In spite of all indications to the contrary (feeling tired and fairly relaxed), last night turned into another insomnia marathon. I just couldn’t fall asleep, and then I did I had weird dreams that woke me up.

That said, I’m feeling reasonably okay  today, and class went surprisingly well. I even did turns at the barre without whacking my knees. Admittedly, the barre at the downtown studio makes this easier — it’s a no-nonsense barre for advanced pre-pro and company classes, no secondary rail to get in the way.

Sadly, I am at least as afraid to admit to my teachers that I’m afraid of whacking my knee doing turns at the barre as I am actually afraid of whacking my knee doing turns at the barre. It’s a conundrum. I don’t want to sound like a whiny little crybaby, but on the other hand, I need some strategies to get over this thing (or, at any rate, I need to do turns at the barre more often).

Anyway, turns at the barre happened, and nobody died. The turnouts were content to be ballet-ing today, though during the first set of tendus I kept placing my a la seconde behind me like a flexible n00b, which resulting in a rond-de-jamb thing instead of a proper tendu. HD fixed me, though.

Turns and adagio were functional but not quite up to my usual standard — I am managing, but definitnely beginning to feel the deleterious effects of sleep deprivation on my equilibrium, coordination, and related functions.

Still, these days, even when my turns and adagio aren’t at their best, they’re at least functional. Unless I have an ear infection, I never find myself hopping through and out of single turns anymore. I suppose it wasn’t all that terribly long ago that  despaired of ever having clean and reliable singles; now I’m worrying about triples instead.

My petit allegro, on the other hand, was better than it used to be on a mediocre day, but still only meh. I kept failing to get myself over my leg during a jete and thus being unprepared for the assemble and two Sissones that followed it.

Basically, I was leaving my body behind again. I think that was basically a mental-block thing: I was like, “OH NO PETIT ALLEGRO AND I HAZ ALL THE TIREDS!” and proceeded to get all tense. A significant portion of my brain wanted to quit, but I made myself do petit allegro anyway. Sometimes part of being a dancer is doing petit allegro even when you feel like you’re already exhausted.

I’m learning that, for me anyway, the key ingredient in that magical thing we call “lightness” is RELAXING ALREADY FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY.

Unfortunately, I forgot to yell at myself to “RELAX, DAMN YOU!”

…Which, I suppose, might not be the most effective approach 😉

That said, I did at least remember both segments of out petit allegro and both of our medium/grand allegro combinations.

Now I need to work on keeping my Sissones a cote in a proper second, so I don’t lose my turnout. Today, my leading leg kept getting behind me. Argh.

Come to think of it, this problem may have been specific to the right leg, though. I realized partway through class that I’d managed to jam my pelvis overnight, but didn’t have a chance to fix it (there’s a small therapy ball that I can use for that in the studio, but I didn’t locate it ’til class was almost over).

I’m getting better at compensating for the jammed-pelvis thing, but it still does weird things to my legs sometimes. Definitely going to fix it before I perform this afternoon.

Anyway, we didn’t actually finish with Sissones — we finished with a simple moderate allegro: saute arabesque, saute passe, saute arabesque, saute passe, tombe, pas de bourree, glissade, pas de chat or saut de chat.

But “Sissone and Desist” was just too catchy a title not to use 🙂

More later.