects, which means it’s a less-effective class than it should be (qv: today my left split was laaaaame and my turnout was, by my standard, only meh).
Wednesday is legitimately the hardest class in my week, much of the time, and I want to be fully able to take advantage of it.
Once upon a time, I used to ride my bike a lot more. I cut back on that for similar reasons — I am constitutionally unable to refrain from stomping up hills, destroying my turnout all the way, so I simply ride less.
Dancing has made it easier to decide what to do and what not to do. It feels akin to religious conviction: when conviction is very strong, the decision to live by the tenets of one’s faith is not as difficult as it might otherwise be.
So this is weird, in that now and then I realize I’m sacrificing things on the altar of ballet — but also not weird, in that deciding what to do and what not to do has never been simpler.
Basically, this flowchart governs my entire life (photo by Amy Merrick).
On the other hand, I had some amazing experiences, and it’s really awesome to have all these other interests in my pocket in case I ever mysteriously tire of dancing.
Class this morning was also complicated by the fact that mold-and-ragweed season has descended upon us, bringing with it asthma and pleural pain. I had to take my inhaler before class this morning, so things were harder than they should have been. I’m still having issues, so I’m taking the night off.
Basically, taking the inhaler before class is rather like taking a nice hit of cocaïne before running wind sprints, only cocaïne is better at turning off the Governor in your brain that makes you slow down before your heart explodes. Basically, you tell your body, “Okay, fondu now, and DO IT RIGHT,” and the governor sticks its fingers in your body’s ears and says, “Don’t listen to him; he’s a putz,” and your body is is like AAAAUGHHH DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO and half-arses its way through everything.
I finally started to assemble my proverbial waterfowls in a linear array during the adage at centre (because by then the initial kick-in-pants offered by the inhaler was wearing off).
Ironically, perhaps, I did better in petit allegro than in just about anything else, though I had to think entirely too hard about the entrechat trois for some reason at first (possibly because we generally do cinq?). It was still rather an uphill struggle, though.
Tomorrow night, I plan to do BW’s class, after which will be heading out for Marco Island early Friday morning. I’m ambivalent about the trip — I know I’ll enjoy it, but I’m not in love with the idea of taking off again just as I’m getting back into the swing of things.
On the other hand, this trip should be a lot more relaxing, and when I come back my life is is like SwanLakePilibolusShowPilobolusClassWendyWhelanTalkMovingCollectiveNutcrackerWinterShowcase, and that’s just the part that isn’t ballet and modern classes.
I’ve also involved myself in the parents’ and adult students’ group at the ballet school, which is pretty exciting. BB and I have sort of become the de facto adult program delegates, which is no big surprise, since we’re basically always at the school anyway.
Anyway, I think that when I come back from Florida, I’m going to switch to Flexibility & Mobility on Tuesday nights.
In other news, I cheated on my favorite shoes by wearing my white stretch canvas ones, and I’m forced to admit that I quite like them. Too soon for a full review, though.
I will traipse happily through a store openly carrying underwear I have not yet purchased.
It seems I will also happily traipse across the studio openly carrying my dance belt.
Once changed, however, I feel weird traipsing back to my cubby or my dance bag carrying my underwear.
So, um, seriously:
WTF, self?
Edit: I just thought, “Well, I wouldn’t have any compunctions about performing in Just A Dance Belt, since that happens all the time.”
And then I realized that, apparently, I have absolutely no compunctions about wandering around in my skivvies at Burning Man.
So, apparently, it’s just carrying my underpants around in my hands that’s a problem?
And I am about as happy about that as it’s possible to be.
Spent a relaxing day looking over (and then frantically revising, because I can’t leave well enough) a couple of things I wrote for Dr. Dancebelt, sent them along, reviewed things and updated old reviews on Amazon, kibitzed on the Tweeters, chatted about some camp inventory stuff with one of my fellow camp leads from Burning Man (who is also one of my favorite people, full-stop), and spent a bunch of time doing laundry, folding laundry, doing laundry, folding laundry. Ate some food, probably going to drink some decaf chai now. Waiting for the last load of laundry to finish drying, then I’m off to bed.
There is much to be said for a quiet day spent reading, writing, and folding things (I like folding things; it’s one of those jobs that has a clear start and end point, and when you’re done things are better than they were when you started).
More or less decided what to wear to tomorrow’s performance, which (as it will be for most of us) is less rehearsed and will be seen by more people than anything else I’ve done in the vein of performing arts (probably including all previous dance performances) simply by virtue of being part of a free outdoor festival. It may involve quite a bit of improv, but IDK, not worried about it.
