Seamus Finnigan is my avatar

Seamus blows up a feather

 

Everyone knows who Seamus Finnigan is: he's the Griffyndor wizard who has a propensity for having his spells randomly explode, usually leaving him singed and soot-covered.

Allow me to explain.

Clarifications

Mostly due to the US Thanksgiving holiday, I only made it to two classes last week. I'm already three classes in for this week (Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday) and have two more scheduled (Friday and Saturday) because I have a scheduling conflict Sunday. I'm really enjoying the opportunity to take so many classes, and am envious of a former regular classmate who used to live only a short walk from the studios. It would be nice if I didn't have an hour-plus of round-trip commute time and weekday parking fees.

Four Classes!

When I first saw my ballet school's fall adult class schedule, I was excited to see that there was an advanced beginner class every weekday at noon, and each class had a different instructor. I had already been taking an advanced beginner class with one of these instructors for several months, and I started thinking about making it a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule.  For various reasons, some of which I've touched on before, this hasn't happened.

Until now.

Consistency vs miracles

 I've been kinda hoping for a repeat of the miracle of last month, but like winning the $2 billion lottery, that hasn't happened. Instead, there has been a slow progression.

I'd spent much of Saturday doing household chores. I'm allergic to house dust (yes, medically confirmed), so the day started with Allegra as a prophylactic and ended with Benadryl in hopes of being able to breathe through my nose during the night. I was fully prepared to use this as an excuse explanation for being a bit off-balance during class.

Sunday I arrived in class a bit later than usual. Someone else had claimed what had become my regular spot, so I moved to the front row of portable barres. Having staked my claim, I did some warmup stretches. Then I tried a couple of pirouettes, just to see how they'd work when I was fresh: not fantastic, but stable. Okay, maybe I'd hold off on the explanation.

I'm not sure if it was related, but the instructor then commented that she'd noticed that I'd been taking advantage of my retirement by taking mid-day classes during the week. Have I mentioned recently that it's hard for me to hide in ballet classes? Of course, that could just be my outgoing personality; I'm not exactly the shy, quiet type, as anyone who has been in class with me can attest.

To my surprise, class went much better than I expected. Pirouettes seemed cleaner than usual. I've often had difficulty connecting phrases in petit allegro, but this time things flowed across phrases just fine. Recently some instructors have been giving phrases that cross musical boundaries, and maybe that experience has helped somehow? Overall, I'm pretty happy with Sunday's class.

Monday I woke up feeling draggy and fuzzy-headed. I decided to take the morning more slowly and skip Floor Barre at 10:30, and make my way to the Advanced Beginner class at noon at a more sedate pace. For a second day, things went better than usual. Even when I was a bit hurried going into a pirouette, the turn was controlled and relatively clean. This is new for me, and I'm hoping it continues.

And then a miracle occurs

Last Saturday I was feeling kinda depressed about the glacial rate of my progress, so I started re-reading the early entries in this blog. That's actually why I started the blog: to allow me an honest look back at where I've been.

That cheered me up a bit. It was like a trip back in time, and I got lost there long enough that I was almost late to The Washington Ballet performance that night. Contrary to what one might expect, watching the pros do the same sort of things I do in class (albeit much better) is inspiring for me.

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Sunday morning, feeling a bit more upbeat, I went off to my Beginner II class. Barre was going pretty well, and one of the exercises ended with rising to passé relevé with the working leg and demi-pointe on the other and holding it. Basically the position for a pirouette without the rotation. Many of the portable barres are too low for me to easily reach while in this position, so I'll just let go and bring both arms to first. At the end this exercise of the second side (left leg working and right standing) I found a really nice balance point. I concentrated on getting as high and stable as I could, and held it for a bit even after the music stopped. As I came down to fifth I heard our instructor exclaim "That's a really nice balance, Reece!" This is not the sort of thing I'm used to hearing from this instructor.

