After watching a few how-to video tutorials on sewing ribbons and elastics onto pointe shoes, I started my sewing of the ribbons at about 9:45 PM and finally finished all my sewing at about 10:20 PM (Megan, I know this does NOT count my sewing of my elastics during your wedding gown appointment...) Here are some photos:
Required supplies for pointe shoe sewing:
light thread, sparkly happy scissors, a lighter (to singe the ribbon ends), elastics, and ribbons!
Ta-da!!!!! All done!
(these are Bloch Serenades with Bloch invisible elastic and Bloch Elastorib ribbons)
I stood up in susu, did a soutenu, and did some tendus and ronde de jambes in them. Obviously they're not the most comfortable of shoes, but in pointe shoe world, my limited perspective leads me to believe these aren't bad! My toes don't feel scrunched, and I felt pretty well-balanced on the platform!
...now to get a portable barre for home-practice :)
{sorry for posting so late, with Jeff's 30th bday this weekend, I got distracted}
~Monday Night~
I'm writing this on Monday night after my class with Constance Walsh - O.M.G. I. LOVE. HER. Kelly was right, she is the best teacher EVER! I know I said this after class with Clark, and while I do love Clark, I am so grateful and happy to have TWO instructors as my regulars whom I adore! Since I enrolled on Mondays at 6:15 PM, I'll have Walsh every week (weeeeeeeee!!!) and then on Thursdays as a walk-in, as long as I am free for class on Thursday nights, I'll have Clark! I'm so excited! BalletNova's motto is "Where you dance matters," and I'm seriously a believer! I think that Walsh's instruction and guidance will really help me. She smiles, she laughs and jokes around, but also comes up with challenging combinations and pays attention to every student helping them individually. When we were doing a reverse passé, she came up and fixed my heel so that my turnout was better (I had no idea I was doing it THAT wrong!), and fixed my hands in port de bras a la seconde (second position arms). No videos for this class, we didn't do challenging corner work. The more challenging parts were a developpe exercise that was just too complicated for my early-alzheimer's brain to handle haha... but it wasn't beyond comprehension... I was just too slow-minded that I would flub it every other attempt haha...
The best thing about Monday night class - A LIVE PIANIST! I seriously felt like I was in a class straight out of Center Stage:
Fast Forward to 2:55 and that was how our class felt with the live music! Sooo fun :)
~Thursday Night~
So, Kelly didn't join me on Thursday night's class with Clark, which I thought was OK. Well, turns out I was wrong. Yknow when you have one of those days where physically you're present, but mentally you're spaced out completely? Almost every time Clark gave a combination to us, I would just NOT GET IT. It wasn't that the combos were HARD, my mind just wasn't there! It was so frustrating!! Since I'm not classically trained aside from what I've learned since this past June, I need the instructor to be specific about what the combination IS. The problem with Thursday was that she would step-through the first 1/4 of the combination and then change something up within it but wouldn't demonstrate it. Instead, she just used the terminology and that just messed me up because I don't KNOW ALL of the terminology. This was my first really truly frustrating classes at BalletNova. Sigh.
After class I met up with Saki, my friend I met through Jeff, who helped mentor and guide me along this whole ballet journey (She's the one who teaches at Washington School of Ballet... She also hooked Jeff and me up with free tickets to The Nutcracker last Christmas!). We met up at the Capital City Brewery down in Shirlington and caught up. After talking about her new engagement, we eventually talked about my ballet classes. I told her about what I'm learning, how my bad class was that night, and then about what my plans were for the next year. She gawked at the price of classes at BalletNova ($329 for 18-ish classes, plus supplementing with $16/class for a second class each week). So, she suggested that after this Fall Session is complete, that I consider taking classes at other studios she has taught or has friends who take class. One of them is the Metropolitan Fine Arts Center and the other is The Ballet Studio (Saki used to work here and knows the owner really well). Both have recitals that include adult ballet classes! (exciting!) MFAC is $330 for a 30 class card ($11/class; no registration only class card attendance) and The Ballet Studio is $18/class for an 8-class card (more expensive than BalletNova). The only upside of The Ballet Studio is that Saki's friend teaches the Advanced Adult Ballet + Pointe class, which as an enrolled student is $325. This is for Fall, which is only Sept 10-Dec 15 vs. Sept 3-Feb 3 at BalletNova (Advanced Beg Ballet + Pointe would be $439, for comparison purposes). So it seems like once on pointe, BalletNova is cheaper. BUT, Saki said that her friend who teaches the Advanced Adult + Pointe class has only 4 students right now, and could give me a lot of focused attention to help me get on pointe faster. Lots to think about. For right now, I'm sticking with BalletNova. May as well, since my work schedule is all figured out with my Monday enrollment, and it's just too complicated to factor in starting at a new studio. Knowing me, I'd probably wind up at the wrong studio on the wrong day and miss out overall haha.