I’m in that place, mentally, in which things appear to be improving, but I’m taking my optimism with a stiff dose of caution. Tomorrow might be a trial — not because of the performance itself, but because I should probably be cautious about how much I actually wind up interacting with humans.
Getting back into the regular rhythm of ballet, on the other hand, helps immensely. Looking forward to class tomorrow. I hope by then my trapezii and lats will be done being sore, though.
So these things happened in Acro 2 yesterday (both photos by Starr Peters, I think? … at least, I know the first one is).
I can only describe the first one as a four-way fold. Basically, you pretend you’re sitting in a chair, and then you grab hands in the middle and lean back into each other’s laps, and it’s like, “By our powers combined, we are Captain Awkward-As-Hell-But-Looks-Pretty-Cool!”
Also, if you have only one person in the fold who feels comfortable sort of exploding up from this position, everyone else winds up falling over.
Ask me how I know, heh.
The other one is what we’ve nicknamed the “Scented Candlestick” (as in, “Trick or treat, smell my feet…”), though it has another name in Yoga.
Because I’m a medium-sized person, I base and fly everything and everyone, and Katie (who I’m basing in this picture) is one of the best flyers I’ve had the privilege of strangling with my feet 😀
In other news, today was my first day back in Trap 3 since I went to the Burn. I was expecting to suffer, but it was a review day, and I pretty much nailed everything … okay, except for that one thing where I forgot that my flexibility means I can dump myself right out of the trapeze, but fortunately I was on the moderate-low trap and could easily catch myself in a handstand.
And then I got back up and nailed that thing, too. I failed to catch the name of it, but it was kind of a bird’s-nest variant that you enter by dropping from a front balance and catching yourself with the backs of your legs on the ropes. The downside of being really flexible is that you can slide right off the bar; the upside is that you can get into a super-cool hang with your knees folded over the ropes and your hands on your ankles (or calves, or knees). I’ll have to get a picture of that next time I’m in Open Fly.
Edit: I also nailed pike beat to tuck-through and full ankle beats during the warm-up. I meant to try long-arm beat to front balance, but forgot. Still, I’ve never even tried to tuck through from a pike beat before, and I think I’ve done ankle beats all of once. All of that, though, owes to the rather extreme flexibility of my back. It makes doing almost any kind of beats much easier, because you can get a better release and therefore more momentum.
We ended class by playing what I’m going to call Improv Telephone: everyone lines up, then the first person mounts the trapeze and does something, the second one does the mount and the first move and adds something, and so on. The cool part is that, being the second-most advanced class on offer, we’re allowed to do whatever feels right, even if it’s not officially A Thing.
The result (in addition to a fun little piece of choreography) was the invention of a possibly-new skill that we’re calling the Mer-Horse (I say “possibly new” because basically everything under the sun has probably been done at one point or another by someone, somewhere, but this one definitely isn’t in our existing syllabus, and our trainers are pretty well-trained).
Also, I discovered that I do remember how to do dragonfly on the trapeze, even though I always get confused about it on lyra.
Ballet today was alllll about the turnouts … and it was a good class. There was so much fondu that we could’ve opened a restaurant.
It was also timely, because I’ve been working on maintaining all the turnout — like, alllllll of it, in both legs. It’s a workout, but it’s paying off. It’s much easier now to step into and maintain a 180 degree first or a legit toe-to-heel fifth (regarding which: when I started letting my supporting leg drift, Ms B. came over and grabbed me by my hipbones 😀 Hooray for physical corrections!).
Anyway, the biggest challenge right now is to keep the upper body light and easy while working the turnouts like the fate of the world depends on it. This ties into what BW kept shouting at me last week: “Use your lats!”
So I’ll be thinking about turnouts and lats in class tomorrow, heh. And about not letting the barre-side shoulder creep up.
And also about everything else, because ballet.
Also, petit allegro is finally improving, which feels like a minor miracle. I thought I was having a mental block about Sissones, but it turned out that it was a physical block: my épaulement was interfering with liftoff. Ms. B gave us a useful note about that: there’s that little side cambre in the port de bras for Sissones changée a côte, and if you start to cambre before you start to jump, you kind of wind up crippling the jump itself.
Ms. B complimented me on my turns, which is huge. I applied Modern T’s note about using my chin to spot, and it really seems to have helped. Ms. B said she’s going to steal it for another one of her students who spots with her forehead like I was … so a big Well Done to Modern T for that catch and the note to fix it!
