Today I Learned…
…The Apollo jump (which I had seen, but as far as know had never done) and the last remaining piece of our dance, which is mine alone and involves a turn in second and said Apollo jump.
That’s about all of it: we finish the Noodle Experiment, I back away from the girls and throw in a turn in second, then I pause for a second and when everyone else is essentially running upstage, I do the Apollo jump downstage, land it, collect myself, and run a few more steps to my place for the end of the dance.
We might change up the first partnering bit, though we might not. We’ll see. I like the change that T and BG worked out, but it’ll be a question of whether the remaining two girls from that group are okay with it.
I’m fine either way. They’re worried about kicking me.
I mentioned that if they kick me, it’s probably my fault. That’s kind of how partnering works for boys:
- If the girl kicks you, it’s your fault.
- If you kick the girl, it’s your fault.
- If the girl smacks you in the face, it’s your fault.
- If you smack yourself in the face with the girl, it’s still your fault.
- If you drop the girl, it is Definitely Your Fault (and you will never live it down).
FWIW, yes, this is intended to be funny but it’s also largely true. If you’re dancing the (traditionally) male role, part of your job is being in the right place at the right time and accounting for glitches, because the person dancing the other part has enough to worry about already. You adjust.
And if she stops dancing, turns around, and punches you squarely in the nose?
That is also Definitely Your Fault, unless it’s Because Ancient Aliens.
~
PS: I was wrestling with keeping my waterfowls in a linear array in the turn from second because ATTAAAAAAAACK!, and BG was like, “Keep your chest up and think of it like … a hammer throw, only your foot is the hammer.”
Bizarrely, this worked really hecking well.
Important note is that you still have to keep the working leg hella engaged, especially if you have sick mobility in your hips. If you think of a track & field person winding up for a hammer throw, though, they stay really tight basically the whole time.
Roll The Tape
I am having a terrible time focusing on Things That Aren’t Ballet today, so I’m taking a few minutes to write (what I hope is) a quick post about video.
Historically, I’ve only very rarely managed to snag video of myself dancing. The rehearsals for our upcoming performance have dramatically changed that, and they’ve made me think that it really wouldn’t kill me to spend a few bucks on a GoPro or something similar, because video is actually a really stellar learning tool for dancers.
Basically, video allows you to see what you habitually do wrong. If you, like many dancers, are naturally hypermobile and thus can’t always feel things accurately, seeing them can really help.
Watching all this video, I’ve noticed a couple of patterns of my own.
First, when I get tired, my arms just … ugh, I don’t even know what to say about them:
It’s worse than that. They’re dead, Jim.
This is from the beginning of the Balanchine Noodle Experiment. My arms are just … what. I don’t even know. Like a straight line, but a lazy straight line, with no presence(1).
- It could be worse, but “could be worse” isn’t really what we’re striving towards in ballet, am I right?
Presence is really rather immensely important to this moment; so much so that BG gave me a specific note about it when we were first learning this bit.
Meanwhile, my hands, in an effort to not be like:
DON QUIXOTE!
…have simply dripped off the ends of my wrists. Feh.
At least my shoulders are down?
The other thing I’ve noticed is that I’ve developed a habit of dancing swaybacked. I don’t really have a good screenshot of this, though you can kind of detect it in the shot above. Check out the front line of my body: it’s a perfect curve, like a segment of a circle, because I’m standing with my pelvis tilted too far forward.
I could probably get a decent screenshot if I was a more patient human being. I’m not.
Anyway. I actually know why I’m doing that—it’s an over-correction from a different problem, in addition to being an occupational hazard of being a hypermobile dancer.
Point is, I can’t feel it, so—just as with my wrists forever being like…
\_____O_____/* *proportionally speaking, my hands are not this big
…until I saw a picture and realized that they were doing that—being able to see it really helps.
When I consciously correct for the swayback thing, my turns are about 1,000,000 times better (which suggests that I’m using pretty small units of measurement to grade my turns, to be honest :P).
When I don’t, the middle of my body gets up over my leg(2), but the part from roughly the shoulder-blades (or, on really bad days, the navel) on up stays behind the axis.