Don't get me wrong; she often politely compliments students when they do well. But this had more of a "wow, I'm impressed" tone with a touch of pleasure thrown in. It's just not like her to draw that much attention to a single student, especially when the whole class is waiting for her to explain the next exercise. Even when she gives corrections to a student by name they're usually phrased "Reece and friends" or similar to spread the focus. I wasn't really sure how to react, so I just kinda politely nodded.

I think her exclamation caught her off guard too. Maybe she thought she'd embarrassed me (maybe a little, but I'll gladly suffer that for such a compliment). I think she decided to take the edge off it by joking, "Miracles do occur!" Then, perhaps thinking that was too harsh, she added, "But it takes a lot of hard work."

Now she really had everyone's attention, probably in confusion. After a moment she felt compelled to explain, "It's like my beginner pointe students: They're scared to balance on pointe, then one day a miracle occurs and they do it. But it takes a lot of work before the miracle occurs."

I don't know whether she felt she'd struck the right balance, or just decided to stop digging the hole deeper, but she then went on with the next exercise. 

I'm still working to translate those moments of solid balance to my pirouettes, but they're slowly improving. During the rapid-fire pirouette exercise in this class I still find myself off-balance, but less so with practice. 

In Monday's Advanced Beginner the pirouette exercise is slower, giving me time to everything aligned before starting the turn, and the turns are much cleaner. I've even been tempted on occasion to attempt a double on occasion, but decided to concentrate on walking with confidence before attempting to run.

Scratch Monday. Let's do Tuesday and Thursday

Monday I didn't feel like getting out of bed. I logged in to register anyway, only to discover that Floor Barre had been canceled. I took that as a sign that I should stay home. And it was: some idiots decided to hold a protest blocking a major highway causing major traffic snarls.

One of the problems -- or benefits -- of buying the monthly class pass is that it only makes economic sense if I actually go to about three classes or more a week. Having blown off two classes Monday, I resolved to go Tuesday and Thursday evening.

Why is my easiest class the hardest?

I arrived for my Beginner II class early Sunday morning. I did some warm-up, then practiced a few pirouettes: left and right, en dedans and en dehor, from fouth. All working fairly well. I was feeling pretty good.

Class started with barre, of course. There were hints that we'd be working on pirouettes in centre, giving me that spooky feeling again. Barre went on and on, with lots of time spent rising to passé relevé and balancing. I told myself to conserve energy by doing some of the exercises flat-footed instead of demi-pointe, but I didn't. Finally, after 50 minutes, barre was done. I was feeling tired and a bit sore already.

We got to the pirouettes section of centre. Starting in fifth we rose to passé relevé and returned to the same fifth. Then an en dehor turn closing in the opposite fifth. Tendu to fourth and a pirouette en dehor landing in the same fourth. Stepped to the opposite fourth and a pirouette en dedans landing in fifth. Repeat in the other direction.

I told myself, go slowly; don't over-do the turn. But I was already tired and wobbly. We did it again, with some general corrections. I didn't fall over, but I wasn't happy: an hour before I was doing pretty decent turns.

This class is the slowest class I take, aside from Floor Barre, yet it's exhausting. It's because it's slow that it's hard.

Flic or Flac

There are things that everyone dreads hearing:

• Your boss says you need to work late.
• Your dentist says you're overdue for a cleaning.
• Your ballet instructor says she just drank a caffeinated beverage.

Thursday, our instructor casually mentioned that she'd really been dragging, and had gotten a cup of coffee before class to perk her up. This sparked an animated discussion with another student regarding the relative caffeine content of coffee versus green tea. I got straight to the point and commented, "We're screwed."

Years ago I came across this thing called a "flic flac" in magazine or web articles. These articles commonly opened with scary statements like, "Flic flac confuses even the most advanced dancers."  I was just getting back into ballet and was very much a beginner so I didn't bother reading any further. I figured it'd be a long time before I encountered it in class, if ever.