I haven’t posted a poem in a while, so here’s one I wrote today, when I could have been writing up my class notes instead.
I rather hope that you’ll like it. I think I do, though of course it’s a rough draft and almost certainly needs some revision.
Sysiphus’ Lament
At first,
I hated the boulder.
Each morning, I woke,
encamped at the base of the hill
with the boulder beside me.
I boiled the water,
drank the black brew
that passes for coffee here
in the land of long shadows.
Fried up the eggs.
Scraped off the rough stubble
that peppered my chin.
I prepared.
I said to myself,
“These bitter gods will not break me,”
as I finished my breakfast,
“I will not succumb
to the madness of Tantalus:
I will overcome;
I will push this boulder
over the top of this hill.”
Then I set to work:
every day—
rain or snow,
cracked heat of summer,
joyful reprieve of the fall.
Every day
I bent down,
set my hand to the plow—
though if course it was neither my hand
nor a plow,
but the stone digging into my shoulder.
I did not look back.
Every day, I marshalled my strength.
The boulder rolled:
slowly at first,
then just a bit faster
as I found the pulse of my work.
Every day,
as I climbed,
I felt I was a man.
How can I explain?
For the length of the day,
I drew closer and closer,
the bald crest of the hill
rising before me
as ever I strained at the climb.
Each day, I pronounced,
“I am man,
I shall conquer!”
And then—
as each day staggered closed—
I felt first the will of the boulder
and then the hard will of the gods.
Foolish man!
Every day,
at the crest of the hill,
as the wheels of my fate turned their round
and the counter of days
added a hatch to his register
the boulder, too, turned—
subtly first,
and then sharply
and all at once there it was
charging back down
to the hollow that rooted the hill;
the place where I boiled the coffee.
Every night I wept—
not with sorrow, but wrath—
bitter tears salting the earth
as I followed my fate
to the place where I’d boil the water for soup;
where I’d rest myself under the stars
and the laughing, invisible eyes
of the gods.
Each morning ,
I hated the boulder.
Then one day I woke
and I boiled my water for coffee
and scrambled the eggs
and scraped off the stubble
and threw my weight into the stone
and did not look up.
All day I pushed,
climbing the hill,
saying, “This is my work,
as once being a king was my work.”
All day the stone rolled
and I felt the hot strain in my back
and the fire of my calves
and the weight of perpetual burden.
I welcomed them,
thinking,
“This way I do
that which I was given to do.”
And at last,
in the pivotal moment,
as the last rays of light grazed the pale, bald crest of my hill,
as my boulder began its decent,
I felt my heart lift
knowing that I had done
the thing I was given to do.
My boulder rolled down,
tearing clods of pale grass from the earth,
racketing over the bare spots.
I followed with tears,
but not bitter tears:
as I had been king,
and every day shouldered the burden of kings,
now I am but Sysiphus,
and I shoulder the burden of Sysiphus.
And if I have not conquered,
no more does anyone else.
I go gladly instead
to the work that Persephone grants me:
let that, instead,
be the breadth
and the depth
of my victory.
And sometimes at night,
I look up at the dim, distant stars—
so far from this land of long shadows—
and think
how much harder it was
all those years,
all those hardscrabble years,
when I was still a man.
Sep 13
This gallery contains 9 photos.
I’m not afraid of heights per se, but standing high above the ground on an unstable surface can certainly be a workout for the adrenal system. Especially when you’re standing on a surface made from steel punched with little cut-outs that lead to a kind of flexing beneath your feet as the wind blows up […]
Since returning home from That Thing In The Desert, I’ve been playing catch-up and haven’t been able to resume my normal schedule because reasons, so my apologies for radio silence over here.
Anyway.
Just made a quick shopping list, read it to myself, and am feeling vaguely appalled because it reads:
+bread
+cucumbers
+hummus
I feel like I should put bacon (the ultra-processed kind, not the free-range artisan-crafted kind) or hot dogs on there just to de-hippify it a little.
Not that there’s anything wrong with hippies; it takes all kinds. But, wow.
We’re out in the dust, doing all that setup jazz.
For me, right now, this mostly translates to taking care of the domestic end of things: setting up our home for the next two weeks, making sure people get fed, and so forth. This also leaves some time for reading and writing, both of which are happening.
Once our other two camp leads are settled in, of course, the real push to build a village in a couple of days will take off.
Right now, we’re just an assorted grouping of campers, vans, and storage trailers (we bought two this year); by Monday, we’ll be a cohesive mini-community of 35, home to a dance space with barre, a bar with dance space, a public lounge, a camp kitchen and lounge, and (assuming all goes well) our own aerial observation deck.