- Every time I hear or write this phrase, the little earworm that lives in my auditory cortex goes, “GET UP OVER THAT LEG … AND TURN ‘TIL YA FEEL BETTER!” and then that plays on repeat for like an hour
Likewise, it sometimes causes a wiggly hip thing that I find completely revolting.
Anyway, regular work on my core should help correct for this, and I’ve rather committed myself to Pilates on Sunday afternoons (though one class per week probably won’t cut it, so I need to make myself do it at home, too).
The other nice thing about video is that it lets you see the things you’re actually doing well. The rep group is, as a whole, on top of the beautiful lines. I jump well (but, like, I kind of knew that?). When I nail an arabesque, I nail it.
An itty-bitty upstage saute arabesque. Still a little swaybacked (and my shoulders have crept up a bit, which also happens when I’m tired), but the lines are decent.
So, basically, the whole point is that video is great for sorting out some of the details you never notice when you’re in class or in rehearsal because you’re too busy, you know, dancing.
I hope if the rest of the group should stumble upon my blog, they won’t mind that I’ve stuck a couple of screenshots up here. I’m guessing they probably won’t, since you can’t tell who anyone is, including me 😛
History In Our Tights
When you have a ballet company full of people who need to be able to to lay hands on the the right costumes at the right times, there are any number of ways to keep things sorted.
One of them is to write the name of the dancer who’s using a given item somewhere inside said item.
Our fitting today was peppered with exclamations of, “I’m wearing Bovard’s tutu!” and the like.
As for me, I have no idea whose tiny, tiny, tiny little shirt I’ve got—honestly, I was too busy being afraid it wouldn’t even go over my head and failed to look—but I can at least identify the history of my tights(1).
- SPOILER ALERT: they aren’t BW’s, though that would have been super cool.
I know the dancer, KW (no relation to BW, though they both have beautiful eyes), whose name is written inside my tights. He’s very good. I hope some of his excellence rubs off on me!
I was, in all honesty, really rather surprised that I fit into the positively miniature clothes I tried on today—I was particularly alarmed about possibly exploding the tights, as they just had me slip them on over my own tights, since we trotted down for our fitting in the midst of barre. But they went on just fine and did not experience catastrophic seam failure and actually felt quite nice (and silky: I don’t own any shiny tights, but maybe I should).
The funny part is that I got completely re-costumed at the last minute(2) because BW spotted a shirt that, while stylistically quite different (like, night-and-day, ancient-and-modern different) from his original idea, really fit into the look of our little miniature company rather nicely.
- And might, in fact, still get re-re-costumed yet. I am apparently pretty much standard Ballet Company Medium, so the possibilities are more or less endless.
Everything got changed, including the shoes: ironically, to the only standard men’s ballet ballet shoe color I don’t already have in my stable. Fortunately, the color in question is grey, and almost every ballet company in the world has a herd of grey shoes connected with Nutcracker’s rats. If all else fails, BG’s feet are only a little bigger than mine, and he thinks I should be able to borrow his.
Evidently, the ensemble works quite well on me, though I didn’t get to see it. We were down in the Mysterious Cavern of the Wardrobe, and there wasn’t a mirror down there. I’m not sure whether I’m happier that I didn’t, because that prevents me feeling insecure about specific things, or if I might have preferred to have a gander at it after all.
I’m leaning towards being very much okay with not having seen how I look, possibly on the “if you can’t see it, it can’t see you” principle—like, if I haven’t seen any specific things about which which I might feel feel insecure, then I’m effectively hidden from the Insecurity Monster that lives somewhere in the neighborhood of my amygdala.
It’s an interesting thing, anyway, this odd little dose of animism, if you will, that has the lot of us mildly giddy about whose bits of costumery we’re borrowing.
That said, I’m not going to investigate it too closely just right now.
Even my wild overconfidence could stand to benefit, after all, from the occasional magical feather—or from KW’s magical tights.
Tours De Farce
Modern was rather great today. I figured out how to do it without annoying my foot. I’ve discovered that the only thing that makes it hurt is putting even a little pressure directly on the outside of the joint, which happens with alarming frequency in modern dance. I simply faked my way through anything that involved that (safety releases, etc) and things went fine.
