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: work
Finally, A Thing
So DanceTeam is going well (though I am still convinced that at any moment our dancers are going to realize that I have no idea what I’m doing and revolt/go rogue/possibly eat me).
Ballet and modern were less than awesome last week, but the Pilobolus workshop made up for a lot of that, especially the part when one of the instructors tracked me down afterwards and told me I was a beautiful mover with a lot of presence. Definitely one of those “I can die happy now” moments.
Likewise, today’s Open Fly, during which I started formally building a dance to Hozier’s “Work Song” that’s actually going to happen (Finally!), felt like a leap forward.
Including myself, I have four dancers lined up. Aerial A, who went to the Pilobolus workshop with me, is also in, as are my DanceTeam partner-in-crime and a fellow I know from acro (upon whose very high shoulders I have literally stood). We’ve got a tentative performance date early next year (the performance is a definite; it’s just the date that’s undecided). Aerial A happened along while I was working on choreography this afternoon and we stepped through the first 41 seconds of the dance — at least, as much as we could, since there’s some partnering stuff that requires our compatriots.
Aerial A likes what I’ve got, and I think it’s going to really work.
Needless to say, the explosion of dance stuff in my life is both exciting and a bit overwhelming. I’m still in that phase during which you just kind of white-knuckle it whilst you adjust to your new schedule. Hence less posting. I’m somehow managing to scrape paint off the trim in the midst of all this, also, because miracles evidently do occur.
This week, we’ve got a dance event on Monday evening (a sort of “live interview” with Wendy Whelan), then I think a “normal” schedule again — wait, no, DanceTeam performs on Friday!
Anyway, here’s hoping that in class this week I won’t do dumb things like choosing too shallow a line in a bidirectional combination and almost colliding with someone in the next group.
Intensive plans for next summer are also in the works. Aerial A and I are hoping to hit at least one of Pilobolus’ week-long workshops. In addition, I’ll probably go to Cinci and Lexington again. There’s a remote chance of doing Sun King if our finances are okay, but in the current economic climate it’s really hard to predict.
No worries there, though. If I don’t get to go til 2018, I’ll be even better prepared than I will next year.
There are also a few audition-y things on the radar, but let’s file those under, “To Know, To Will, To Dare, To Keep Silent.” At least for now.
So that’s where I am at the moment. Still percolating other choreo projects, especially Simon Crane — but one of them is finally taking off.
Nothing To Report
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.
Teaching Adult Beginners: They Grow Up So Fast!
My Sunday class is making amazing strides — their tendus, dégages, and even ronds de jambe looked so great this week.
I also experienced one of those great moments in which I grabbed a student’s leg and demonstrated how rotation and placement could help her A) keep her RdJs smooth and B) balance her arabesque, and then got to see that amazing thing where the light-bulb inside just clicks on.
And then she did it again, completely on her own, without my meddlesome, grabby hands 😀
That was the best part, and really the highlight of the day. Such a cool moment!
I also guided her into a first arabesque (really, I just offered her my hand so she’d extend her arm to the right spot) so she could feel how the working leg and opposite arm connect through the back and counter-balance each-other, and she totally got it.
(Also, her arabesque looked awesome! Her back is really strong and flexible, which really helps — thanks, aerials! Likewise, because she wasn’t fighting to try to get a super-high extension, she was rock-solid.)
Something I’ve learned through my own experiences returning to ballet and teaching:
New dancers don’t just find it hard to locate the center-line of their bodies when the working leg is to the rear.
They also (and perhaps more importantly) often find that working to the center-line seems a little weird, unnatural, and sometimes even scary … until they try it and it clicks!
For me, that light-bulb moment came when I realized that I could keep my turnout more easily and effectively in RdJs if I really got the working leg all the way back to the center-line, and then that the same applied to tendus. This happened more recently than it should have, if I were better at A) listening and B) applying corrections 
Prior to that moment, I guess I kind of felt like I’d lose my turnout that way. Sometimes, ballet can be pretty counter-intuitive.
If you’re engaging all the (right) things, though, drawing the arc of the RdJ or the line of the tendu right freaking back from the tailbone lets you stay turned-out without lifting (or dropping) a hip.
(That, by the way, is the other part that’s hard for people: they feel like they need to lift that hip even when they don’t. Which, if they’re using correct technique and working within the ever-evolving limits of their own bodies, they shouldn’t at this level, or almost ever.)
This is still one of the best ways I know to gauge my own placement: if my working leg is taking too much weight in a tendu to the rear, or I’m hiking a hip in a RdJ en dedans, usually the problem is that I’m not getting my working leg behind myself.
Exception: if my pelvis is jammed — which happens with ridiculous frequency at the moment because Bodies Are Weird™ — I can’t RdJ without lifting the hip on the jammed side (very nearly always the right).
