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My Car Is Horrible Right Now; Brief Notes on Modern; Also, I Made A Thing
At the moment, my car smells like the inside of someone’s dance bag.
In fact, it smells like the inside of a dance bag belonging to someone who shoves his sopping-wet warm-ups into said bag after class and then forgets about them and goes home and the next day is like wtf did I do with my warmp-ups and then finds them when he goes to get his shoes out in ballet class the next day and shoves them back in his bag and forgets about them again until he finally remembers to bring the freaking bag in so he can wash them, which might take like an entire week[1, 3]. Ewww.
- I can neither confirm nor deny that this has actually happened to me[2].
- Possibly more than once.
- For the record, this problem is pretty specific to commuting by automobile, since taking public transit or riding a bike rather prevents leaving your dance bag in the car all week, doesn’t it? Though I did once leave legwarmers in my bike’s trunk bag ._. Good times, good times.
So I’m planning on going after my car with some carpet foam tonight. Possibly also mowing the lawn (completely unrelated, but still something I should probably do), but we’ll see.
Anyway, fairly good day in Modern today.
I am still madly in love with floorwork.
Perhaps I always will be? The lights (which are on sensors) clicked off about a quarter of the way through our floorwork combination, and we were just like, “Ahhhh.”
TFW the lights go out during floorwork. (Credit: Paul Holloway from Birmingham, UK – C&W kittens, via Wikimedia Commons)
Modern dance naptime, you guys. For real. It’s as refreshing as a nap without all that annoying napping.
Meanwhile, I’m back to being able to withstand light pressure on the outside of my right foot, so it’s now possible to safety-release into various rolls from an upright position. It’s still iffy about turns, but TB (who has been in class with us a few times now—yay!) suggested a different way of taping it that might help, so I’m going to try that tomorrow and Thursday.
I’m also continuing to work on knowing where UP is, which is remarkably hard (TB finds this unsurprising about me; I suspect it’s part of the “ridiculously hypermobile dancer” package).
I’m also also continuing to work on not being so freaking terrible at scheduling myself. As such, I created a dance-specific calendar, and because I figured, “Why not?” I’ve posted it as a page. That way D can find it easily and figure out where in hell I’ve gone, which can be a problem when you’re married to a dancer who won’t stand still for 5 minutes.
Turns out that it loads desperately slowly (read: about the same level of urgency as an unhurried sloth), but whatevs. It’s a start. I thought about making a separate calendar page for intensives, but that seems excessive. Instead, I made two separate calendars with joint output. The intensives show up in a red font; everything else shows up in blue.
A visual representation of a visual representation of a conceptual representation of … anyway, it’s a calendar.
Why?
Because I’m crazy awesome. Or something like that.
That said, it turns out that I’ve YET AGAIN double-booked myself on so many levels it isn’t even funny, so now I’m trying to finagle my way out of the Cultural Dance workshop I can’t take because I’m in Lexington during half of it. That sort of forces me to take our AD’s masterclass, though, which I’ve been semi-dreading because, like, he’s our AD and therefore inherently terrifying.
In other news, I guess it’s time to Order All The Dance Belts before I jet off to Lexington and then Connecticut. I have three that I like well enough; I would really like to have five so I never, ever have to worry about whether or not they’ll dry on time.
I need to make up my mind whether to order another pair of Yumikos or to order some M. Stevens tights, also, mainly because there’s some lead time involved in acquiring another pair of Yumikos.
Though, come to think of it, my Very Own Personal Yumiko Rep is about to jet off to a tropical paradise for an intensive because he is, in fact, awesome (no, really; last year he got invited to dance at Jacob’s Pillow), so that might sort that for me. I’ll have to find out when he comes back from Ballet Paradise.
Eek!
I’m now committed for BW’s masterclass and some of the ML&Co intensive—I remembered that there are one-day passes and 3- or 5-class cards, so I’m planning to take 3 classes during the week and then go for the full day on Friday. It will be a hectic week, but not insanely so.
I also seem to have somehow committed myself to audition for the company at ML&Co’s intensive, so we’ll see how that goes. Erm, onward and upward?
In other news, I learned while I was writing this post that I will indeed be going to Pilobolus’ intensive this year as well! Obviously, that’s pretty exciting! I’ll also be able to visit my Mom and Step-Dad (unless the week that I’m going is the same week in July that they’re out of town; I can’t remember at the moment o.O’).
Yesterday, after I finished writing my post, I ate lunch, decided to read for a bit, and promptly fell asleep on the couch until 9 PM. Later, I slept from 12:30-9:30 AM. I’m not usually much of a napper, and that’s a lot of sleep for one night, so presumably I really needed to catch up!
At any rate, I’m feeling pretty well rested today 😀
We didn’t have modern class today (which let me get a bunch of stuff done around the house), so it’s back to the normal class schedule tomorrow. Modern is moving to a new time-slot, though, so that’ll be a change.