I’m still fairly terrible at remembering modern combinations, but that’s nothing new. It is slowly improving.
BW’s class tonight, meanwhile, was quite good once my body decided to wake up and participate. I think it was feeling sluggish because I’d just subjected it to a rehearsal followed by no stretching and a 20-minute drive. I suppose it was within its rights to feel grumpy about that.
Anyway, we did all the jumps today: so much petit allegro, followed by one grand allegro exercise.
One of the petit allegro exercises involved temps de cuisse, which I’ve been erroneously calling temps de puisse ever since I for some reason decided it was, in fact, power-step and not thigh-step. But I was right the first time, which is funny for the very specific reason that I initially thought it was really neat that the step was named after a piece of armor, then disappointed that it wasn’t … but I was wrong, and it really is named after the piece of armor!
…Which is pretty cool, though POWER STEP!!!!!111oneoneone1one1onewon is also a pretty cool name for anything in ballet.
Anyway, turns out temps de cuisse is supposed to be done upstage to effacé. Also turns out that when you do it that way rather than trying to do it en face, it’s a hell of a lot easier.
Oh, and remember that you “BOING!” upstage to efface, which I completely failed to indicate here because laziness.
The weirdest bit is that I remember looking this up, but maybe that happened in a very vivid dream, and I can file it away with BW’s choreographic advice about rotting fruit?
This is the most important thing I’ve ever learned about ballet, and in fact about dance in general: with few exceptions, things are largely easier when you do them correctly.
In fact, I would almost go so far as to say that this is pretty legit advice for life in general.
I don’t actually remember the rest of that combination at the moment, though I know involved entrechats, because I had done fugly entrechats in the second petit allegro exercise and was startled that they miraculously just plain worked in this one (probably because I was busy thinking about temps de cuisse instead).
Anyway, for grand allegro, BW gave me the choice of various species of jetés across the floor or tours. I said, “Tours, because I never get to do them in any other class,” which met with approval 🙂
Anyway, BW gave me a little combination that went something like:
tombé
pas de bou-chasséi(1)
plié fifth(2)
tour
- This is that kind of hybrid step in which you begin to pas de bourré, but instead of simply going back-side-front to fifth, you go back-side-front straight to fourth through a kind of flying chassé.
- In this case, you’re practically doing a petit assemblé that lands fifth. It spring-loads the legs. Oy vey, does it ever.
I tried this a couple of times and alarmed myself by doing 1.5 tours instead of proper singles … and then I ran the combination again, got off a nice single, and promptly fell the feck over. Like three times.
BW said he’d had the same experience, and once in fact left class in tears because he couldn’t stop falling over. He also pointed out that falling over means you’re trying really freaking hard. Which, in fact, was true.
I’ve had a bad habit of doing itty-bitty little cautious tours, which probably have their place somewhere in the great universe of ballet, but honestly aren’t very interesting. I’ve decided that I’m going to launch all my jumps into space all the time (okay, okay, exept when we’re doing petit allegro), in the interest of actually A) being an interesting dancer and B) making the best possible use these giant slabs of ham with which the Universe has for some reason seem fit to favor me instead of normal human legs.
Anyway, after falling over backwards a few times, I decided to switch sides, and except for the part where my brain insisted the first time on doing the right-side variation anyway, the left side came off without any falling over. I then tried the right again, almost fell over but caught myself, and realized that a part of the problem was simply that I was instinctively trying to avoid putting my right foot down.
You can do tours to a single foot if you’re doing actually doing tour-to-the-knee, but you have to do it on purpose(1). Otherwise, you half-ass things and fall right the heck over.
- Even then, you do it by bringing the front leg to passé after lift-off, which neatly shoots it out the back because Physics, and then you land in an awesome-looking lungy-kneely thing so you can look all romantic and impressive and princely.
So now I know two different ways to fall over doing tours.
A. Forget to change your feet.
The first thing you do in a tour (well, after lift-off) is change your feet. If I remember correctly, not everyone does it this way, but it’s the standard, and the guys who change the feet last are stylistic mavericks. Anyway, I once tried doing a tour without changing my feet just to see what would happen. I managed to stay upright, but just barely; if I’d put any real force into it, I would’ve been flat on my tuchas in a heartbeat.
