Last night, conditioning class was tough —Ms. A2 opened with a gentle warm-up that lulled us all into complacency, then whipped out the most-demanding Pilates workout I’ve done to date.

I spent the brief break before technique class pacing the studio to keep my muscles warm; between that and the flexibility work we did in conditioning, I had increasingly awesome turnout throughout barre and good extensions. I’ve been remembering to stretch my piriformis, which has been helping with my splits.

Double turns were reliably on tap for turns and terre-a-terre (a lovely waltzy thing with sweeping ronds) and I had good entrechats during petit allegro, although I had to battle muscle memory to keep from doing a similar combination we do frequently at home.

I might overturn my ruling about triple turns tonight, because I’d like to tune them up for variations, if I can.

After the second break, we ran Albrecht a bunch of times, then revisited our duo, then returned to Albrecht.  We’re now really polishing both. I substituted contretemps where I’d just been stepping over myself in one passage and added double turns where they fit, though if we perform the duo, I probably won’t do them unless C does. We are, after all, supposed to be mirroring of one-another, not show-boating!

Albrecht-wise, since I now have the opening pose-step-chassée-cabriole-assemblée-Sissone sequence down, I’ll see tonight if I can work double cabs in. I’m still not 100% sure I can even do them reliably, but it would be awesome to be able to pull them out on Saturday.

I should also figure out how I want to finish Albrecht’s variation — there are some options. Right now I’m doing a turn from fourth to second to the knee (which I think I should finish effacé but with my shoulders opened back to stage left, since that would leave me facing our imaginary Giselle, for whom I’m theoretically doing this entire dance?).

I plan to watch some versions of the variation on YouTube and collect some ideas.

Mr. J got my arms sorted on a part of Albrecht’s variation about which I’d somehow confused myself and improved my tour-to-the-knee (a definite in the duo and an option for Albrecht), which I’d been doing awkwardly — tour, land on two feet, rond de jambe to knee. He demonstrated it and I realized that it’s cleaner if you pick up the leg that will be in back before you land the tour.

I also want to see if I can swing a double tour before I go home — I had a respectable 1.5 last night, which is progress, although not incredibly useful.