Saturday, May 11, 2013

An "Ah-Ha" moment

I got stuck in traffic on the way to class this morning. Some minor accident, already cleared to the shoulder, but four lanes of highway traffic crept by at a snail's pace so people could look. The teacher greeted me with a smile, but I missed the first stretches -- which I need.

In the center we were doing a simple combination. Sauté arabesque right, sauté arabesque left, step, step, saut de chat, step, something like a jeté with a quarter turn to the left, and repeat in the other direction. No problem, right? No such luck. My first sauté was fine, but when I went to do the second something went wrong and it was all downhill from there. We'd done a variation of this sequence before, and I'd had a similar problem but couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong.

Today I figured it out. We've also done a different sequence where the sauté arabesque was followed by something like a passé sauté, and I was doing some sort of weird mix. This put my working foot in front of me rather than behind. Oops. This revelation came to me half way through the exercise, and I sort-of managed to do it right once. The frustrating thing is that it's taken me so long to figure it out.

I had an appointment with my massage therapist scheduled for 90 minutes after class. The plan was to eat lunch in the gap, but I wasn't hungry. Instead, I stopped at a drug store to buy a cold pack so I could ice down my aching hip flexors and quads on the drive over. That helped, and I'm hoping I can break the cycle of tightness in my legs without having to take an extended break from class.

I loaned my massage therapist my copy of Classical Ballet Technique so he could see what sort of stuff I was doing. His verdict is that ballet is designed to torture and maim dancers' bodies. But he didn't try to talk me out of going to class. I think he may see me as a stable revenue stream. :-)

On that note, here's a picture I find quite apropos:


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