A good balance evening

I think our instructor got so excited to see the Sunday B2 students struggling with her "easier" class that she's decided to ratchet up our not-so-easy class up another notch. The barre has started to include cloche and tendu movements in triplets; that is, where there are three movements in two beats. We've been doing plié/relevé exercises with one foot sur le cou de pied derriere for a while now, but it used to be four then change feet with a pas de bourrée. Tonight it was 8, repeated twice on each side. These don't really bother me, but others really seem to dislike them. After Sunday's experience of being able to keep up with double beats during frappé, I'm back to not having a chance of keeping up. And don't even ask me about petit battements.

I didn't flounder at everything. Some days I can't seem to balance to save my life. Today, balancing didn't seem to be much of a problem. I felt comfortable with about half of the center work, and by "comfortable" I mean "knew what I was doing and was working on making it good" rather than just hoping to remember the next step in time. After not doing the combination with the alternating piqué arabesques for a while, we did it again this evening. The first time through I did ok, but going to the left the second time my left foot was again in front of my right when it should have been behind. That was annoying, but three out of four ain't terrible.

One of the adagio sequences we've been working on goes something like this: From croisé in fifth, développé devant, slow rond de jambe en l'air with arms to first arabesque, close derrière. Now effacé in fifth, développé devant, another slow rond de jambe en l'air with arms to second arabesque, promenade upstage 3/4 around, demi-plié and hold for a beat, rise to demi-pointe and pas de bourrée. Now croisé in fifth to the other corner, développé to écarté devant en l'air, close to fifth derrière. Now éffacé in fifth, développé to écarté derrière en l'air, close to fifth derrière. Chassé en avant, rock back a bit to a demi-plié fourth with the weight remaining on the front foot, pirouette en dehor, closing to fifth derrière. Repeat to the other side.

Got all that? The scary thing, to me anyway, is that I DO have that. I can be a bit unsteady, and by the time I get to the pirouette my legs are sometimes too unsteady to do the turn cleanly, but I know the sequence and on good days like today I can do better than many in the class. I'm not one of those who do double or even triple pirouettes for a bit of a challenge, but I don't look like a clueless dork either.

During the jumps section we did a new combination of four changements, a little hop leading into a chassé, assemblé, and an échappé. Then repeat. I got it the first time, receiving an attaboy.

My right hip flexors got really tight during the barre and into the start of the center work. Then, for no apparent reason, it relaxed. Brains aren't designed to notice the absence of something, so I don't know exactly when it relaxed, maybe during the adagio I described above, but I am SO glad it did.

Ok, enough random babble for one night.