Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Ash Wednesday

Here I am back again, after taking a nice, serious ballet class on Tuesday with some dancers who were using the class as an audition. I, too, felt competitive and did my best. After working out at the gym, I looked in good shape and felt right at home with this group. I tried to really dance the steps and move, like my other teacher said, and the more I tried to use artistry, the better I used my technique as well. Another highlight of the day was a good yoga class, where I really tried to feel grounded. It's good to have good teachers like this who see your flaws and try to help you. Yasir is getting bigger and stronger, too, and we have been walking more and this weekend I plan to start him in a puppy class!
Whew, went to my favorite Pilates class with Swiss balls and weights, asking the teacher how to fix my shoulders because my back muscles are weak, and she said, yes, women usually have weak back muscles. Then to the pool workout, now back to puppy!

Well, after Pilates and pool workout, you would think I would look super in class, but I'm still no match against the younger girls who have been dancing from birth.  While I struggle to point my toes, watching them do it so effortlessly and naturally puts me to shame.  However, though I was never physically a beauty, I still shape my movements better, which is why I am frustrated because if I could get a better technique, I could really do what I feel.  So, off to class I go.  As the teacher told a new student, come back tomorrow, and the next day and if you come every day, you will learn to dance!  This teacher is such a dancer, and I feel how dancers exist to dance and they dance to express themselves, like other people talk to each other, and so on...but it is all such fun.

Class
Barre:
1. Stretches away from the barre, pull away barre, bend down, rise; pull away from barre, stretching back.
2. Plies with fondu flex foot.
3. Tendus with plie a la seconde to passe balance.
4. Degages en croix, pushing toes into 5th position.  Teacher said you are doing this, clop, clop, I could do this all day but you are not using your muscles...
5. Ronde jambes with battement passe arabesque, whereupon teacher said she would leave class if combinations were not done right.  She told us a story about her days in class where the teacher would take a student by the hair and push her across the floor in anger for doing a step wrong...
6. Frappes en croix with pas de cheval beats.
7. Fondus with developpes and port de bras.
8. Grand battements, swinging leg through 1st position.
Center:
1. Tendu passe pirouette combination.
2. Balance combination with pirouettes en dedans.  I noticed how it was hard for me to do these because I could not plie out of the turn, partly because of faulty alignment and "sticking out."
3. Changements with echappes beat trois.
4. Pique turns with soutenus.  The teacher said, you girls who can't turn, pique passe in diagonal to me...

Then I went home and took out Yasir but even after our walk around the block in the misty rain, he is still hyper and carrying on.  I hope the neighbors don't complain...he is just getting to be a bundle of energy.  Another thing, the management frowns on me when I carry him in the passenger elevators, yet everyone else does the same thing with no slack.  I guess I am just too sensitive.  It is really nice to come home to puppy, though, even with all his faults.  I am too perfectionist, too!

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