I'm still a relative beginner some 10 years in. So it was something of a surprise when "ever" came Thursday evening. My first reaction was, "Are you serious??" Then she demonstrated it without the turn and that part seemed really easy, like an abbreviated pas de cheval. She said that those who knew how to do a flic flac could do it with the turn, while the rest of us could skip it.

Now that it's been introduced, I'm sure we're going to see this again. I went hunting for a decent explanation of this step and came up with this video on YouTube. I think I'm going to spend some time studying this step.

Righty Loosey

The old saying about screws is "Righty Tighty; Lefty Loosey". This does not apply when it comes to my legs, though.

Sunday, I was thinking I should thank the instructor for giving me a key correction for fixing my turns, but I decided to wait until after class to see how well I did. This is the slowest class I take, and I have time during barre to really focus on getting all the details right (or as right as I can manage). The problem is that this sometimes leaves me rather tired, and this affects me in centre. Compounding this, I ate leftovers from dinner as breakfast, rather than something that has simple carbohydrates. The turns segment in centre was a mix of passé relevés and pirouettes, and I didn't do all that well. I was just too tired by that point. Oh well, there's always next week.

I'm trying to get to class more often, so I bought the 1-month pass rather than my usual 10-class card. This is fractionally cheaper if I take 12 classes a month — roughly three classes a week — and gets better if I take more. Now that my schedule allows me to take daytime classes too, I've been taking Floor Barre® class Monday mornings, followed by the Advanced Beginner class that used to be mid-day Wednesday. Adding in a weekend (Sunday) class brings me to three a week, plus I've been dropping into the occasional Thursday night Beginner 2.75 class.

Taking Floor Barre not only helps practice proper positions without fighting gravity and balance, it gives me a chance to warm up slowly before the Advanced Beginner class. However, I still need to conserve energy during the AB barre. Today we had an interesting centre exercise that included several pirouette turns. I found that those standing on my left leg were pretty good, but turning on my right leg was wobbly. Toward the end of the exercise I made specific effort to get that leg fully straight and that did a lot toward making them more stable.

We also did a piqué turn exercise. Again, one side is better than the other. But I can work on that.

Little, incremental changes.

Less is more

I've taken two classes since I was told I was putting too much energy into my pirouettes.  You know what? She was right. Funny, that.

Not that I ever really doubted her. The question in my mind was more one of how to implement her suggestion. I started by just practicing the motion of rising from a plié to passé relevé with no rotation, with the goal of getting as upright as I could, and balancing there as long as I could. Then I added just a hint of rotational energy. It works for both en dehor and en dedans turns. The turn isn't rapid, but it's fast enough for class and it's stable.

No place to hide

I've received emails from the studio advertising open job positions, and I've noticed some new faces popping up recently. When I arrived the check in before class today, the person behind the desk was someone I'm used to seeing in the halls preparing to take a class. Apparently she's been hired; congrats to her on the new job!

I don't believe we've ever been in the same class -- she's much more advanced than I am -- and I don't know her name. But as I walked up to the desk she immediately greeted me with a cheery "Hi Reece! I'll check you in."

I'm sure the folk at the desk have a list of those registered for the day's classes in front of them. And it's welcoming to be greeted by name. But it's also a bit spooky to be recognized that quickly. As a man in a ballet studio, there simply isn't a crowd I can blend into, even while wearing a hat and a surgical mask.

Feeling like a pincushion

I'd only been able to get to a couple classes this month, and hadn't been to one in over two weeks. A few hours ago I looked up at the clock and realized that if I rushed I could make it to this evening's class.

By the end of barre I was feeling really tired. We get a short break between barre and centre, which helped some, but by the second centre exercise I felt exhausted. I sat on the side until I felt better, then packed up and excused myself.

Maybe it wasn't a good idea to go to class two days after receiving flu and pneumonia vaccinations? And barely 10 days after receiving a bivalent booster against the current plague? Yeah, that might not have been the smartest idea.