B. Change your feet, but then fail to actually put the one that started in front down all the way.
In a tour, your feet act as a kind of braking system. You load up a metric shed-ton of momentum, and changing your feet and sticking both of them on the ground allows you to oppose that momentum in a meaningful way so you don’t fall on your butt and roll, which seems like it might actually be a valid way to end a tour if you’re dancing a role in which that’s how you die, but probably should otherwise be avoided.
Artist’s depiction of how not to land tours. Any resemblance to Kokopelli experiencing wind turbulence is entirely coincidental.
Anyway, the falling-over-backwards bit was pretty hilarious, mainly because it was a complete surprise Every. Single. Time … at least until I figured out why I was doing it.
By then, it was just after 8 PM anyway, and we’d been working for more than 90 minutes, so we called it a night.
Sadly, I won’t have class with BW next week because of rehearsal, but he is coming to see us dance that Saturday.
This Saturday is our final fitting, and I finally get to find out what I’m wearing in the performance other than white socks and white shoes (SPOILER ALERT: YES, there is a shirt).
Tomorrow, we have Awesome Acro Workshops, followed by a weekend of madness and final costume fittings and a rehearsal on Monday.
Next week, I am taking Tuesday OFFFFFF.
The Onliest Boy Rides Again
… I mean, not literally rides, honestly I’m staying off the bike until April 1st because I have so freaking many rehearsals been now and then that the last thing I need to do is add even more exercise.
But I’m pretty sure that in addition to being the only boy in my piece, I’m the only boy in the whole show.
Honestly, most of me is totally like:
…And a little tiny part is aware that I should probably temper my innate overconfidence with a small measure of humility.
…
…
…Nah. I’m good .
Day “Off”
The Time of the Allergies(1) is upon us again, and D had a coughing fit at 6 AM that woke me up.
- Or, if you’re me, the time of EVEN MOAR ALLERGIES, because all times are the Time of Allergies.
Since then, I’ve actually managed to put dishes away, wash last night’s remaining dishes, put those away, make waffles (because either someone in the neighborhood was making them or I was totally hallucinating the scent of waffles, and I just couldn’t stand it anymore), eat a waffle, feed D a waffle, clean up after the waffles, and run a couple of loads of laundry.
I also failed at making tea, however: boiled the water, then forgot to actually make the tea for two hours, so had to start over. Anyway, I have tea now.
I’ve got this, guys.
Fortunately, D picked up some allergy meds for me, so I’m breathing through my nose pretty decently at the moment. #smallvictories
Anyway, ballet-wise, I feel pretty on top of my choreography, including the Partner All The Girls! bits (actually, those are the easy bits; I really basically just stand there, look pretty, and put my hands where they need to be). However, we still have the last 23 seconds to learn, so I’m going to rehearsal tomorrow instead of going to see Wendy Whelan’s “Some of a Thousand Words.”
Funny thing is that it really wasn’t a question (because apparently my #priorities are properly aligned, or something). If we’d finished the dance last night, I might have gone to the performance instead, but I really actually want to go to rehearsal.
Fortunately, D isn’t offended that I’m opting out on my birthday present, and in fact agrees with me that going to rehearsal is the right choice. He is going to give our tickets to someone who wants to go and doesn’t have tix, which is a nice thing as well. So instead of seeing Whelan’s show for my birthday, I get the pleasure of giving someone else the chance and still getting to go to rehearsal 😀
In other news, I still have no idea what I’m wearing in the show, besides white socks and white shoes. I keep forgetting to ask, and people keep asking me, and I keep having to say, “Um, actually, I have no idea.”
BG described the tights I’ll be wearing as “awesome,” so of course I’m picturing something like this:
Ganked from the Googs because I’m lazy right now. (Also, I’m guessing matadors don’t wear dance belts. Huh. Honestly, that looks hella uncomfortable.)
…But I suspect that reality will be somewhat less ornate, since all the girls are wearing pastel leos and white romantic tutus, and not so much with the bling.
In other news, today is perfect soup weather, but I forgot to buy soup, so #firstworldproblems etc. I could make soup, though, if I get desperate.
