I feel that I was, well, very squidly in the middly today — like there were no bones between my pelvis and my shoulders.

Last night, I went running. Or, well, it started out as running. The goal was to run to the RedBox at ValuMarket, retrieve two movies, and run home — only I discovered that, after about six months back in the ballet studio, my feet have reshaped themselves enough to change how my running shoes fit.

The Minouras are still comfortable, don’t get me wrong — but I can no longer wear them without socks! I gave myself a bunch of blisters — not the biggest ones I’ve ever had, and not the worst ones I’ve ever had, but there were a lot of them, and dancing on burst blisters is no fun. Walking home kept them from bursting and peeling, which made class much, much more comfortable this morning than it might have been.

There are actually four on my left foot; you can only see two at this angle. Also, look — I have ankles now!

Anyway, I ran the outbound leg of my trip and walked back, then stuck fancy bandages all over my feet while we watched two movies (Grand Budapest Hotel, which was very lovely, and The Lego Movie, which was actually better than I expected it to be).

I arrived home at 8:25 PM. Needless to say, we stayed up later than we should have.

Staying up late meant taking my sleep aid even later, and I was still feeling it this morning during class. I felt a touch groggy, a bit slow, and like I was having a hard time keeping everything pulled together*.

That said, I think that working through the fog is a good lesson in and of itself. Say I actually get a chance to perform some day: there are going to be days that rehearsals happen when I’m feeling groggy and not entirely with it. Likewise, if I work in Dance/Movement Therapy, there are going to be days that I’ll need to be in the studio and “on” even though I haven’t slept well or whatever.

As dancers, we have to learn how to work through grogginess and harness every scrap of focus we can find.

Going across the floor, I felt like all that focus-retrieving effort paid off: while I didn’t feel like my sautés and leaps were exactly spectacular, I was able to get my arms in sync. This was an improvement over the beginning of barre, during which I couldn’t seem to remember what my arms were supposed to do at all.

I also managed one or two decent pirouettes (which we did before clearing the bars). Margie gave me a couple of excellent corrections that amounted to: pay attention to when and where the working knee arrives in passé and let your shoulders carry your head (or, don’t lead with your neck!)**.

Denis said I looked really good going across the floor, which was nice. I tend to focus hard on my faults and I don’t always appreciate what I do well. Instead of seeing a grand jeté that looks pretty nice, I see one that doesn’t look perfect. C’est la vie.

Probably the highlight of today’s class, though, was really feeling and using the music — bizarrely enough, this happened during our barre stretch. I feel like I’ve got the basics back in my body enough to start working on musicality and interpretation more, especially during our Essentials class. In the advanced beginner and beginner/intermediate classes, I still feel like I’m focusing on getting the steps back into my body.

The really cool thing is that every now and then I have a moment — like Monday’s tour jetés, Wednesday’s one really good pas de chat, a lovely glissade I tossed off randomly at home today — in which something suddenly clicks and my long-unused muscle memory wakes up and says, “Hey, I know this!”

I hope I’ll be able to keep the glissades turned on. The glissade-assemblé mental block still surfaces from time to time, so I practice glissade-assemblé at home all the time now in an effort to correct it.

For what it’s worth: different teachers and different dancers have different feelings about practicing at home. I find it works well for me. I’ve very much a kinaesthetic learner, though: my body leads my mind, rather than vice-versa (in short, I don’t think too well when I’m sitting still!). As such, I rely on a process of successive approximations followed by increasing refinement … which is to say, I learn faster if I repeat things a lot.

If I leave the studio feeling like I don’t have the first layer of approximation solidly modeled (a good mental 3D “video” coupled to a basic kinesthetic understanding), I won’t generally practice a given movement outside of class. Once I have that first layer down, though, I am pretty good at building upon it without adding errors. This usually means that I’ll give something at least a couple of classes before I start working on it at home.

There are some steps I can’t practice at home (no room for tour jeté in the house — upstairs, there’s too much furniture; downstairs, I’d smack my arms on the ceiling; outside, our yard is way, way too un-level), but I seem to be good at improving the steps I can practice.

I will say that two classes per week plus some practice at home doesn’t work as well as three plus some practice at home. I’m sure four or five classes per week would be awesome, but it’s not in the budget right now.

I don’t think everyone necessarily should practice at home (and I might not bother if I was taking class five or six days per week). I think it’s up to each of us to determine for ourselves (ideally with the guidance of our teachers) whether solo practice is a help or a hindrance.

For me, a bit of practice at home seems to work, as long as I’m conscious about it.

This is getting long so one more random bit: during Wednesday’s class, Brienne ran all the across-the-floor stuff quite beautifully, and I found that really helpful (not that I managed to get my crap together during class). She has a very graceful, athletic, bounding style, and it’s been handy to be able to picture how she performed our choreography so that I can use it as a model. Pretty cool stuff.

