Minor Improvements That Must be Fought For

Sometimes breakthroughs are exceptional. A moment of clarity and suddenly you are doing something you've never dreamed of.
But, let's face it, mostly you get tiny imperceptible improvements over the course of three solid months of work and the final product can really only justifiably be called "less bad than it was".
Take this petite allegro combination that the students have all come to dread. It's not even complicated, it's just glissades, jetés, and assemblés. But it's quick and it changes directions halfway through and pretty much everyone hates it. Last night, for the first time since we've been working on it (ages! Ages have been put in to this damn thing!) I watched myself in the mirror and felt like it wasn't pitiably terrible, just kind of a wreck. There was, perhaps, a slight bounce in my proverbial bungee. PERHAPS.

Also new: apparently the studio where I take ballet has been voted "best yoga studio" in the city. Which is interesting, I must say, because they don't actually offer any yoga classes. We all think they should accept the award and put it on the front desk just to mess with people.

All The Grace of a Cantaloupe (Not Antelope)

I am the clumsiest and least physically graceful person on the planet. How clumsy am I? Clumsy enough that my husband worries about and teases me for my clumsiness. He has an autistic spectrum disorder. Like, he was in special clumsy kid classes in elementary school. No, really. We joke that it's a miracle we haven't killed each other yet, and that it's only a matter of time before one of us accidentally stabs the other while cooking and goes to jail.
Ugh.
I mention my utter lack of grace to illustrate the fact that I am sort of frustrated with class these days. And my teacher is straight-up frustrated with me, as well. Last night she made me re-do tombé pas de bourrées across the floor about four times in each direction. She has been giving me special instructions when we are preparing for a combination "if you want to, RPrin, you can just do one piqué turn." while everyone else is supposed to do two. Standing directly in front of me during petite allegro and obviously getting flustered with my inability to make it look effortless. The problem is that I can do the steps, I just can't do them quickly. It doesn't help if I only do one piqué turn, you see, because by the time I am done with the preceeding waltz turn I am already half a beat late.
Just... just argh.
She often wonders at my strength en pointe and my weakness on flat, but it's not strength that I have trouble with. It's speed. When I speed things up it just becomes a mess, more akin to badly executed tap dancing than classical ballet.
Sigh... anyway. So it's all been rather disheartening lately and my motivation levels haven't been at their peak. The fact that I just smashed my head against the corner of a bookshelf is not helping.

Master Class

My regular Tuesday class was replaced this week by a master class taught by a former NYCB dancer. I tossed the idea around all weekend before finally deciding to go for it and attend the master class. It was ... quite a thing.
Barre went well enough. We had something like 22 students in attendance, so there were a lot of people smushed in to nooks and crannies. With four portable barres of various sizes all set up at once I mostly spent the latter half of barre trying not to smack or be smacked by my regular teacher, who was taking class along with us (and showing us up, mostly. It was adorable, though, she was having a really great time and was so very excited) and the person standing behind her. Center was... well. It was. Mostly it was an exercise in futility. I did a lot of flailing around and very little to impress anyone. We weren't going for any new steps, really, but my old enemy (speed) was working against me in full force.
At the end of it all I was quite ready to be done, honestly. Not that I didn't learn some things. I definitely have some new food for thought. For example: petite allegro (never my strong suit, but improving slowly) should focus on pushing down in to the floor rather than bouncing up. I hadn't thought of that before, so as soon as I have an opportunity to actually think about ANYTHING while attempting petite allegro I will try to keep it in mind.
Will I be taking master class again next Tuesday? The jury is out on that one, check back after I've recovered my pride a little bit.
When I got home I googled our instructor for the evening. Here he is in all his professional glory:

Intimidated? ONLY IN RETROSPECT.

Popped Ballon

Right now petite allegro and I are not getting along. Okay. No. I should say "Petite allegro is killing me."
It is sucking the very soul from my tiny, withered husk.
I see my little improvements in other things. I can do double frappes, now. I have mostly figured out the front, back, side, front (whatever the hell that is called) pattern for barre work. I try to keep my spirits up with this stuff. But petite allegro. Man. It's so defeating.
Don't get me wrong, I'm fine with the component parts. I can do glissades and assemblés (patooie!). Pas de chats and jetés. But... at the kind of tempo I am being asked for I can basically just trip over myself repeatedly. I just sort of flail around randomly and try not to run in to anyone until the music is over and I get to stop. Apparently we are supposed to be aiming for "ballon" which is basically a fancy French way of saying "you don't hit the ground like an elephant" but right now I can't even get myself OFF the ground in the first place. I kind of look like I'm doing a very confused tap dance for a minute or two. A little soft shoe routine.
Ra-ta-ta-ta-TA!

Shins: an Update

I think that what my shin splints really needed was for me to take a week off from class. Probably two or three weeks, really, but fuck if I'm doing that unless I have to, right? In any case I felt good enough tonight to do petite allegro (you know, not well or anything, but I certainly won't blame that on shin splints) AND sauté  arabesques. I skipped changements, though. I figure if I am only recovered enough to do half of the stuff, then it's going to be the stuff that doesn't suck.
We also started a new thing: pas de basque. Which is a silly little rock side to side and is a lot of fun. I think character roles are probably way more fun than classical roles. I know, I know. The mere thought is some sort of heresy. But you know? I just like to dance. It doesn't really matter what type of dancing it is. I had a great time when I used to take belly dance lessons. When we were young and hip enough to know all the bands and go out to clubs every weekend I thought drunken swirling around was pretty fun. Heck, I even enjoyed the dreaded square dancing in elementary school.
*shrug*

Oh, and I know I've been having some sort of ballet-related dreams lately, but I get all distracted by other stuff and forget all about it. You know, stuff like... being on a space station and flying rapidly toward the window, knowing that I'm going to break through it and implode in a vacuum. Or being at some symposium on historical reenactment and idly fooling around with the claymore (the sword not the land mine. ALTHOUGH...) of the audience member sitting in front of me and then realizing it's my ex boyfriend. Yeah. Like that doesn't mean anything...