Ballet Class

Ballet group at West School, courtesy of Flickr Commons

I just got back from ballet class a little bit ago. This year I hope to go 2x a week, and I think I'll see a lot of improvement, especially once I feel like I know things well enough to practice them at home. Right now I still feel pretty awkward in class, but some things are starting to come more easily. Having a nice teacher and friendly classmates definitely helps, and these past several years of bellydance classes have taught me how to be good at accepting corrections.

Now it's time to get back to getting the guest room ready. I'd rather be dancing! 

More Ballet!

Alison Lee, [stage name Helene Lineva and star of the Original Ballet Russe, 1939-1940, posing in the studio and dancing on the roof of Dupain studio] photographed by Max Dupain.

It's hard to believe, but I've actually been taking ballet classes for 4 weeks now. I go once or twice a week depending on how brave and motivated I'm feeling. And sometimes... I actually have fun! I'm still struggling with a lot of the material and I'm sure I will for a long time, but slowly I'm becoming more comfortable. It helps that the teachers at BreakOut are really nice and encouraging.

One reason why I'm taking ballet, even though I'm currently bad at it, is that when I get things right, I feel beautiful. I have long legs and arms, which sometimes makes me feel awkward in bellydance class (I always pull my arms in when I turn, for fear of hitting somebody), like I'm taking up too much space. But when I relax and allow myself to take all the room I need, and when I can do a full extension and just reach with my arms and legs, I feel lean and elegant. Ballet class is helping me develop proper form, strength, and flexibility to add those moments to my belly dance. 

Cross-training: Ballet

I needed a ballet picture for this post so I went to The Commons on Flickr and found this. Wow!

Valentina Blinova in L'Oiseau de feu [The Firebird], Ballets Russes, Sydney, 1936-1937 / Max Dupain

 

I went to my first ever ballet class yesterday. I've been meaning to go for months and months. It's something that my teacher Jolie has been encouraging me to do to improve my belly dance. But as I've confessed before on this blog, I am very nervous about doing new things. So every week I'd say "I should go to Beginner Adult Ballet on Thursday" and when Thursday rolled around, I'd make an excuse not to... too tired, not feeling well, want to laze around the house with my husband because he's had a stressful week at work. Well, now there's Beginner/Intermediate Ballet on Mondays, so I made myself go. I found out about it yesterday, so I had no time to make excuses.

 

Being in ballet class was totally different from being in bellydance class. Most of the class was spent doing exercises at the barre. The teacher Christy would explain what we were going to do and then watch us do it, rather than leading, which meant I spent a lot of time putting my ITS peripheral vision to use to "follow" the students who seemed to know what the heck they were doing. On the other hand, since Christy wasn't leading, she was walking around the room giving corrections, and she was very nice and encouraging about it.

 

I probably should have gone to a straight-up beginner class rather than a beg/int one, because there seemed to be a definite expectation that the students already knew basic ballet terms and had some familiarity with what they were supposed to be doing. This meant that some things that we already do in bellydance class made sense to me, and others I just kind of stumbled along and hoped no one was looking at me. There was also a bit of material that is pretty difficult for a newbie, such as pirouettes (which we do sometimes in bellydance but I still suck at) and some fast jumping.

 

That said, since Monday at 4:30 is a pretty convenient time for me to go to class, and since I like a challenge, I think I might keep throwing myself into the deep end. Besides, we did exercises to Star Wars music, so my inner nerd was pleased even while my inner dance critic was crying "we're so BAD AT THIS!!!"

 

By the way, speaking of my inner dance critic, I have a message for it: Of course we're bad at ballet. We're new to it. We were bad at ITS when we started, and we were bad at Tribal Fusion when we started. Everything has a learning curve, so just shut up and be patient.

EDIT: I have no idea what Blogger has done to this post. What a mess.

Dance Hard!

Whew. What a night. We did leaps and turns and extensions. Since we were doing leaps we had to do a major warm-up, which included stretching and splits. I have the worse splits of anyone in class. When I have to do splits, I just hate my body. But then Jolie said "Ok, run 5 times around the room as fast as you can" and you know what? I owned that. I outran everyone and I was ready to keep going. I guess I could have ran faster than I did.

My turns are also getting a lot better, which is a nice feeling. It's really good to feel like I am making progress on things that have been difficult for me for a long time.

Good Bye, Studio A

Well, tonight was our last night of class in Studio A at the 4th Avenue location of BreakOut Studios. When classes return for the new year we will be in the new studio. It's bigger. It's warmer. It has better speakers. It doesn't have that really weird mirror where there's a strange raised part off the wall.