Turning like a rusty nut

After a break for the US Labor Day holidays, I was able to schedule a session with Jacob to work on my turns. 

In the interim I'd recovered a bit of confidence in several variations of pirouette, but it as if I'd developed a complete mental block on pirouettes en dedans to the right. The first one I attempted during my session with Jacob felt as if I'd never done one before After a bit of work I managed one or two weak turns, but nothing like I'd been doing only a few weeks before. 

Near the end of the session, he asked if there was anything else I wanted to work on, and I suggested pique turns. I had no real trouble turning to the left, but could barely do one to the right. As if a light bulb suddenly turned on, it occurred to me that a pique turn is very similar to a pirouette en dedans, with the working foot in a different position. Jacob suggested working through the motion without the rotation, which isolated the problem: I'm having trouble rising to demi-pointe on my right leg. We spent the rest of the session working on this.

I'm still wobbly on my right leg, but I have something to work on.

Are you talking to me?

A couple of weeks ago, I learned that one of my favorite instructor's Wednesday mid-day Advanced Beginner class was being moved to Monday. I've been taking this class for some months and feel fairly comfortable in it. I'm not the best in the class, but neither am I the worst.

Another of my favorite instructors will be taking over the Wednesday mid-day slot in September, also teaching an Advanced Beginner class, and I mentioned to her that I was looking forward to taking her class Wednesdays. To my surprise she told me I wasn't ready for Advanced Beginner, and she'd "let me know" when I was ready. I was really taken aback by this.

[Edit: The instructor and I may have miscommunicated here. See this post for clarification.]

The En Dedans Blues

Yup, my en dedans pirouettes to the right are definitely broken. I tried one before class today and sort-of wobbled through it, but later it didn't work right at all. *sigh* On the other hand, my en dehors are still clean, so it's not a catastrophe.

One of the things I like about this instructor is she now includes piqué turns practice. The first time I tried this a week or two, I found myself way off balance. I had them on my list of things to fix the next time I get a private lesson, but I tried fixing them myself today.

One of my instructors had suggested to another student that she bring her shoulders forward by "reducing the space between your ribs" (more properly, sternum) and your pubic bone. Thinking to myself that I always found myself falling backward when I attempted a tour en l'air (literally, a "turn in the air" — a jump straight up combined with a full turn), and that my fix for pirouettes had involved a similar shift forward, I decided to apply this to my piqué turns. 

This seems to have worked! I don't think I've ever done a long series of piqué turns as cleanly, and certainly not as fast (this class is nominally "Advanced Beginner"). I also had more luck with my spotting, and felt less dizzy afterward.

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One of the rather fun aspects of taking classes at a school with a robust pre-professional track is when one of these "kids" drops into the adult classes. Today, one of this year's graduates joined our class. While I was feeling rather proud of a fairly clean single pirouette en dehor, this young woman standing next to me was doing gorgeous triples. This summer she was hired into a ballet company and soon will be starting her professional dance career in Atlanta. My best wishes to her!

Has it really been six months?

After some gaps due to spikes in the pandemic, I've settled into a regular routine of two to three classes a week. My school's records say I've taken almost 50 classes thus far this calendar year.

Like many who have taken up ballet as adults, the instruction I've received has been anything but well-structured. Adult ballet classes often include students ranging from years of dancing to those with no experience at all. If an instructor spends too much time teaching basic steps to the newbies, the more experienced students will get bored and stop attending. So the newbies generally learn by jumping in and hoping desperately that they can figure it out.

The skill levels of the instructors also vary. I learned the basics back in the mid 1980s, and I have no idea what our instructor's qualifications were. When I returned to ballet in 2011 (11 years ago? gulp!) our instructor had just graduated from university with a degree in dance education, but her primary dance style was not ballet (I discovered she was clueless about pointe work when one of the students showed up with a pair that fortunately didn't fit). The result of this is that I feel like I got short-changed on many of the fundamentals.

