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!

Semaine 16

I have sadly realized that I can't come up with a quote for each week because I'm not thinking about my blog during my class-- I need to work on that.

Monday night was the usual 6:15 PM Walsh class, and as usual, it was fantastic! We did a LOT of work in that 1 hour and 15 minutes! We practiced combinations with plié-pas de cheval (that horse kicking type of move that begins with a coupe) closing to Fifth en croix - front side back side then without a plié, and also while on relevé all en croix, and battément, dégagé, and frappé combos as usual. Other fun exercises were our pirouette exercises, complete with tendus and correct arms but only 1/4 turns at a time. Corner work was a balance-tombé-pas de bourré-chassé-souté arabesque exercise that we did about 6 times. Kelly wasn't at class today so I couldn't record the corner exercise, not that it's a new one, but I think it's starting to look better. Pirouettes are starting to get better, too. I can do a full pirouette while spotting and not topple over! Yaaaay...

Walsh, at least, came up to me and pushed in my butt/pushed my pelvis front and ribs in... I'm not used to doing that. Butt in? I'm used to my butt hanging out everywhere, so keeping it squished-in requires a conscious effort. =P

My ribbons, elastic, and pointe pillows came in the mail two days ago and I'm excited :) I'm not going to be wreckless with these pointe shoes when they come in (relax!). I'll slowly learn how to break in a shoe and get used to the feel of the pointe shoe itself by practicing tendus, rolling through a demi pointe, watching my turnout in them (since it's bound to be worse) and standing in susu (closed Fifth en pointe) while staring into a mirror practicing to keep my big old butt tucked in! The ONLY thing I'll probably do EN POINTE is stand susu and stand with one leg in attitude/coupé/passé getting used to balancing (while holding onto a ledge). I'm NOT going to try and pirouette my way to unconsciousness on the floor. Demi pointe shoes are $30/pair anyway, so I may as well get used to a real shank. Besides, I'm almost just as excited to practice sewing ribbons and elastic onto my beauty-full gorgeous shoes.

weeeee!!!!!

Tuesday night I went to Kintz-Mejia Ballet School's Adult Beginner ballet class with Vihao. The studio is actually in the same shopping plaza as my (old) LA Boxing gym. It was led by Linda Kintz (pic below). She runs a tight ship, like a ballet bootcamp! It was no-nonsense, no jibber jabber, smiling, laughing, or joking. It wasn't hard per se, just pure isolated exercises with corrections in technique throughout. It was really nice to actually be in such a strict atmosphere. It's not the confusing exercise you get lost in (like at BalletNova), instead, you just focus on your arms, chest, butt, going through your demi pointe and plié when landing jumps, and turnout.

I felt comfortable with class after the first 15 or so minutes not feeling exceedingly behind in technique, and the hour flew by. This sure as hell didn't feel like a Beginning ballet class! I sweated gallons and gallons which was great! My towel was soaked and it felt like I'd jumped into a pool, by the end of class.

The best part of it? After class, Linda introduced herself to me, asked my name and said, "You could get really good!" Wow, so reassuring and SUCH a confidence booster! :) She said she knew I'd done some dance before but wondered what it was and where I was currently taking ballet. It was good to know I didn't look like a complete goof!

I think that after this positive experience, I'm definitely open to returning for class on open days where BalletNova doesn't offer class for me.  Plus, I sweat a lot more at Kintz-Mejia. But, at $25 per drop-in... {{sigh}} my bank account will say *ouch*

Left: Linda Kintz, and Right: Mark Mejia and Linda Kintz

Owners of Kintz-Mejia Ballet School

Semaine 11 (Part Two)

I got my new swag in from Discount Dance Supply! I'd been lusting after some nice legwarmers and trash bag shorts for ballet class (originally mentioned in Semaine 5).

I got some new tights (I'd been wearing my light pink ones this whole time), so I got two new pairs of Slimz convertible tights that are super super soft. I got light tan ones and black ones. In addition to the 27" stirrup thigh-high Body Wrappers legwarmers (I got them more of a function of keeping my right ankle loosened up for some good grand plies) and Body Wrappers sweat-awesome trash bag shorts (well, they're really called rip-stop shorts), I got a new pair of ballet flats! They're Grishko's Ultimate split-sole canvas ballet slippers. I'm not sure if I need to be a size 7 in them.. Both the Capezio's and Grishko's recommended me get a 6 1/2 (half size larger than my street shoe size) which is perfect for my right foot, but my left big toe is a TINY bit smushed in both of the 6 1/2's. I'm sitting here stretching the left one out with a rolled up sock in the front. I already tried warm water on the toe and wearing them around the house to stretch 'em but no luck so far.

Anyway, to burn some extra calories, at around 2 pm today I'm going to go to the gym and do some cardio with my trash bag shorts on haha. Then tonight's 6:15pm class with Carmen Perez, last BBFNB class of the summer! I'll have one more punch on my card, I wonder if I should just use it for Basic Beginning on Tuesday or if I should just save it for the Fall class. Extra classes are now $16 for me since I'm enrolled, and the class card makes each class out to be $18/class, but if I already bought it, I may as well use it for a class I'll get more out of, right? I think Basic Beginning is a bit too easy now (SO SO SO glad I can say that now!). Advanced Beginning Ballet, here I come next year! =P Maybe next Summer??

Walk-In Week is coming around the corner! With $10/class, I'm already adding two classes to my schedule!