There are a couple of things I will miss about the current studio. I will miss having a convenient place to park on 4th Ave. I will miss being able to walk to all the great restaurants, cafes, bars and shops after class. I will miss the "Secret Dance Garden" behind Studio A, and showing up 20 minutes early for class to hang out with my troupemates on a nice Summer night.

But in general I am REALLY excited about the move!

A lot of people showed up tonight, maybe because it wasn't as painfully cold as it was last night. It was good to see some familiar faces who hadn't been around in a while, and to have a big group. It was a nice send-off for the room that has been our (sometimes awesome, sometimes awful) home for over a year.

The weekend is too short

How is it already 11:30 on Sunday night? This weekend flew by.

I didn't end up performing at the Circus Farm fundraiser after all. The weather was far too icky to drive all the way up to Mesa and dance outdoors at night. Instead I ended up going to a holiday party, which was nice. Sometimes I get so wrapped up in dance (and this time of year, my jewelry business) and I just don't make enough time to socialize with my friends.

Today I went to dance class in the too-cold studio. Two more nights of cold classes and then I am FREE! The studio is closing for 2 weeks starting on the 21st and moving to an exciting new venue with more room and best of all, HEAT! Oh, I can't wait to no longer shiver my way through dance classes. I hope that the nicer, bigger studio also results in more new faces in class, and maybe in the troupe, too.

Then I went jogging, and it was also too cold, but you do what you gotta do. I did pretty well, until we stopped jogging and suddenly my calves decided to entirely cramp up. But that's sadly pretty normal. Maybe if I didn't subsist off of tea all winter long I would be less prone to calf cramps, but water is cold and tea is not. I guess I could drink plain hot water but that would be awful.

What a weekend!

I've had quite the busy weekend. On Saturday I went to the Tucson Belly Dance/Tucson Tribal Collective student recital to see my friends from those two groups dance, and my friend Martha from Phoenix met me there. The recital was held at the Cushing Street Bar and Restaurant which was a GREAT choice! The food was really good, and the outdoor courtyard was beautiful (and it was sunny and 80 degrees, so a perfect day to be outside). It was great to see what all of the students was working on, and there was a nice variety of performances. The show was just the right length, and I really appreciate that it was held at lunch time, so that Martha and I could hit 4th Ave to kill the rest of the afternoon, and then I could attend the art show that my troupemate Liora was in that evening!

Today I got back into the swing of things by attending drills and ITS and going for a jog this evening with some friends and my corgis. I felt good in class, happy with my current progress. I was worried that with how little I've been practicing lately, I would have lost a lot, but really, it's only been a few weeks. Jogging went pretty well, too, and now my dogs are nicely tired out and lazing around the house instead of chasing the cats.

And on top of all of that, I have TWO more gigs coming up! I'll be part of a group piece at BreakOut Studios as part of their Street Fair show on Saturday, and on Thursday I will be dancing at the VERY FIRST SKY BAR OPEN STAGE!!!! Woohoo! I am super excited because not only have I really been missing open stages, but Sky Bar is the perfect venue! I think people will be a lot more enthusiastic about coming out to see the dancers if they don't have to plan their dinner around it. Besides, it's such a pain to eat dinner while watching a show! Much better to kick back with a drink, and more affordable, too.

So far it's looking like December is going to be pretty awesome!

A good time

I've really been enjoying classes again lately. There was a while, when I was frustrated by a lack of progress, where it felt like every class threw some stumbling block in my path and had me doubting myself. But now that I've managed to make some headway with things like chaine turns and some of our more difficult troupe choreographies, I'm feeling a lot more relaxed in class. I still struggle with things, but I don't let it get me down. After all, this isn't like a college class where I'm being graded and I have to worry about passing or failing. What is important is that I am there, I try my best, and I work on keeping a positive attitude.

Home practice, however, is a bit more of a struggle. Drilling things at home alone is boring! I mean, drilling in class is often boring, too, but at least I get corrections when I'm doing something wrong, and I get to see my friends before and after class. At home it's just me and Daisy, who just sits on the couch and looks sad that I am dancing instead of rubbing her belly. She's not a very good coach. I am having fun working on some new solos, and I am practicing troupe choreos because we're coming into the busy performance season, but drilling basic skills is such a slog!

Uhm, ow

So today I ran into the first obstacle to my daily hour of practice. I had to take my car in for service and it was expected to be done between 3 and 4! Shoot! That's my dance time! Not to be daunted, I moved my dance time from 1-2 and rushed through my housework before hand. I had a good hour of practice including nearly 10 minutes of chaine turns, and a few minutes of shimmies while petting Daisy the corgi, because she was scared of the thunderstorm.

Then I went to class and had the most physically difficult class ever -- nearly an hour of levels. Oh, my poor quads. By the end, my legs were shaking uncontrollably. And I still had another hour-long class to get through! I'm afraid of the pain tomorrow will bring. But I also feel good, because I love being able to rise to a physical challenge like that, and I did some things that I thought I wouldn't be able to.

