Semaine 24

I am a complete disappointment lately. I know I need to get back on the horse (er, barre...) but I have just been so lazy! The studio is a 30 minute drive from home which I guess, to me, is too far to feel motivated! I'll need to look into a closer studio!

Anyway, so I went to Carmen Perez's class on Thursday morning at 10 AM. Remember back when Carmen Perez was the instructor I took class from last summer? I was intimidated by her? Well this class was a pleasant surprise! It was great! The combinations felt foreign, of course, but that comes with the territory of going to a different instructor. Barre exercises have already left my mind (I didn't set it up to record) but what I did like about her Thursday class was stretching during the first 5 minutes of class, barre work, then stretching, then barre work, then center.

Our corner exercises were:

1) soute arabesque, soute arabesque (other side), soute arabesque, pas de chat, pas de chat.

2) waltz step to the right, to the left, waltz a tournant, pas de bourre to fifth, lunge to pirouette en dehors (outward turn), waltz right, waltz left, pas de bourre to fifth, tendu lunge, pirouette en dedans (inward)

The good thing I gained from LAST week's video at the barre was catching at how bad I was doing at keeping my head in its proper position. Being made aware of my traveling neck and head made me stay very aware about my head's position during class (even though I kept messing it up!). So I'll try to incorporate more barre into my videos.

With the Inauguration on Monday, January 21st, I think class was cancelled. I didn't end up going to class this week (this is horrible, I need to get the momentum back up for the Spring!

Then I'm off to VIVA LAS VEGAS for a week for Jeff's Microstrategy World Conference. Wohoo! I'm out of town the whole week of January 27th, so when I come back it'll be Winter/Spring session at the studios. I might consider taking from MFA, I'll have to see how I feel about MFA's classes.

No video this week, didn't have time between all my shifts and errands to run before the trip!

Semaine 23

Wow has it really been almost a month since my last class? Time has flown by like crazy! I knew it had been 2 weeks before Christmas, but seeing the last entry was 12/13/12, this is just unacceptable! :)

For Christmas, my super cool and awesome supportive husband got me a ballet barre!

My beautiful VitaVibe double-barre in our condo living room amongst our Christmas decor

I've yet to put it to use, but I'm considering taking it down to the basketball court for my next video, to show some of the barrework we do in class. Hope no one finds it extremely odd to be bringing this down the elevator! 

Monday night's class was Walsh's 6:15 pm BBFNB and it was busier than normal. Some of the advanced beginning students came to class, were probably bored out of their minds, but at any rate it was a good class. It felt great to be back!

Later on, I'm {seriously!!!} going to try and go to the Metropolitan Fine Arts Center in Springfield for classes. $15/class means $300 for 20 classes (cheaper than $329 per semester at BalletNova with 20 classes per semester). No registration means if I don't make it (like after the car accident and the holidays) I don't lose the $! 

Hope you like this week's video!

Of course there are MANY other exercises we did, but I honestly can't remember them! I'll have to find my little mini digital recorder from graduate school so I can stow it in my bag and record the audio at least (to jog my memory). 

New Terminology: 
Failli - (pronounced "fah-YEE") after a dancer lands on their front foot, the back foot slides through to the front.

Semaine 21

I think I'm going to approach my blogging every week a little differently than I have been this whole time. It's hard to reliably get videos taken after class (I know some of you have taken notice that there haven't been ANY videos since Semaine 18 and it wasn't even me in it), and because it's a little awkward when girls start filtering into the studio, I'm going to use the inspiration I've gained from watching the Jenna Marbles YouTube videos (as my friend Darren says, minus the cursing and dogs in the videos) and try to re-create interesting/challenging ballet exercises and edit my own videos (!!!!!) on my MacBook Air.

Now, since we don't have an appropriately-sized unused section of the condo OR spacious areas of non-carpeted flooring, I'm going to take my trusty little laptop down to our indoor basketball courts during "off hours" to minimize awkwardness that this whole idea would create, should some guys come in to shoot some hoops. I'm so so excited, because as I am writing this post, I'm literally teaching myself how to use iMovie =)

So Monday night's class was good. My ballet class friend Mark wasn't there and neither was Kelly! It felt a little lonely...

Exercises earlier tonight at the barre focused on a lot of staying on relevé to passé in hold, to get us ready for all the pirouetting we were going to be doing in center.

Anyway, some combinations I shall demonstrate:

I swear, when I recorded this, my feet were recorded for exercise A... and then when I clipped it down for editing it chopped off my feet! Ahh! I'll have to give myself that cushion for space later. Jeff tells me this is an "aspect ratio" issue... I am not a computer person, haha... 

 The music was also a looooot quieter when I edited the video but it exported a lot louder. 

Oh well, not bad for first video, right? 

a) {in center, fifth position right foot front} arms a la seconde, tendu front, tendu side, tendu back, sweep to front, close fifth. plié, pirouette, close back. Repeat other foot.

b) {in center, preparacion right foot back} balancé right, balancé left, tombé-pas de bourré, chassé, plié, pirouette. I know my head isn't turned correctly. Then there's the whole issue with my arms...

c) {this was the corner exercise, preparacion right foot back} step right to waltz turn, 3-steps, waltz turn, repeat. Next week Constance says we'll add the pirouette after the sweep. Since I forgot to even DO this exercise altogether, here is a good beefed up version of it!

This is Larry Payne, who teaches ballet at Long Beach Community Center in CA demonstrating the on-line waltz (and in a basketball court too, ah!) the way it's supposed to look. Ha. Looks a lot better with the waltz en tourant (turning waltz) afterward.

Lots of pirouette work to be done I know, but the semester isn't over until Feb 3rd, so we'll just have to see how much better things come with time!

OK, well til Thursday or next week!! Happy Dancing!