Addendum:
Here’s what I wore last night, anyway:
Lo-res video is low 😦
I was use-testing the socks, which are new. BG and I agreed that we kind of liked the blue tights (which are brighter in real life) with the socks, but also that they would clash with the rest of the performance.
The shirt, OTOH, is just the same shirt I wear every damn day.
TIL
…That a straight hour of partnering work can be pretty heavy on the arms even if there isn’t a single lift.
Especially 4-on-1 partnering, when you’re the 1.
Update: TI Also Learned that when I post at midnight, I don’t proof-read very well!
A Mostly-Good Day
Sunday class went well today. I seem to have suddenly remembered how to dance, though my grand allegro (of all things!) was iffy. I was, of course, thinking hard about my arms, and the rest of everything was just rather meh, except for the last grand jeté, which felt very nice.
JMH is one heck of a good teacher. I find the pacing of his class very pleasant, likewise the material is about right—stuff I can do and am polishing, generally. Hence the “thinking hard about the arms” part. I am trying to cure myself if this embarrassing wrist-flick that has infiltrated my arm programs.
I also managed, amongst a field of mostly acceptable turns (not bad, but nothing to write home about), a triple that felt light and stable because:
- I didn’t attack it mercilessly until dead.
- I got up over my leg and didn’t let myself tip over backwards.
- I didn’t anticipate my spot.
I did, however, keep overdoing the chaînes in the same combination. Not doing them badly, just doing too many. Which is a better problem than the previous problem of hating chaînes and struggling with them.
I stepped out early from the class I’m semi-teaching because my right foot hates modern right now. I dislocated my irritable small toe a while back, and it stayed that way for a month (because dancers, or at last this dancer, can be monumentally stupid: like, “It’s still attached, and I’m still dancing, so it must be fine!”). It’s back in place now but very annoyed with me.
I hung in there gamely for a while, but even a well-executed safety release makes that foot scream, and we’re performing next week (YASSSSSSS!), so I don’t want to annoy it any more than is necessary. And there will be a metric shed-tonne of necessary the next two weeks.
That gave me a few minutes to roll my legs, though, and they neeeeded it.
After, I did Pilates, finally, and discovered to absolutely nobody’s surprise that, yes, my core needs work. And after that, I had one pint of IPA and found myself surprisingly tipsy.
Definitely out of practice, there.
You Might Be A Dancer If, Continued
Please ignore the shoes making their break for freedom. Nothing to see here. Move along.
- You have a tumble dryer or a clothesline, but laundry day at your place looks like this anyway
- And by “laundry day,” you mean “any day that ends in -y”
- Your bedroom resembles a fire sale at a Sansha outlet
- You have so many tights (Footed! Convertible! Capri! Short! Really effing short! Strappy!) and joggers you don’t know where to put them all, but only two pair of regular trousers
- Which you never wear because ugh
- You are more than typically grateful to the inventors of the Utilikilt
- You miss pockets, but not enough to make you wear regular clothes(1)
- Besides, they make hoodies with zippered pockets now.
In case you’re wondering, when a dancer and an aerialist love each-other very much, the result is:
- A closet like the one above
- A ridiculous collection of matching tights that the dancer almost never wears because deep in his black-feathered heart of hearts Serious Ballet Boy Is Serious (…but only about ballet).
Balanchine Noodle Experiment FTW
Tonight we added Apollo-y things and something I’m calling a Balanchine Noodle Experiment.
If you’re familiar with Balanchine’s ouevre, you probably know what I mean: those things where a flock of dancers basically ties itself into moving a Celtic knot?
Basically this, but with more heads and feet. (Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.)
Anyway, I’ve always thought those were cool (even back when I didn’t like B-style because I hadn’t seen it done well).
So that’s the kind of thing we’re doing—with partnering in the mix—and it’s hella cool.
We’re basically two weeks to launch now, which is really exciting.
Tomorrow, modern and BW’s class(1).
- I still haven’t found my effing jump rope, blergh; I’m just going to buy a new one. It won’t kill me to have a couple.
Tonight, sleeeeeeeeeep.
~
PS: I was a brainless mess in Killer Class, but evening class went brilliantly. Some light & lovely turns to combat the sheer badness of this morning’s turns.
danseur ignoble 