Semaine 18

Monday night's class was the most. fun. class. ever!! We had really fun and great barre exercises, a center pirouette exercise along with developpé-pas de bourre tournet exercises, and best of all, we had a ballet dance off at the end of class! It was like a dance off-relay-type thing. The whole class divided into four groups of 6-8 people (yes, class was huge tonight), and each group went to the each corner of the studio. At the start of the music, one person from each group would move in a huge circle doing souté arabesques around and around and around. When that person came back, we traded off with the next person in the group, sort of to see which group finished first. Lots of cheering and clapping, it was just a lot of fun! No video footage. Kelly wasn't at class, plus it's really inappropriate-slash-frowned upon to whip out the iPhone in the middle of class -- which is why all of my videos are post-class. The other centrework exercise we did was

I've been wearing my pointe shoes around the house to break them in, and I'm getting a lot more comfortable standing en pointe and tournet.

They're starting to look a little worn, so they are extra beautiful now :) I'll have to admit, most of the worn-look on my pointes has come from the photo shoot and walking outside in them, hehe... they are pretty nonetheless...

Thursday Night's class was pretty standard, there were only 5 people in attendance so it was a pretty intimate group of adults. I guess Constance Walsh takes the cake for the popularity contest in terms of ballet instruction for adults, since her class was PACKED with people this week.

Anyway, tonight we had some pretty mild run-of-the-mill barre work, but a couple tricky barre exercises that included a developpé/reverse developpé, then degagé exercise that was a bit confusing, pretty fast but easy to catch on after the first round, and a fun temps lié-tendu-flexed foot exercise.

Centerwork consisted of 1/2 pirouette exercises and developpé/passé exercises that really made my thighs burn with long holds! The corner exercise was a super easy routine two-step then grand jeté jumps. It was pretty strange with only 5 of us, because there were very few distractions and quick turnaround for the next person in line! All around, a pretty good week for ballet. I kind of wish that last night's class was a little bit more of a challenge than it was though...

On a sad note, I think I'm catching a cold :(

New Terminology from Week 17 that I forgot:
Temps lié - where there is a transfer of weight from one leg to the next with a plié