Working through it

Tonight I was feeling heavy-hearted and a little nauseated, but I went to class and practice anyway because I've missed too many lately. I started to feel better as soon as I got there, which I attribute to the healing power of awesome troupemates. There's such great energy in that group, everyone just seems to generally like each other and to love what we do.

And luckily, tonight was not too demanding. We revisited the choreography that Jolie did in Saturday's class, which I really like and did pretty well at. Then we went over some videos to see what we needed to work on, and did a moving meditation. It was good to just dance, without stressing over choreography.

Now to just get back into practicing at home! Today was all about my jewelry business (ok, and playing video games on my husband's lunch break), but tomorrow I should be able to tackle some chaines and work on some solos and maybe even do some prop work.

Still kicking

I have really fallen off of the blogging wagon. Between my recent house-sitting adventures, my hatred of Blogger's new design, and the total lack of interaction from my readers (yeah, I said it!), I have not really felt a lot of enthusiasm for blogging lately. Don't worry, it's not just you guys, my jewelry blog hasn't been updated in over 3 weeks.

Anyway, I'm still keeping a really busy class and troupe practice schedule. I actually had to skip the second class tonight because I was just too worn out. Hopefully I'll sleep well tonight, because I really need to practice for my two upcoming shows. I've barely worked on my solo for the Open Stage on Thurs. Of course, I also haven't received confirmation that I have a spot in the show, so there's that.

In the meantime, I'm daydreaming about future solos, new costumes, and going to Tribal Fest next year. I have $40 in my Tribal Fest fund, hooray!

National Belly Dance Day!

Today was National Belly Dance Day! I had some free time this afternoon, so I decided to make a treasury of some beautiful dancey-dance Etsy items.

Because it's a Saturday, I also went to the Community Class! It was just three of us from Fire & Gold, so Jolie turned it into an extra troupe practice. We finished our third choreo (and good thing too, since we have to perform it a week from tomorrow), so when the normal practice rolls around on Monday, it will be all figured out and the rest of the troupe can learn it and we can drill the heck out of it and be awesome. I actually feel more comfortable with this piece than with the second one, even though it's been done for longer. This last piece uses a lot of ITS-style moves, so the vocabulary is really familiar to me. There's not as many small accents to keep track of. Plus it's a fun song and a saucy choreo.

I'm really excited for our show next weekend, but also a little nervous. I have to admit I am not really loving my glow fan solo. I am kind of tired of my fans. I actually have a small scar on my inner elbow from where I hit myself with one while demoing for the rest of the troupe. I think I might have to wear sleeves when I perform.

Floor work

There were only a couple of us in Fonda's class tonight and we decided we wanted to start doing floorwork, so she taught us some exercises and ways to get to and from the floor, so we can practice in preparation for learning more in the future. I expect to have sore quads and calves tomorrow!

Now I need to muster up the energy and enthusiasm to do my homework.

The adjustment period

The worst part of tackling some new physical challenge is waiting for my body to adjust to it. When I started taking Jolie's classes last year, my body rebelled. "What?" said my muscles, "We have to do push-ups and stuff? I thought we gave all that up when we quit CrossFit!" After a bit I got used to it, and then I got better at it, and then I turned into the annoying person who wants to do the hard push-ups because she wants sexier arms.

So now I've got this new practice regimen. I'm doing it 6 days a week regardless of what classes or practices I already have, and it's going to be a good 30-60 minutes per day (including the time I spend on choreos and solos and such). Maybe I should not have started it on a Monday. Maybe I should have waited until Thursday, when I don't have any classes.

Today started out fine. I did my practice, I felt pretty good about it because even though doing basics is booooring, I'm staying focused and correcting my errors as they happen. For instance, for a while I've been getting some pain in my feet and ankles when standing in one position to drill. I realized that it's because even if I start out with my weight evenly distributed, I start to pitch forward into my toes and that puts an unnatural strain on my ankle. So now when I catch myself doing that, I can reset into a more even stance and drill comfortably.

Then I went to class and my body was not happy with me. All those hours of dance yesterday, and a bunch of dance during the day, and I expected it to do more dance and exercise tonight? There were moments where I felt so exhausted that I almost cried, but I powered through and waited for the endorphins to kick in.

Soon enough this will all be part of the past, but it's going to be annoying until I get through it.

Making it official

I came to some big decisions last week. One of them was to take a hiatus from the Tucson Tribal Belly Dance Collective. I've been so busy trying to learn the Fire & Gold choreos, and master my glow fans that I had not been practicing my ITS moves or working on the TTBDC set. I still love ITS but I'm finding that it's not really my focus right now. I'd rather do it casually, and break it out at parties with friends, than actually perform it in a troupe setting. Maybe I'll feel differently later, but for now my interests lie elsewhere.

