Ha ha ha ha ha I thought she would take it easy on us for the first class of the year. I got to class and the barre was already almost full. I hate being on the extra barres floating in the middle of the room. Plus when I’m on those, I panic every single time that I’m facing the wrong way. Despite however many hundreds of ballet classes over the years. Because you’ll be facing an opposite direction than a row of ladies right next to you (left hand starts on the barre no matter where you are in space) and it never feels right! Or is that just…
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Modern Dance!
Special bonus dance class recap: MODERN DANCE!! My sister takes modern dance classes with her friend, a dancer and choreographer named Alyona Almato. I think I mentioned last time that one of Alyona’s sons went to my sister’s in-home preschool and that’s how they met—it was so fortuitous for them to meet and my sister to discover a love of dance!!! I said this on Instagram, but growing up, my sister took gymnastics, and I took ballet (only once a week, for a few years). My sister was a lot more serious about gymnastics than I was about ballet, but eventually quit and played volleyball, and was on the swim…
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C’est n’est pas un chat
When I arrived at the studio on Monday, I whipped out my class card and was totally shocked to see that my card was full and I would be using my free class! The class cards are buy ten, get one free, but it was actually my 13th class since starting ballet again. There was a free class day and then I paid for a single class before purchasing the class card. Lucky number 13! I continue to love Monday classes in a different, yet complementary, way than Wednesday classes. They are actually very similar in structure and difficulty. Sometimes I forget which one is supposed to be the “intermediate”…
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Can’t trust that bourree
I should stop over-eating every single weekend so I don’t feel bloated and sluggish every single Monday. I should, but I probably won’t. I did go to a yoga class on Saturday. I hadn’t done yoga since I started back with ballet. It amused me that I was very sore afterwards—from the waist up! My legs were fine. I guess there aren’t any muscles in the lower body that dancing doesn’t hit. Ballet class on Monday was good once I got going, as usual. There were some new faces. One woman attended who was pretty advanced, but maybe she hadn’t danced in a while. We both struggled to get the…
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Time to go ahead and get *talking about my HOOVES* and *making Center Stage references* out of the way
So… let’s talk about the class I took on Wednesday! This is the “beginner” class as opposed to “beginner/intermediate” but in reality, the two levels are pretty similar. I have to say I like the bit of extra hand-holding we get in the Wednesday class. I mean like the teacher calling out steps, giving heads ups as to which side/step/leg/arm is coming up next… just because it gives you the opportunity to work on technique instead of fatiguing your poor brain with remembering choreography after a long day of work. I’ve decided to make a conscious effort to work on my releves*. I’ve been trying really hard to get as…
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A brief history of temps
I was trying to figure out exactly how long I’ve ACTUALLY been dancing. How many cumulative years I guess? Hours of my life. I wish I had it documented somehow/somewhere, but all I have is my memory, and unfortunately I interspersed (COMBINED?) periods of intense dancing with periods of intense… how shall we put it… binge drinking. So. Yeah. Unreliable narrator over here. Unreliable curator of my own past. Whoops! FIRST (adult) BALLET CLASS: A wild guess that it was 1999? Earlier? Later? Ok. I was driving to like Pineville or some farflung suburban campus to take class once or twice a week, sort of regularly, for a year or…