Instead, my working leg is usually kind of camping out in … I don’t know, 2.5-ième position? Working back to the center line by rotating and reaching generally resolves the related problems.
In some ways, and as much as part of me really hates to admit it (in part because I feel weird in third because I use it so rarely), I feel like this is a really good reason to teach adult beginners to work in third position before introducing fifth.
Then, when they come to tendu derrière or RdJ derrière, they have to think about moving the working leg in towards the center line (by rotating the heel forward and adducting, of course, rather than just by unraveling the working hip, letting the knee point to the floor, and shoving the toes over), which creates the opportunity to feel the difference that it makes when that happens.
Working from fifth, new dancers often tend to let their legs turn in when they extend back (see above re: unraveling, etc.).
Likewise, they often finish an RdJ or point a tendu a little to the side when working from fifth with the working foot closed in back — possibly because early on that seems like the only logical way to get your foot out there.
Later, of course, we get better at pulling up through the pelvic floor and lower core (also known as “pulling up through the hips” :D) and placing our weight to keep the working foot free when it’s in back — but early on, really subtle core cues and weight shifts are anything but intuitive.
With a little hands-on guidance, the sensation of bringing the leg back to the center line through (for example) a rond, on the other hand, can become a powerful physical illustration.
I doubt my student, C, will soon forget what it felt like to “get it” any more than I’ve forgotten.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that she’ll be perfect all the time — but it does mean she’ll be more perfect a lot more of the time, because now she has a memory that connects body and brain through the awesome feeling of an “Ah-hah!” moment.
In other news, the class as a whole is coming on like a house on fire.
Today we worked piqué balances at retiré going across the floor, and so many of them were bang on. It’s really cool to see a group of new dancers experience the thrill of springing on to the supporting leg and being able to just hover there, perfectly balanced, then come down.
We gave them a simple combination: piqué balances at retiré along the diagonal, to the count of:
Brush up – stay – stay – stay – down up – stay – stay – stay – down up – stay – stay – stay
(..etc. The number of piqué balances varied based both on the length of any individual dancer’s legs and how willing she was to really step out beyond herself.)
On the first run, we let them try it on their own. A few really nailed it, but several were shaky because, as is often the case, they felt unsure and tried to bring the supporting leg under themselves instead of launching themselves onto the supporting leg.
(Really, it’s kind of like throwing a BBQ skewer into the lawn — I’m not old enough to have experienced proper lawn darts, so I can’t say that’s exactly spot-on. Either way, that’s the image I should give them: your leg is a lance, and you’re spearing a reclining mammoth … or maybe something flatter, like a giant crocodile.)
What could possibly go wrong? (1)
On the second run, we simply rolled out the very-most-basic partnering, offering them a hand on which to steady themselves. Most of them literally put no weight on the hand in question, but knowing it was there made them feel safe, and the piqued more boldly.
So, lesson of the day for me: hesitant piqué balances might be the result of a little bit of fear. With new dancers, a little hand-holding (or, well, hand-offering) can really help.
(With more experienced dancers, though, yelling works just fine :D)
Anyway, that’s it for now. Sadly, I won’t be checking in with my students next week, as I’ll be off in the desert, doing tendus in the pool (and then building a freaking enormous theme camp at Burning Man).
~
Edit: fixed a thing. I don’t know why I was thinking these piqué balances were at coupé. They were at retiré. We’re planning on teaching these guys piqué turns sometime soon.
Further edit: just so you don’t think my Sunday class is really, really perfect, we still have to remind them about thinking of plié as a continuous movement. Today I explained this as:
Don’t drop and pop — melt and … um … smelt. Yeah, we’ll go with “smelt.”
Thank dog that Aerial A backed me up on that mnemonic 😀
Further, further edit: They have definitely turned into a dance class. Before class today, several them were attempting to figure out pirouettes (and kinda-sorta succeeding: they were upright, weren’t falling over, and were getting around, but they weren’t turned out or spotting).
Kinda warms my heart a little 😀
~
- By Mushy [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
True Story
In fact, I was exactly as tired as I look, here.
This picture happened because none of us thought to bring a single hand mirror to our Road Show performance on Tuesday.
Pros (or kinda-sorta-quasi pros) we may be. Organized? Um. Wellllllll….
I thought my eye makeup was uneven (it was); wound up with a highly consternated selfie by accident. Ultimately decided to keep it because I enjoy the look of blank desperation on my face (Is it uneven? I think it is. I’m not sure. I can’t go on like this! My kingdom for a mirror…)
Also, I forgot to take the sunglasses off my head — but don’t worry, the first inversion on the trapeze got that job done!
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 🙂
Thinking About Teaching, Dancing, and Being Good Enough
Back in January of 2015, I discovered that I love teaching neuroscience-y stuff (which probably shouldn’t have surprised me, since I am both a gigantic know-it-all and the kind of person who delights in watching other people make discoveries).