Monday August 27 @ 6:15-7:30 pm
Thursday August 30 @ 7:30-8:45 pm

*************
Tonight's class was great! We had Carol Clark as a sub since Carmen Perez was at the beach this week, but it was a nice replacement! Everyone loved her, she is probably my favorite instructor out of everyone I've ever had (Carmen Perez, Irina Wunder, Leisl Swogger, Silvia Burnstein, and Carol Clark), she was lighthearted and the most real of all of them. I think all the instructors at BalletNova are wonderful, but my favorite is Carol.

We had some challenging fondu floor/halfway/90 degree exercises, and my favorite centrework exercise was a pirouette prep one (starting in Fifth with hands on hips, plie-passe x 3, then plie to pirouette and finish behind, then switch feet). We did about 3 sets of that exercise. We did some first/second/changement jumping exercises where I need to learn to turn out less so I don't keep landing on the balls of my feet unbalanced.

Since my Bunhead Buddy wasn't with me tonight, I didn't have anyone I wanted to nerdily ask to record a clip of the corner exercise. Today was a chasse, degagé with attitude exercise which was fun. We did it first with arms in Second and head front, then we did it with arms in arabesque position with head straight, then we did it with arms in arabesque with head facing the acting leg, then with hands on hips. Hands on hips was awkward. The other exercise was a chassé-grand jeté exercise which was a lot of fun. Here's a video of a grand jeté (though honestly she looks like she's performing a developpé):

I debuted my new gear tonight, but Kelly wasn't there to laugh with me in the trashbag shorts...

Trashbag shorts, leg warmer on the bum ankle, and new canvas slippers. I'm officially a fan of canvas slippers over leather. They don't stick annoyingly to the studio floor when trying to do dégagés. 

Studio C, where class is held every week

Beautiful portraits line the walls of the studio's hallways. This is one of my favorites, because they're the kind of photos I'd want to have taken of myself when that ONE DAY COMES! :) 

Semaine 11 (Part One)

This post is going to be short and sweet - have to wake up at 5:30 AM for work in the morning! 

Tonight's class was Irina's Monday 7:45 pm class, but substituted by Leisel, the awesome sub from last week's Monday night class. I really like her and she has such a beautiful pointe.

I got to class about 40 minutes early (I had to pick up my car from the service center, which is close by and closed at 7 PM) so I had a long time to stretch beforehand. The Company dancers were warming up next to me, and wow - I have a long ways to go! You could just tell they're so good just by watching them stretch!! They were all thin, lean, long, and when they pointed their toes and stretched out their legs, you could just imagine how great their technique is.

I took a photo of my floor pointe so I could compare it in the next few months and see how much I have progressed. Here's my "semi-start pointe" in the first photo and then the second pic is of me stretching out my feet before class in the second photo. It's not very impressive... but it'll be a benchmark.
                                

One of the company dancers was able to comPLETELY bend her foot

So you see where the pink arrow is pointing to? This Company dancer could literally TOUCH that part of the foot directly to the ground where it was practically bent in half! **way farther than this foot**

I found this contraption online at footstretch.com that looks tempting..

 

At €133 (€98 for the foot stretcher + €35 for air mail) it's kinda pricey ($163.98) 

Anyway, tonight we did the really good pirouette practice for centrework, a glissade-jete-tombe-pas de chat combo, and then a repeat of the corner exercise routine from last week (I know I need to work on getting my arms better and looking less flimsy floppy and more crisp...?!)

I think Kelly and I are progressing pretty well - well, where we're keeping up with class where we are right in the middle skill-wise? Next class is Thursday 6:15 pm!!

Semaine 10

Monday Night Class: 

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. 

Semaine 7

So this week was tough after not having gone to class for a while.

This past Thursday was after I'd come back from Amsterdam at 2:30 AM (our flight from NYC to DC was cancelled so Jeff and I drove a rental car for four hours to get home) and class at 6:15 PM, with Perez. Barre work was tougher than usual, since 1) she went through the combos pretty quickly; and hopefully more importantly 2) I'd been away from the "ballet mindset" for a bit. After barrework, the centrework was terrifying! We did some easy combos like  degage en croix, but then we did exercises that start in fifth position, then continued with three glissades (going to the side while appearing like you're gliding, from fifth position, en changement) and then three Pas de Chat(s) (the "step of the cat," where the dancer jumps sideways) then end with a pas de burre then back the other direction:

(above) Glissade and (below) Pas de Chat

We also did these cross floor exercises with arabesques and pirouettes that I was horrible at! In my head it was like, "one, two, three - arabesque, down, arabesque, down. Releve, down (set-up for pirouette) and then pirouette!" again and again and back and forth. Oh it was just a hot mess! 

Well, so from 00:07 until 00:13 was almost like our exercise (it's hard to find on youtube and I can't record during class), except we did it in slippers, and a single pirouette (not triple). We also had some arabesques in there (as you can see from my 'inner' dialogue above). 

Things I need to work on BESIDES stretching my darn ankle, is remembering that for cross floor exercises, to not stop right when I get near the wall, but I have to stand in place and continue until the end of the exercise. I just stopped immediately when I got to the wall (I think it's a confidence thing. I just wanted it to be over!). I was sweating my butt off all class and my legs and back were sore the entire day after!

Man, it was tiring! 

Next week's classes are Monday (BBFNB) and Tuesday (Basic Beginning Ballet - for extra practice)!