This morning, Ms. B’s barre was fantastic: really good and really challenging (as often happens, we had a handful of professional dancers in class; even they found the barre challenging!). I got some excellent guidance on my penché — the result was one of those, “Oh, it’s the floor! Hi, floor!” moments.

Apparently, my port de bras was also beautiful, and a quick adjustment I made early in the class (totally cribbing off my friend B.) made for some amaaaaazing balances. w00t!

In between combinations, I kept catching sight of myself in the mirror and thinking, “Is that really what I look like?”

Like, when did I turn into this surprisingly broad-shouldered person?

After class, B. took me out to lunch, and we got around to discussing various First World Ballet Problems (as is our wont), and it suddenly hit me: of course I’m having trouble with turns.

My body is surprisingly different than it was just a few weeks ago.

Though, really, that shouldn’t be surprising. I’ve been spending 10 – 15 hours each week on cirque training. I seem to have sprouted, like, arms and stuff.

So, basically, all of that is going to impact my center of balance, and of course it’s going to make my turns a hair wonky until I sort it out again.

Thus, for the time being, I’m going to go back to Channeling Baryshnikov — preparing for turns as if they were some kind of Zen exercise, which maybe they should be, instead of sproinging into them with All The Power whilst simultaneously throwing myself off my axis.

This also explains a previously-inexplicable new problem with my balance during tour lent, promenade, and penché. So, basically, I need to adjust for the fact that I’ve added muscle upstairs. Eep.

Since it’s my birthday, I got to choose a step to work on, so I chose saut de basque (and we got to do Grand Allegro, finally — it’s been a while). We did a fabulous combination that I’ll try to record later, if I can remember, but for now we need to jet off to conditioning and Trapeze.