Unsurprisingly, this year, I’ve discovered that my fondness for teaching transfers really well to teaching dancers.
Full disclosure: where teaching dance is concerned, I literally have the worst case of impostor syndrome I’ve ever had. I’m totally like, “How are they allowing me to do this?! I could completely ruin this whole class with my generalized incompetence AT ANY SECOND!”
It’s significantly worse than the voice in my head that shouted, NO YOU CAN’T, DON’T AGREE, SHUT UP, SHUT UP, WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! every time I was offered some exposed or otherwise significant piece of choreography in rep class in Cinci. (Which, btw: I screwed up some stage business — returned to my starting place at one point when I should’ve gone to a different place — but I reminded myself that the audience has no idea it’s not supposed to look like this and it shook out just fine. So there you go.)
What I’m learning, though, is that I have good ideas, sometimes, and that Aerial A and I teach synergistically. My ideas and hers work really well together.
I’ve also learned that, while it can still be hard for me to articulate things verbally, I’m really solid with the physical corrections — those moments in which you actually grab someone’s leg and sort of show it what to do, or (as Claire once so usefully did to me) tap something and say, “Lift this.”
I will totally feel like I seriously have no business being up here, but I’m also learning that a lot of people feel that way a lot of the time. I’m learning to overcome that feeling: maybe not to make it go away, but to more or less thumb my nose at it. I remind myself that Aerial A is particular about her teaching staff and that our dancers are coming along so unbelievably well.
In short, it looks like I am, in fact, good enough — though maybe not in the way my brain means when it thinks, “But I’m nowhere near good enough!”
I’m not perfect. I’m new. I’m inexperienced. I’m learning.
But I’m serviceable. I get the job done. I’m, you know, good enough. Maybe not The. BEST. Teacher! — but still a teacher with some value.
Nobody ever knows everything (not even insufferable know-it-alls) and everybody has to start somewhere.
I’m trying to keep this thought before me as a dancer, as well: in a field where basically every working second is more or less a potential audition, there’s really nowhere to hide. People judge my ability based on what they see, not based on the things I say about myself or the things I think about myself. When people ask me to dance for them, then, the part of my brain that thinks, “She had no idea how awful I really am at this,” is wrong. People who have seen me dance can probably judge my strengths and weaknesses better than I can.
It’s up to them to decide whether, for their purposes, I’m good enough.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if that means “good enough” as in “This guy is clearly to compete in the highest echelons” (hint: I’m not!) or, “Eh, he’ll do all right.”
Good enough is good enough if it gets you in the door.
You Might Be A Dancer If… #001
You might be a dancer if you go to look for a picture of yourself in “professional attire,” and realize that essentialy every picture taken of you in the past year is more or less you in elaborate underwear.
Edit: PS – I’m #NotDeadYet but I’m completely swamped right now. Bleh.
So festivities. Much schedule. Wow.
Friday Morning Variables; A Really Good Contact Form Tutorial
First, the ballet:
Today, I finally got back to class. I was again assisting in Friday class, and we had one brand-new student. He let us know that he was uncomfortable with any kind of hands-on correction, so I spent much of the class contemplating best practices for verbally imparting elements of basic placement and so forth that are easiest to demonstrate by physically placing someone’s arms or what have you.
I’ll be thinking about this for quite a while, I suspect.
In other news, I’m building a PHP-driven contact form for Denis’ website, and being as my PHP skillz are more than tad rusty, I decided to play it safe and hunt up a tutorial (especially since I’ve never hand-coded PHP into a WordPress-driven site before).
I found a great one — it’s going gangbusters, thus far, so unless I hose something up (in which case I’ll just say, “Screw this,” and copy the code from the thoughtfully-provided repository ;)), I think it’ll work.
The best part is that it’s well-written: clear, concise, and direct.
Here’s a link, if you’re into this kind of stuff:
https://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/how-to-build-your-own-wordpress-contact-form-and-why/
I initially started doing this the e my WP install is wonky and I can’t actually install plugins, but since I prefer actually doing many things by hand, this appeals to my crankety old-fashioned tastes.
I cut my teeth on old-skool HTML as a kid before WYSIWIG editors were really a thing (and definitely before good ones that didn’t produce code that looked like something a cat might disgorge after a hard night on the town), and developed my initial abilities the same way everyone did back then, through the magic of View Source. This fostered in me a deep appreciation for clean, well-commented code, and the tutorial above is a fantastic example of what that should look like.
For maximum laziness irony, of course, I am writing this entry in the WP’s “Visual” editor.
Anyway, that’s it for now. Oh, or, well — I have a research idea percolating for my ballet peeps, but I’ll get to that in another post. This is mostly a reminder to myself, so there we go. STICKY NOTE!!!!
À bientôt, mes amis!
danseur ignoble 