How can they see with SEQUINS in their eyes?

For the past several weeks we've been doing this horrific dégagé combination at the barre. It involves counting and it's ridiculous and no one ever gets it right. Well, last night I freakin' NAILED that son of a bitch. That is right, STONE COLD NAILED IT. Well, on the first side, anyway. The left side will get there in it's own sweet time. Which isn't to say the rest of class went beautifully, but you have to seize your triumphs when they present themselves.

Last night I actually saw my teacher wearing pointe shoes! It was pretty astounding. Usually you won't catch ballet teachers within a mile of a pointe shoe, regardless of the class they are teaching. In fact, I could have sworn I once heard her say she wouldn't be caught dead in them (I believe the exact words were "wild horses could not drag me back in to pointe shoes") but there she was! Also: girlfriend straight up uses scotch tape on her toes. That ranks up there with folded up cheap paper towels, which I have also seen.
While she and the pointe students (I am the only person on flat in that class, now. Don't I just feel special) were all sitting on the lobby floor putting on their shoes I was standing alertly in the corner, absorbing their ribbon-tying instructions on the not-even-at-all sly. She looked at me and said "aw, RPrin. Do you feel left out?" and I was like "naw, naw. It's all good. I am learning from you guys" and she mentioned that she did not want to put me en pointe while I am still working at the theater (the season ends next month, and I go back to maybe-sorta earning a living from home for the next nine months) because it would be "a recipe for disaster". I wonder, do I really seem that harried and out of it right now? I mean, I AM harried and out of it, because I have to tube feed a cat at 6am and midnight every day. But STILL. I like to think I present an image of having my shit together.
It makes me think of one of my favorite songs (which, holy crap, we are staging at work this Summer. I am pretty excited.) I try to live the dream, man:

Obviously I am not doing such a great job of it.

Shut Up and Dance

Sometimes, invariably at the barre, the teacher will show a combination and it all looks simple enough. UNTIL. Until someone has a question about it, and the answer confuses someone else, and the explanation of the answer confuses the first person again plus four or five other people. And the teacher says "okay, enough! Let's just do it and see what happens!" and someone who is More Serious Than You argues that without understanding the proper choreography the entire thing is wasted... and by the time we actually get around to attempting the silly thing no one has any idea what is going on. EVEN THE TEACHER. And now everyone at the barre is doing something different and all you can hope for is a quick transition to the next exercise. Because DAMN.

Also: PMS

Maybe Tuesday Will Be My Good News Day

For the last few weeks we've been using a song during barre work that is excruciatingly familiar. You know the kind, the kind that you KNOW you know, but it hovers right off the edge of your memory like a word you can only remember the first letter of. Compounding the problem is that ballet class music is usually tailored specifically for barre or center work, going so far as to shorten or rework songs to fit specific exercises (I honestly couldn't tell you which exercise we've been using it for, in much the same way that I honestly cannot tell you what type of plug the bathtub in my last apartment has, even though I used it less than a week ago). The tempo was changed quite a bit, and that can make a song sound like something entirely different (not having any lyrics made it tricky, too).
I know that my teacher uses a lot of songs from musicals when she's in the mood for it (she choreographs musicals for a local student theater) so I was searching my mind's vast catalog of show tunes (I, admittedly, also work at a musical theater. I can tell you two things about it: 1- through-composed musicals are proof of an evil entity at work in the world, and 2- there are a LOT of sex jokes in old musicals.) and coming up trumps.
Tonight, finally, she mentioned the name of the song: "The Man I Love" by Gershwin. AH HA! I knew it was something I recognized! Not from musicals, though. No, I recognize it from my collection of Billie Holiday tunes (I freakin' LOVE Lady Day) that played near-constantly during a certain period in my life. I have always been rather fond of the sincere simplicity of the lyrics in songs of the era. Simplicity you couldn't (or shouldn't, more like) get away with now for fear of sounding trite and precious, cliché and condescending. Can you tell I don't listen to a lot of popular music these days?

Now that I know what song it is I can totally sing you the entire thing by heart. Here is the version I am familiar with. The barre version is an up-tempo piano number, naturally.

Two Posts in One

I have been stuck using the portable barres at the studio, lately (which is a story that involves me being annoyed with someone else for not understanding ballet etiquette, and this story is SO bitchy that I am refraining from telling it) which is irksome because a) sometimes there isn't quite enough space on them so you get stuck hanging over the end or trying not to grab on to the hand of the person on the opposite side, b) sometimes they get set up sort of wonky so that they aren't at a 90* angle to the mirror (or the seams in the floor) so I spend the entire time feeling off-center, and c) they are metal so I create a loud CLANG! every time my left hand touches the barre. Either I am just super-conscious of my own clanging or no one else is having this problem. This is grown-up class! Where are your wedding rings? I am not dissing anyone who takes theirs off, it's just that I am lazy and forgetful and so I basically never remove mine. In the bath tub, doing dishes, digging around in the garden, changing the oil in my scooter, baking bread... whatever. There are reasons I do not wear fancy diamond things with bits all sticking out.
ANYWAY.

 Cemeteries are one of my great passions (I have a lot of great passions, okay?) and in the world of Pinterest I recently discovered this photograph:

Which claims to be the grave of Marie Taglioni in the Montmartre cemetery. And I thought : "OOOH AWESOME!" It's kind of gross but also very beautiful. It's become a sort of shrine for dancers, the pile of decomposing shoes an offering to the memory of the first famous modern ballet dancer. Definitely something to see someday, a pilgrimage site for the future.
But, I was intrigued enough to do some research online and discovered that there is some confusion about this particular grave site. It actually isn't Marie Taglioni's grave, but the grave of her mother (who was a dancer, though not the kind of celebrity her daughter became). So... all those shoes are in the wrong cemetery. In fact, Marie Taglioni's actual grave is in the Père-Lachaise cemetery (where all sorts of other famous dead people reside). Here is an article but it's all in French. My own French is pretty rusty but I can work out the general gist of it.
This is what Marie Taglioni's actual grave looks like:

Much less dramatic but at least there are some shoes up there! If I ever visit France I would definitely make this a destination and add a shoe to the site.
The downside to living in the western US is that our history goes back about 150-200 years and then drops straight off. We have some really interesting cemetery history, but it's nothing like the incredible history of Europe's cemeteries.