For the moment, though, I’m enjoying the time to myself, in a space that I’ve (mostly) organized according to the way I work, which occasional forays to dance in the dust.
I miss the structure of class and the rhythm of my normal week (though perhaps not the breakneck intensity to which I’ve consigned myself by tackling both aerials and dance at the same time), but I can make my own structure until the Burn officially begins, at which point there will be enough scheduled technical dance classes to comprise another one-week dance intensive.
I’ll be mostly offline for the next two weeks — after the gates open, in fact, getting online will quickly become impossible.
As such, here are a couple of pictures is one picture because WP’s Android app is being dumb. Inevitably, during the actual Burn week, I’ll mostly fail to take pictures. I’m fine with that. Build week is actually my favorite part, and I’m okay with the momentary and serendipitous things that happen during Burn week being just that — momentary.
I've been decorating (hooray for liquid chalk).
So I’m off for now. I might get around to posting again before I return to the Default World, but I might not.
So, until then, à bientôt, mes amis.
Whilst folding laundry and watching a documentary about tap dancing, I learned of the amazing force of nature that is teacher-and-author Vicki G. Riordan and the possibly even-more-amazing force of nature that is her TapPups.
Vicki teaches tap to adults, and only adults (ranging in age from 21 to 86!), at her studio-cum-cultural center in Pennsylvania, which she describes as “Quite possibly the loudest place in America (what do you expect when you fill a room with 500 tap dancers).”
And she doesn’t just teach tap; she intentionally harnesses its power to transform. Her students — everyone from people struggling to cope with the things that suck in day-to-day life to women struggling to recover from abusive relationships — learn to use dance to lift themselves up.
That’s flat-out awesome.
Now, I’ll grant that tap — in which both room for joyful abandon and the ability to simply make noise are pretty much obviously inherent — probably seems, at first pass, like a more accessible way to learn that skill. It also probably seems less intimidating; less judgmental(1).
1.
Seriously: how many movies have you seen about eating-disordered tap dancers being drooled upon by scummy ADs?
None? Same here. Also, I’m pretty sure that if you want to understand how Americans conceptualize tap dancers versus ballet dancers, you should just watch Happy Feet and then watch Black Swan.
Actually, just watch a trailer for Black Swan, which will sum it up without making you sit through the whole train wreck, and then watch Happy Feet to make yourself feel better.
~
That said, my own experiences and those of so many dancers that I know either in “meatspace” or online have experienced the same kind of transformation through ballet.
We’ve just, erm, experienced it a little more quietly.
So, knowing that there are bajillions of people out there who were once little girls who dreamed of being ballerinas or little boys who secretly thought ballet was awesome, in addition to bajillions of people elsewhere on the gender spectrum who maybe always wanted to dance but didn’t because they felt uncomfortable about their bodies or what have you, I have to wonder what it would take to make something as a amazing as Vicki’s TapPups happen with adult ballet students.
I think, probably, the safe space of an all-adults, all-the-time program probably makes things easier for nervous newcomers (if not necessarily for parents of school-age kids with their oceans of after-school activities; there’s something to be said for your ballet class being at the same time and place as your kids’ classes).
Basically, I would love to figure out how to light this kind of fire under my studio’s adult program — because, honestly, I freaking love my (primary) studio, and I have learned so freaking much and come so freaking far in the past 2.5 years that it’s not even funny, and I’d rather drive this kind of love through their doors than work to form something that competes with that.
Anyway, I am seriously thinking I might read Ms. Riordan’s book, because this she a lady who clearly knows how not only how to get adults into the studio, but how to keep them there.
I suspect that one of the remarkable elements of her program is that she has formalized the social end of things — the lounge is a comfortable space where her dancers can hang out and chat; once a quarter, they have a tap jam session together; they offer a boot-camp program that takes both technique and fitness seriously(2).
2.
This is one of the reasons that I think serious adult dancers who are able to really should do everything in their power to get themselves to an intensive. The conditioning element alone moves mountains.
Anyway, I find the whole TapPups phenomenon pretty inspiring. Really demonstrates that where there’s a will, there’s a way!
…And now I’m off to watch some of my favorite dancers not die of heatstroke, I hope.
Recently I got a really exceptionally nice compliment from Ms. B — not on my musicality or my technique, but on my work ethic.
That meant a lot to me. In fact, it meant more than I really know how to express, because until recently I’ve really doubted my own work ethic.
