Four and Fourteen

The studio where I usually take class Wednesday nights is closed for the holidays, so I went to the studio where I usually take class Sunday. (Confused yet?)

The instructor for the Wednesday evening Beginner I is the same who teaches the Tuesday Beginner II. She has a very casual style which makes it seem like she's just there to have fun, almost as if she's not serious. But she's given me more helpful suggestions in the three classes I've had with her than I've gotten in I don't know how many other classes, and I'm not getting special attention. It's rather hard to reconcile the initial impression with the reality of how sharp her eye is.

The combinations she gives are more complex than those of the Beginner I class I take Sunday (same studio, different instructor). While we may do a chasse and saute combination across the room on Sunday, tonight we did a sequence of at least eight steps that then repeats in the opposite direction. It's more like "Beginner One and a Half", as she remarked another time. When I don't get a combination I feel really dumb, but when it finally clicks it's a bigger thrill.

So what's with this post's title? That's how many men and women were in tonight's class. We had four men and fourteen women. I've never been in a class with that many men. And I got the distinct impression that there was some competition among us during the warm-up before class started. One guy was clearly just starting: he didn't seem to know what a tendu is, let alone a pas de bourrée. The other three of us seem to be roughly even, each with his own strengths and weaknesses.

My weakness seems to be balance on one foot. By the end of class I'm really unstable on one foot. Either foot. Sometimes I can find it but other times there's a lot of wobbling. I guess I'll just have to start playing stork a lot until I figure it out.