Oh, one really last random bit: I managed to actually watch my mouth (thanks, Jim!) a bit during this class. I did catch myself making faces from time to time. Whenever that happened, I made myself smile***, which has the rather magical effect of loosening everything else up along with my face. Good to know.

Notes
*I re-learned, yet again, about the importance of being solid and connected from the ground up. I’m guessing that the large muscles in the thighs that do a lot of that work were still recovering from the run, as well, which probably didn’t help.
**I was sort of hyper-spotting; snapping my neck around in advance of my turn. This throws everything off and makes for a messy finish.
***Because you have to do something. Denis and I routinely debate the whole, “Smile, you’re performing!” idea — he thinks dancers should basically smile all the time; I think they should smile when it’s appropriate to the music they’re interpreting.

For me at this juncture, though, attempting a beatific smile is better than just trying not to make faces!

Tonight I took Tawnee’s beginner class for the first time.

Her teaching approach is closer to Margie’s — slower-paced, with a lot of focus on precision and clean technique (and occasional hands-on assistance — at one point, she grabbed my leg mid-extension, turned it out a bit further and simply lifted it painlessly into a much higher extension: she then said something like, “There’s your turnout,” to which I mentally replied, “Wow?” — because, seriously, I had no idea that A) I could get my leg that high in an extension à la seconde and B) it wouldn’t hurt at all*).

Bizarrely, I was the most advanced regular student in class for once … though I did not acquit myself accordingly once we left the barre (I promptly forgot how to count and how to remember combinations, and I probably made faces as well).

Then the Pros showed up.

Brienne (my teacher! In class with me! OMG!) and a fellow who I’m fairly certain is at very least quite an advanced student came to do class as well (he said off-hand as he entered, “I was going to do company class but…” and I missed the rest).

So our little band of four became a band of six, and I found myself alternately standing behind, then in front of, a really well put-together guy whose technique was pretty solid. (Also, his arms were beautiful. Just sayin’.)

So. Um. Apparently, I can be intimidated**.

Obviously, it wasn’t too scary standing behind him (if anything, it was edifying). What was intimidating was standing in front of him.

If you dance, you know these feels.

Needless to say, I suddenly found myself very, very focused on remembering the combinations and executing them with the best technique I could manage.

Which, of course, led to thinking. Which occasionally led to screwing up, because thinking + dancing = bad dancing. Sort of. Sometimes.

Also, I apparently respond to intimidation by forgetting to pull up my knees, then pulling them up like my life depends on it. This was an informative insight, as the mid-section jelly phenomenon I’ve previously described seems to pretty much stem from loose knees (who knew? — loose lips knees sink ships dancers!). Once the knees pull up, everything else is like, “Oh, better get in line.”

Else, jelly.

I guess this shouldn’t be some kind of ground-breaking discovery, but there you have it. Each of us comes to understand the whys of ballet in his or her own time.

Anyway, while I executed one totally lovely pas de chat (if I do say so myself — and I do), I was largely of useless at centre (I kept losing track of my legs, and my arms, and the combos, and probably everything else).

I think I might actually have overdone it with the caffeine, which might have contributed to flighty-brain syndrome.

Perhaps I should cut back***?

Surprisingly, the roughly 20 fast miles on the bike didn’t really seem to phase me. So there’s that.

Anyway, even though I feel like I was a mess during enormous swathes of this class, I actually don’t think it was that horrible. Compared to the first few classes when I was just starting back, I’ve come a long way in a short time.

So that’s it for tonight. No stunning insights other than, “Oh, if I tighten my knees, things work better,” which I think I’ve covered before.

Pull these muscles up. Then pull them up some more. Then a little more. Then unlock your knees, and you’re good to go.

So, um, sunny side up, leather side down; head in the air, wheels on the ground (yeah, I know it’s “feminine rhyme,” but whaddaya want?).

More to come.

Notes
*Actually, I should have known this — I think it was one of the times that either Margie or Jessica taught the Saturday beginner/intermediate class that we did basically the same thing while stretching — manually turned our legs out a bit further and discovered that, ohai, we could tuck them behind our ears while standing. At least, I could.
**Also, blubbery. I am way leaner than I was a couple years ago — lean enough to look pretty good on the bike these days — but seriously, ballet kit hides nothing. And ballet is one of the areas where Other People Can Be Fat And Look Fine But I Can’t because of my stupid brain and its stupid double standards.
***Yes, I should cut back. Caffeine and bipolar go together like horseshoes and hand-grenades, as we like to say around here.

Tonight my work at the barre was largely pretty good (except the odd moment of OMGWTFBBQ during a frappé combination) and my work at center was … um. My adagio was awkward, my turns were mostly horrible (with a few good ones). The little jumps went well, though. The little jumps always go well. I could do little jumps until tomorrow morning*. I mostly even counted them correctly. Mostly.

