Last night, I couldn’t sleep, so I did some plies and tendus and practiced a couple of combinations from Saturday (isn’t that what everyone does 2 AM?).

This was frustrating, because they were very travel-y combinations, and I quickly found that I had to practice them in the round, because there is not a single room in my house that will let me squeeze in more than two sets of sauté arabesque – chasse gallop, or so much as one really all-out tour jete (I can squeeze a conservative tour jete into the diagonal of the living room, if I first move our collection of giant ottomans).

So I would B-plus in mid-kitchen and complete a given run in either the living room (going right) or the dining room (going left), carefully negotiating all the obstacles en route while wondering whether Denis would mind if I sold three-quarters of our furniture.

I rather suspect that he might.

Anyway, I have come to the conclusion that the obvious solution is to sell our house and move into a converted barn or warehouse wherein I can install a spring floor and not really bother with interior walls.   We can put the bedroom in what used to be the hay loft, or that stereopticon-type room from which the supervisors watch what’s going on in the warehouse.

We could also empty our basement and hire a bunch of guys with jackhammers to dig the floor two (or, ideally, four) feet deeper, but that sounds expensive and like it’s certain to lead to floods and other disasters.  It would, however, prevent me from cracking my arms on the ceiling when practicing jumps.

Am I alone in fantasizing about moving into the gymnasium of a disused high school, a converted barn, a refitted warehouse — or, better yet, a house with a proper ballroom (and, ideally, not much else, because who has  time for all that when there’s somewhere to dance?)?

These all seem like very reasonable ideas when I’m trying to dance at home.