The Hardest Thing

Last night's 2.5 hour block of class was taught by a substitute instructor. She's a nice gal, one that often attends those classes herself, but is obviously a ballerina extraordinaire. Like, seriously ass-rockin'ly good. Does those one-footed relevés en pointe without so much as a twitch of difficulty while I laboriously haul myself up there using 10% muscle power and 90% barre. That sort of thing.
It's okay to have subs, but they do throw off your groove. You learn to expect a certain type of combination with a certain type of port de bras to a certain type of music and then BAM! Suddenly you are trying to figure out what the hell is going on and you haven't even made it past tendus at the barre, yet. And you spend the next hour+ sort of shaking your head and guessing and/or flailing around hoping you hit a ballet position of some sort by blind luck.
Anyway.
When we would universally botch the hell out of an entire combination this teacher would give us another shot at it (or torture us by making us repeat something we obviously can't figure out? You be the judge.) which meant we ended up doing quite a few things over and over again. After watching us glide gracelessly across the floor for the requisite bourées en pointe she stopped us with a question. "So. Who here loves doing bourées?" and everyone just sort of stood there, listening to the crickets chirp (honestly, I enjoy them more than most things en pointe, but after two hours of class there are few things in the world that I like). SO! "Okay, you are doing them again. AND I want to see those happy faces and softened arms. You're performing, guys! You can do this! Smile!"
I suppose we smiled. Or perhaps we just grimaced in a convincing approximation. 
I think smiling is probably the hardest thing about ballet.

Hey, guess who's competent?

That's right! Me! Tonight my teacher was all "hey, Rheumatic Princess, why didn't you sign up for the recital?" And I was like "dude I am shy" and she said aww, that was too bad because I was totally competent.
THAT'S RIGHT, I AM MOTHER F*CKING COMPETENT!
WOO!
In related news I have been able to go in for extra classes on a fairly regular basis lately and I am feeling a lot more confident in the "harder" class. In truth, due to the way the classes are set up to "graduate" students in to the more advanced classes as they reach a level of (dare I say it?) competence, I think that it is quite possible that they are just doing less advanced stuff now. But, anyway, I will TAKE IT. Don't look a gift horse in the mouth, girl.
Anyway, we are still learning new and interesting stuff! It's always exciting when something new comes up. Tonight we were doing combinations of bourées with a graceful turn and some fancy swooshing port de bras, and it was darn near dancing, though obviously painfully slow. We hadn't done bourée before, and it's one of those things that the internet assures you will feel like flying across the stage someday when you are wearing slippery satin shoes. What it fails to mention is that OW that is some serious calf exercise. It was stupidly fun and exciting, though, and so I will probably be bourée-ing across my kitchen floor in fuzzy socks for the next few days.
ALSO, are you a person who likes to know where our silly dance terms come from? I am. So that is what the internet is for. And a bourrée, an actual bourée, is a French folk dance. Here are some people rockin' it. I am sure I have witnessed this at a rennaisance faire or something of the sort (yes, yes, I do that, too. It's all about making up excuses to wear pretty dresses) and it has very little to do with bourrée and pas de bourrée as we do them in ballet, but I guess it all had to come from somewhere, right?:

It looks fun! I might go so far as to say "hella" fun. 

That's right, I just said "hella" like it ain't no thang!

Bam!