My turns were horrible, though, for the right reason — not because I wasn’t working, but because I was: working, and thinking about stuff, and trying to get things coordinated. And sometimes thinking a little too much.

Basically, my heels don’t like to touch the ground when I’m preparing for a turn. I do this weird boingy thing off the supporting leg. I get through the turns, but they don’t look great, and if I would do it right, I should have basically no trouble doing doubles and stuff.

So then I start thinking about getting my heels on the floor, and everything else goes to hell in a handbasket.

Keep hands and feet inside the vehicle until the ride comes to a full and complete stop.

So that’s my goal for this week: stop turning like a half-baked gymnast.

I am getting better at being upright and not tipped over backwards, and at keeping my collarbones open and my sternum lifted and my shoulders down instead of scrunched up around my ears. My arms have decided that they get to dance, too, which is good. For a long time, I had to think about adding arms to barre and floor combinations; now I have to concentrate on not using them when Brienne doesn’t want them.

In other news, I came out of this class feeling strong (if hot: once again, I left class looking like I’d showered in my ballet kit). So there’s that. And, also, I ate a ton of vegetables today. So yay!

Notes
*The only disconcerting thing about little jumps is that sometimes one suddenly wonders mid-combination if one’s dance belt is adjusted correctly, and if one didn’t just feel it shift. Sometimes one panics just a wee bit.

First, it was Open House night, so class was freeeee! Woohoo!!!! Free ballet class is like the best thing EVAR.

It was also packed. I think there were about fifteen of — four on each barre, except my barre, which had three.

Second, Brienne’s class is officially one heck of a workout. Not counting hot rides on the bike, I haven’t sweated like this since Muay Thai. Seriously. And it’s every. Single. Class. By the end of barre, I was soaked, flat out dripping, like I’d just stepped out of the shower (you know, assuming I had, like, showered in my ballet clothes — which I mostly try to avoid, though I did accidentally run my canvas shoes through the wash).

Row, row, row your barre,
Gently down the sweat…

I was like jelly again today during grand battement, so I hung out after class and asked Brienne for some pointers on how to fix that. I think she has me sorted. Now I will practicepracticepractice until I nail that down.

In case you’re wondering: think about driving the weight down through the supporting leg while the imaginary string that always pulls you up keeps pulling. This is what I’m doing when it works, I think; obviously, this is what I’m not doing when it’s a hot mess.

I suspect I also do better when I can’t see myself in the mirror. I get distracted. More stuff to think about and work on and stuff.

In other news, I am beginning to think that all this ballet is actually really going to make me rather a better cyclist.

First of all, it makes weighing less a huge freaking deal. You know how much of a pain it is to haul extra weight up a hill on a bike? That same extra weight makes everything you do in ballet class that much harder. By the end of Brienne’s barre, I feel every single extra ounce.

For the record, I really have to be motivated to ride so hard my legs burn. Give me someone to chase up a climb, and I’ll make my quads scream. Beyond that, I tend to be like, “Meh, I’m going fast enough right now. I don’t need to go faster than 20MPH max speed on this ride. I can afford to average 14 (or 12, or whatever). I’m good.”

In ballet class, I don’t get that luxury. I get Brienne going, “…And now we’re gonna do it again!” Which she totally does every time we finish a combination that makes us all look like we’re about to cry, but we’re keeping it all inside because there’s no crying in ballet class (say that in your best Tom-Hanks-in-A-League-of-Their-Own voice). And because I find group class settings highly motivating, I keep pushing.

For the record, my thighs feel really different than they did, what, five? weeks ago? Six? You know, back when I bit the bullet and got back into teh ballets. They look kinda different, too.

Which brings me back to point two: I am stronger than I was before I got back in the studio. My core is stronger. My legs are stronger. The balance between my quads and all the stuff that opposes them is better. My butt, people, is like cold blue steel. Okay, so actually kinda warmish peachy steel with a nice layer of foam on top, but steel, kay? Like if I was standing in a parking lot, and you backed your car into my butt, I would dent your car.

All of that makes me a wee bit faster on the bike.

As for center work: There were no “Fosse! Fosse! Fosse!” moments during petit allegro . Just me losing count occasionally, but mostly doing okay. Once, during our nice little adagio thing, I realized my arabesque looked more like an ar-embarrassment, and fixed it without falling over. I’m gonna blame that on being super hungry by then, though … yeah. It was totally the result of low blood sugar. Ballet bonk. (FWIW, I was a tad cranky on the way home.)

Anyway.

It wasn’t my prettiest class ever, but I can tell I’m making progress, and that’s what counts.

That’s it for now.

Leather side down!