My current instructors are top-notch, and do their best to address the shortcomings in my training. I've made it clear to all of them that I want whatever corrections they can give, but there's only so much they can do in the context of a class with 20 other students. To address this, I made inquiries about getting some individual instruction. While supportive of my interest, no one at my current school has time in their schedules for private lessons. Finally, I arranged to take some classes with a retired professional dancer who also manages a different ballet school.

One of my problem areas is petit allegro. In the normal sequence of a ballet class this comes near the end, just before grand allegro. By this point I'm usually tired and mentally overloaded, which is not the ideal time to be learning something physical. So for my first private lesson I asked to concentrate on glissades, petit jetés, and other small jumps. It was exhausting but I think it helped, especially with linking phrases together without the mental hard-stop between phrases I'd found myself doing.

Another of my problems has been turns. I've been fighting with some postural issues I blame on spending 40 years sitting at a desk, slaving over a hot keyboard. This, I believe, has been causing me to stand with a posterior pelvic tilt, which throws off my balance. A classmate friend recommended her chiropractor, whose practice has included some big-name ballet dancers. He's done an amazing job in a very short time, though there has been some vile cursing of his lineage involved.

The thing is, when one part of your posture is wrong, other parts of your body compensates. Fixing one problem means the compensations have to be unlearned, and for several weeks my attempts at pirouettes and other turns were inconsistent, to say the least. My second private lesson added some work on pirouettes en dehors which helped somewhat.

 A couple of weeks ago, one of my instructors commented that I was holding my arms too close to my body in first, especially in my turns. Correcting this also brought my upper body a tiny bit further forward. Suddenly, unexpectedly, my pirouette problems seemed to go away. For several classes in a row, I was as balanced at the end of a turn as I was at the beginning. Left or right, en dedans or en dehors, from fourth or fifth, landing in fourth or fifth, it didn't matter. I even managed a slightly sloppy double before class today, marred mostly by not spotting very well.

Yay?

Then came the turns combination part of today's class. Somehow, during the pirouette en dedans to the right (clockwise), my left foot got caught on my right calf as I brought it up to retiré, and I nearly fell on my face. I can't remember the last time I tripped over my own feet. The other three turns were clean. What happened? I figured it was a fluke.

We repeated the combination, and to my shock I did it again, on the same turn, though I caught myself earlier. Again, the other three turns (both en dehor, and the en dedans to the left) were clean. Great, I've broken my one of my turns again.

Onward to the petit allegro combination! Today was the "real" Beginner II class, so the combinations were relatively simple: glissade, petit jeté, coupé, temps levé, pas de bourée, glissade, assemblé, échappé and back to fifth, and rest. Then repeat the other way. Before I started working on linking phrases I would often get stuck part way through, often with my weight on the foot I needed to move next. Today, though, I got all the way through fairly cleanly. I recognized points where I could greatly improve, but I'm definitely happy with my progress.

Easing back into class

Infection rates in this county have dropped dramatically, and a friend and I decided to meet at a local pub for an early dinner. She had previous commitments later in the evening, and seeing as how the pub was just down the street from the ballet studio I decided it was time to go back to class.

I'd lost track of time, as often happens when you're enjoying a conversation, and barely made it to the desk by the time the class was scheduled to start. When I went to check in, the staffer seemed confused. "Did you just register?" she asked. "Yup, about 3 minutes ago" I replied. 

I rushed into the studio, dug my slippers, water bottle, and towel out of my bag, and changed out of my street clothes. Normally we have a live pianist, but he was late arriving. The delay getting recorded music started in his absence meant that I missed only a small part of the first barre exercise.

Fixing my turns

One of the things I've been struggling with is inconsistent turns. When I'm fresh I can do clean pirouettes in either direction, on either leg. As I tire my turns get sloppy, with turns standing on my right leg almost feeling as if my leg was collapsing under me. I've been struggling to understand exactly what is it I'm doing wrong and not having much success.