I'm sitting in my bed in the dark with my glasses on, hair wet, and with my laptop open. I am having a Carrie Bradshaw moment here, and it's funny how that's never crossed my mind before. I guess it's because I'm usually sitting on the couch when writing my blog entry.
Anyhow, this week is a Monday/Thursday combo, and tonight I just finished up my first of two classes. So this will REALLY be a two-part blog entry! Irina isn't in town this week or next week (sad) but the substitute instructor is still a good temporary replacement. She was the same instructor from week 1 for Perez, when she was in Argentina (or was it Chile?). Ontop of that, Kelly (my "bunhead buddy" I'll call her) wasn't able to come. I wasn't too nervous about going to class alone this week, which to me, is a sign that I'm feeling a little more confident with my technique and skills to keep up with the rest of class!
Irina Wunder (aka, best teacher ever)
Anyway, tonight's class was pretty easy. Barre work was for the entire first hour (which is more than usual) and centrework for the last 20ish minutes. Barrework was lots of dégagé, battement, coupe envelope (pronounced "on-ve-lope-ay") and pirouette prep exercises, then barre stretches. Thinking back, it's hard to remember what took the whole hour! Centrework was really simple from my pointe (hehe) of view, which I guess means it was REALLY easy for everyone else! We did quarter, three-quarter, then full pirouette exercises and a soute arabesque combo with these running-leap things... oops, forgot to ask at the end of class what they were called. I guess I'll be asking my coworkers this week!
Oh something interesting - I met a girl in class named Joo. She's 22 years old and has been taking ballet with BalletNova for 1 year now, and before then, was only taking jazz (and at a different studio). She's taking BBFNB like me, and then also taking Advanced Beginning Ballet. She said Advanced Beginning is a pretty hard class, and she's one of the girls who totally keeps up with my class. I asked if she was going to take pointe soon, since she's in Advanced Beginning (the class you are required to take in conjunction with Intro to Pointe) and she said "OH NO!" and she said MAYBE in a year. She said that other girls ask the instructor (Constance) to see if they can begin pointe. So anyway, there's hope right? If she only started taking ballet 1 year ago and with the class I'm taking now, in a year I should be able to ask the instructor if I can progress to pointe. It'd probably help if by the Spring semester I can make it into Advanced Beginning. Hopefully my technique after the next semester (Sept 3-Feb 3) is up to par to advance. Supposedly you're required to take 2 classes per week with pointe (aka, Beginning Ballet for Non-Beginners, Advanced Beginning Ballet + Intro to Pointe). That's big bucks!
Last week I enrolled in Mondays at 6:15 PM with Walsh (BBFNB) and that itself was $329 for 5 months. If I enrolled in a SECOND class ontop of that (hypothetically if this was the POINTE semester), PLUS enrolled in Intro to Pointe, it would be an additional $329 (there's a small discount if you're enrolling in more than 1 class, but I'm not sure what that discount is), plus $100 for the pointe class. So that's $760! Yikes. =/ I guess I should try to work some overtime shifts at work and save up! At least I have time on my side... haha...
I'm getting ahead of myself... let's keep on practicing my turnout for Fifth Position and my simple single pirouette. As if that wasn't already hard enough!
Thursday Night Class:
Carmen "I get down to business" Perez
Tonight's class was pretty good, a little confusing. Carmen goes through her combinations quickly but the tricky part is that she makes one tweak in the middle of the combo and I forget which direction to resume the normal part of the combo! So she'll do an exercise en croix with four frappes to the front, four to the side, four to the back, then back to the side with single single double-double, then four to the front, four to the side single single double double, then four to the back. Then repeated while on relevé. The combo itself isn't complicated, I think it's just that my short term memory lacks and I just lose my place in the combo forgetting which way to start again.
Centrework was easy, we did some pas de chat-pas de bourré-changement exercises, pirouette exercises, and then cornerwork (across the floor) was this exercise that I so poorly will demonstrate:
I messed it all up at the end with the pas de chat, nervous because the advanced intermediate dancers are trickling into the room and here I am doing a simple routine haha... anyway, the end would've just had a pas de chat executed with the correct foot leading! I need to work on not looking so much like I'm in karate class and be more graceful =/ oops.
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