And where is elsewhere? Other than F&G (which I'm really loving), I've decided that what I really want is to be a professional tribal fusion soloist. Dancing with a troupe is fun, but being a soloist gives me total creative control to express myself artistically, dance to the songs I love, and go crazy with costuming. As for being professional, well, if I'm going to do this, I might as well do it at the highest level possible.

So to make it official, I e-mailed Jolie last week and told her that was my goal, and I wanted to have a private lesson to evaluate where I was at and set me up with a good strict practice regimen (I'm pretty sure I blogged before about being baffled by how to structure my practice). Now I have a crazy amount of homework to do, focusing on drilling the hell out of my basics to undo some of the bad habits I've developed.

To give you an idea of what my days will be like now that I'm on this path, here's what today was like:

-Get up, get dressed, eat breakfast, check internet things.

-Private lesson with Jolie, set up practice schedule.

-Come home, get together some beadwork, deliver to Kate's house so it can be photographed for her upcoming book. Something not-dance related!

-Come home again, do chores because they ain't gonna do themselves.

-Decide I want to go ahead and start my practice regimen today. Get into a fight with iPod while trying to set up practice playlists. It thinks that one of the troupe songs is 32 minutes. It is not.

-Go to early dinner with husband, because I skipped lunch and I am staaaaaaarving.

-Go buy groceries.

-Come home for the third time today. Finish setting up play lists, spend about half an hour doing homework. No time to practice choreos or solos before class.

-Drive over to BreakOut Studios, coordinate with a troupemate who is placing an order of tribal jewelry for the troupe. Woohoo!

-One hour of Choreo class. Fun Mira Betz/Gypsy-influenced piece where we got to channel our inner machisma. I enjoyed the hell out of it and want to find a song that makes me feel that way for a solo.

-Over an hour of troupe practice because hey, less than 2 weeks til our big show!

-Come for the fourth and final time. Realize that I still have to update my blog and stretch. Devour all food in the house like a locust.

NEW MOVES!

We learned new moves in Fonda's class tonight. Hooray, new moves! Brand new moves that I've never learned before, not variations of moves that I already knew from Anaya. I'm excited!

Also, we did some practice with zills. I'd left mine at home, so Fonda loaned me a pair of gigantor Afghani zills. Those were FUN to play! Big and loud. I can see why some people really like them. If the Collective starts doing more zill stuff I might have to consider an upgrade from my current set, since I really don't like their sound.

Suffering for my art

I beat my arms up with my glow fans today! There's these plastic bolts that hold the glow part in and they always scratch my arms up! Today I gave myself a really nasty scratch on my inner elbow, which is annoying because now I have a bandage in my elbow. Oh, how we suffer for our art. I need to decide on the best solution for covering the bolts so I don't destroy myself.

Fonda's classes started back up tonight after a couple of weeks off. We had some review to prepare us for next week, when we'll start learning NEW MOVES! I can't wait. It's been forever since I learned a new ATS/ITS move.

In other news, Blogger changed my blogging interface and I hate it. I do not like change.

Layers are haaaaaard

Geez, what a night. It's amazing how one week off can totally throw you off your game. I felt like a total klutz today, stumbling my way through layers. Eventually my legs just gave up and said "You know what? We are not going to shimmy anymore. You're on your own with this one." Class was challenging physically and emotionally, that's for sure. It's so hard sometimes to force myself to do something that I'm doing poorly at.

More practice is definitely the answer. I've been so caught up in working on specific performances that I have not been putting enough time into my general skills. I'm getting a little sloppy from the lack of drilling.

Halfsies

Even dedicated, committed people need a little break sometimes. I was feeling really cruddy and run-down today. I almost skipped class altogether, but I really should save that for when I'm genuinely sick or out of town, so I decided to compromise and only take one of the two classes tonight. And it was a good class, jam-packed with dancers, a pleasant temperature in the studio, and we got to do some arm drills, hip work, and traveling across the floor.

Maybe after a cookie and some tea I'll even feel well enough for a little extra practice!

Class and Practice

My tattoo is healing nicely, so it's not slowing down my dancing. Hooray! Today I went to Jolie's community class, where we did a modified version of Monday's choreography, and lots of shimmies. I worked up a nice sweat!

This evening, I worked on the F&G choreo (getting better every day!) and the solos I'm going to present on Monday to possibly be used in our big show on May 20th. I have two pieces I'm working on, for a total of just under 7.5 minutes, with the idea that I can do either one, both, or neither depending on what we need.

I also made time for some stretching, because muscles need love, too!