Saki did mention demi-pointe shoes. I've never heard of them, but she said they are good for training those who have weak arches, to get on pointe. Since I don't have weak arches, she said I may not need them, but based on my quick google research, they help prep for pointe and get the dancer used to the feel of pointe shoes. Also, she suggested seeing Maggie from Washington School of Ballet when looking into pointe shoes, since she used to work in ballet retail. :) OMG now I am like... intensely wanting a pair just to mess around with hahaha... Found them online at Discount Dance and they are $25 a pair... omg I can feel my excitement grow =P Definitely stopping by the dance supply store nearby to get sized tomorrow, weeeee!!!!! OF COURSE, I wouldn't dare bringing these into class, lest I be judged or scoffed at! I'll dance in private in these. Yay.
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! :)
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!!
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.
Last night, I bought a pair of brand new pointe shoes that I found on eBay... while it's completely premature and almost entirely silly that I got them, they were only $30 and in my size (well, per the Grishko size chart) so I couldn't resist! Jeff OK'd me in getting them, expecting I was asking for shoes that were over $200, so at $30, he couldn't say "NO" :) Anyway, they are Grishko 2007's (they got SUCH awesome reviews on Discountdance.com), in size 3XX (equivalent to a 6 medium width) with a super soft shank (reviews say I should get a medium, since the shank wears out really quickly even after a couple of weeks of classes). For my size, there weren't any other shanks to choose from. So anyway, the Grishko "2007" is here. So basically, for the next two years I'll just put my foot into the shoe and daydream until the day I'll actually be allowed to dance in them (if that day comes...). Ah, I need to be more optimistic! hahaha...
Grishko "2007"
Had class #2 tonight at WSB. There was a substitute instructor today, and she was a lot more difficult than Maggie (she's away this week), mostly because she was a lot more critical of every move I made - which was really good but I felt like I was a huge ungraceful oaf! I didn't realize how hard it is to keep your knees straight while in First Position and bend down to touch the floor WITHOUT your butt moving back; i.e. your legs and back form a 90 degree angle...
Butt and legs straight & perpendicular to the floor (Left) vs. Butt not perpendicular (Right)
I'm also really realizing that I need to stand much straighter, keep my butt in a lot more, and stretch my hips more. It's so hard to get into the real Fifth Position, that it looks ilke a Third Position that's brought in to the opposite toe vs. toe-heel bilaterally. (see below)
My Fifth looks more like this little girl's (Left), vs. with toes-to-heels on both feet (Right)
From my right ankle sprain in 2008 and again in 2011, I am really feeling its limitations when going into demi and grand plies which reminds me that I need to work a lot harder on stretching out my right ankle before class, and probably every day. Last week, I got ahold of two TheraBands from the Physical Therapy department at my hospital and have been working on pointing my toes and building strength up. But, it seems like what I need to really work on is stretching out my hips to get that Fifth Position looking better! Well, now I know what this week's homework is!
This week was stretching with the barre, tendu/battement en cirque, tendu/rond de jambe, and coup de pie! Not as many "new" terms this week, but I seriously need to start reviewing new terms with the instructor at the end of the class, so I don't forget their names!