This week, D and I will start really cracking away at our PlayThink piece, which I hope to have finished before Master Class/ML&Co week (June 5 – 9) so we can simply polish it up before the festival.
Summer Heats Up!
I know I said I was probably going to do Mam-Luft’s intensive again, but it turns out I’m not.
Instead, I’m taking a four-day ballet masterclass taught by BW right here at home. Huzzah!
I’m pretty excited about that (in case you weren’t sure what I meant by “Huzzah!”). They decided to individually evaluate students for eligibility and sent me an invitation, so w00t. Makes me feel fairly decent about myself, which is good, because yesterday after class I was like I CANNOT REMEMBER COMBINATIONS AND MY FOOT HURTS.
I went to the doc today for Regularly Scheduled Maintenance and discovered that A) they can now submit my prescription for Adderall electronically, B) …but I have to pee in a cup from time to time (which was only a problem because I was kinda dehydrated, but I juuuuust managed a sufficient sample) because Regulations[1], and C) my foot looks normal on X-rays, so it’s just soft tissue BS sorting itself out at this point.
- …Which is fine: honestly, it’s less onerous to be a person with ADHD who has to pee in a cup once in a while than one who has to remember to request a paper prescription, remember to go get the paper prescription, NOT LOSE THE PAPER PRESCRIPTION!!!, carry it by hand to a pharmacy, then remember to go back and pick up the medication later on … yeeeeeah.
As such, though it made me sad, I didn’t jump in BW’s class tonight (nor did anyone else, since I was All By My-seeeee-eee-eeeelf again). We opted instead for another stretch-n-kvetch, in which we discussed the assertion (made by neither of us) that dancers shouldn’t stretch, to which I responded that A] some dancers shouldn’t stretch some things (hip ligaments, kids), B] but we should stretch the other things, and C] if stretching wasn’t good, cats wouldn’t do it, because let’s be real, cats only do things that are really worth doing.
House cats, anyway. The ones that don’t have to worry about hunting and whatevs. The ones that are given their due as, at very least, minor deities, &c.
Take Mercutious T. Lawndrey-Tubbs, here. Whatever he’s doing, it’s obviously worth doing, or he wouldn’t be doing it. Also, pretty sure he’s #UpToNoGood, based on those eyeballs.
We also did lots of fondu-y things, as ever, and at center a nice adagio that began with a backwards pas de basque (or, more formally, pas de basque en arrière).
This has been a week of combinations with interesting beginnings. We did one yesterday that began waltz turn and waltz turn, devloppé croissé avant, tombé… It was starting right into the waltz turns that was the interesting bit. We don’t do that very often (more often, one encounters balancé, balancé, waltz turn and waltz turn and…).
Personally, I quite like pas de basque en arrière as a way to launch a combination. It’s at once a bit diffident (since, by the very nature of the step, you’re kind of bowing to the audience and backing away from them) but also a bit impressive, as it’s one of those steps that looks like it should probably be difficult (and, of course, you get a nice allongé effacé moment).
BW says I am making good progress, which makes me very happy. I actually felt like a more effective dancer today, particularly at the barre, where I was much more able to notice when my shoulders were being dumb and (literally) put them back in their place.
The interesting thing about not being able to jump is that it forces me to buckle down and work harder in the other parts of class (…imagine that ._.).
Revelations at the barre today: I can now feel when I’m temps-liéing into too wide a fourth. I also figured out what it does that makes life so terrifically difficult (beyond just having to tap basically All The Mana to get back up on your leg to do turns): it turns off your turnouts (and all the other stuff that holds you together as a ballet person).
A more obvious example of the same phenomenon involves doing grand plié in second until your butt drops below your knees. The rotators and … well, basically all the muscles that aren’t the quads … say, “Feck this noise, we’re outies,” and then it’s difficult to get back up, let alone anything useful. (Meanwhile, the quads be like “AIGHT WE GOT THIS BOYS! PULLLLLLLL!”)
Turns out that when your fourth is ridiculously big (because you are a travelly go-er who likes to absorb all the space), the same basic thing can happen.
Who knew?
…People who aren’t idiots. Specifically, I’m pretty sure Mikhail Baryshnikov wasn’t constantly unspooling his rotators.
Anyway, that’s what’s what for now.
During Masterclass Week, I plan to hit up my normal morning classes, unless my foot is like SCREW YOU NO. I’m hoping I’ll be back to normal by then, though. I plan to take a week or so to rest[2] it after Orpheus.
- …By which I probably mean “just do barre and flat center-work,” because let’s be reals.
Anyway, here’s my Updated Summer Plan:
- Ballet Week At Home!!!
- Lexington Ballet Intensive
- Possibly Pilobolus (depending on finances and stuff)
BW said the Master Class will be “Hard, but good.” Which pretty much describes most classes with him, and is what I need anyway.
danseur ignoble 