I’ve always been one of those people who’s great at hyper-focusing on topics of interest (okay, okay, obsessions): thus, when I was around 12 or 13, and completely obsessed with dogs, I basically memorized the AKC breed standard. No, seriously, like the whole thing, all 127 or however-many fully-recognized breeds there were at that particular moment in AKC history(1), including the sub-types within breeds.
(1)In case you’re wondering, I don’t remember them all anywhere near as well now — or, well, they’re apparently still in there somewhere, because every now and then one or more will just pop out (usually at the worst possible moment to be nerdsplaining on and on about the finer points of pedigree dog conformation -_-), but my recall of them is rusty (heh heh … obedience training pun, anyone?).
Ditto standards for various horse breeds and equestrian disciplines; I’d been busily internalizing those since I learned to read.
I guess that’s better than being completely unable to focus on anything that relates to the real world in any way, but it has its limits. I haven’t been great at taking that drive and putting it to work in places where it’s actually, like, useful. Or finishing things in general.
In short, I’m great at buckling down and working hard when I’m into it, but maybe not always so much when I’m not.
And that’s why Ms. B’s words meant so much to me — because as much as I love dancing, as much as I love ballet, it is work, and there are times that it feels like work.
Those are the days that I remind myself that I have Goals and Dreams, etc., and I get out of bed anyway, and I go to class anyway, and I work hard anyway, even if the last thing I feel like doing is another effing rond-de-jambe, and didn’t we already do fondu?
And it’s touching to know that teachers whose knowledge and guidance and opinion I value so highly see that.
So, anyway, today was one of those days that it was hard. Like, seriously: I whacked my ankle on something last night fumbling my way to bed, and it promptly developed a little puffy spot, so when I woke up part of me — okay, a whole lot of me — vaguely hoped it would be really sore so I would have an excuse to take an unsanctioned rest day.
Basically me this morning. (Thanks, Cheezburger.com)
It wasn’t, so I got up and I went to class.
And I say this because I think so often those of us in the weird, weird waters somewhere between legit amateur and semi-professional dance probably all feel like that on occasion, but also probably don’t feel like we can admit it.
Like, once you cross that threshold beyond which you’re legitimately a professional (or even a legit semi-professional) dancer — in short, once it’s a job — I think it’s probably easier to acknowledge that sometimes it feels like a job.
Complaining about our jobs is, after all, an essential part of the American Way (and probably also part of the Way in a lot of other places). No matter how great your job is, there are going to be times that you’d rather be doing something else (like sleeping).
When you’re only sort of beginning to entertain the hope that something you really, really love might also turn out to be something you could do even as a kinda-sorta job, it’s much harder to admit that there are days you just don’t freaking well feel like it.
But, here’s the thing: just like courage isn’t the absence of fear, but the choice to forge on even in the face of fear, discipline isn’t the absence of days you feel a bit (okay, a lot) less motivated — it’s the ability to keep sight of that long-term motivation on the far horizon, so even when your immediate motivation flags, the long-term motivation drags you forward.
By the scruff of your neck.
Kicking and screaming the whole way, if necessary, because your long-term motivator isn’t going to take that kind of attitude from you, mister, and don’t make it turn this car around.
So, that was this morning for me. I hit snooze three times, stared at the ceiling in the vain hope of an injury both mild enough to be temporary and serious enough to warrant a day off, realized one wasn’t forthcoming, then poured myself into some clothing, chugged some caffeinated liquid and a protein bar, and hauled my butt to class.
And, sure, I was a little tired and a little sore and it took me a little longer than usual to get my body and brain out of first gear, but by the time we’d made it through the first round of rond de jambes I was glad I was there, if only because I was receiving useful corrections.
By the time we got to terre-a-terre, I had really basically forgotten that I was supposed to be having an unmotivated morning, and that less than two hours earlier I’d been lying in bed rooting for a mild injury.
Dancing is its own reward. Every second I spend in the studio is a gift; especially so because I have phenomenal instructors who take the time to really work on me.
Sometimes, though, getting to that reward is tougher than it is at other times. Some days it’s hard.
So, basically, I guess what I’m saying is this: there are going to be days that you just don’t freaking well feel like it, and you’re going to go ahead and go to class anyway, or go to rehearsal, or go perform.
Instead of beating yourself up for the not feeling like it part, celebrate the immense effort that it takes on those days to get up and do it anyway. Those are the days that you have already won just by showing up.
Aaaaaand, now I totally sound like some kind of After School Special, so I’m going to shut up before I make myself queasy 🙂
YouTube: BOSU Balance Series
danseur ignoble 