Cambré -- pop!

"Cambré" means "arched" in French. "Pop" is the sound my back makes when I arch too much.

I hate this ballet. It makes me cry.

I just saw The Washington Ballet's performance of John Cranko's "Romeo and Juliet". Damned bastards made me cry. But I'll never admit it.

Of course I've read Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" and seen it performed on stage. I saw the San Francisco Ballet's production in November of 2012. (How has it been FIVE years?) I hadn't seen Cranko's version though.

It's all in the shoes

Hey! I made it through an entire class tonight!

Well, almost all of it, but I did stay through to the end. I couldn't figure out the sequence of steps in the next-to-last exercise, and I skipped the jump "warm-up". But I did mostly get the petite allegro sequence, unlike about half the class. If we'd done it a few more times I think I would have been able to do it at speed rather than lagging just slightly behind the music.

Three students were wearing pointe shoes during barre, and two of them did the entire class wearing them. This is is becoming pretty common, where before this past fall it would be a rarity to have anyone. But that's not the reason for the title of this post.

Improving, but not 100% yet

 I had this idea that after two weeks recovery time from a one week illness, I'd be back to normal. Apparently I'm wrong.

Caught you peeking

After being sick for a full week and spending a second recovering, I ventured forth to class yesterday morning.

Missing a bunch of classes

That sinus infection really packed a punch. After a full week in bed I went back to work Tuesday, but I've really been dragging.

I last went to ballet class Jan 20th and felt fine. Monday the 22nd I started feeling sick and missed class on the 23rd, in hopes that taking it easy would speed my recovery from what I thought was the flu. The antibiotics kicked in sometime early Monday morning and I haven't had a fever since, but I still have some minor lingering symptoms.

I'd kinda set my sights on class tonight. Last night I was so tired after work I decided that even attempting a class tonight would be a bad idea. I didn't even pack my dance bag this morning.

I'm hopeful that I can go to class Saturday, but I'll bail on that idea if I'm not really ready. There's always Sunday, or the following Tuesday. No point in setting my recovery back by overexerting myself.

But that doesn't make me happy.