SF Ballet's Romeo and Juliet

I went to see the San Francisco Ballet's production of Romeo and Juliet yesterday with a friend from my Wednesday class. It was very moving. By that I mean it was as well acted as it was danced. During the climactic scene where Romeo drinks poison, I heard a young girl behind me say softly, "Oh no, don't!" By the time Juliet awakes to find Romeo dead and kills herself with a dagger, many people around me were crying quietly.

The effect was only slightly marred when, as Romeo tries to dance with the limp body of the dead sleeping Juliet, the thought briefly went through my head: "Zombie Juliet!" Hey, it's only been a couple of weeks since Halloween.

One of the things that really helped bring the ballet to life for me was a book I picked up on Amazon recently. It describes each scene of a ballet, kind of like the blurb in the Playbill, only in far greater detail. This substitutes for the dialog that would otherwise help you understand who is whom and what's going on. The book is 101 Stories of the Great Ballets: The scene-by-scene stories of the most popular ballets, old and new by a couple of ballet know-nothings named George Balanchine and Francis Mason. If you want to understand what Juliet and her nurse are doing while Juliet is looking in the mirror and the nurse cups and lifts Juliet's breasts (get your mind out of the gutter!), this is a book for you.

Dancing with the teacher

The instructor for this morning's class was in a better mood than last week. It could be that more people showed up for class (apparently there is a minimum number of students, and if attendance falls below a certain level the class gets canceled and the instructor loses money). It could be that she was feeling better physically, as I didn't hear any rasping when she breathed, though I still suspect she has asthma. Regardless of why, she was definitely better than last week.

She provided constructive criticism, and did it with a reassuring tone of voice. For example, while I was doing one combination across the floor I got through the first fine, then botched the second. In a light-hearted tone she commented, "You got it right the first time, then you tried to think about it!", which is pretty much on target. She still teased the one student she was really rude to last week, but it came across more as familiar teasing than nasty.

Several of the new students are really new. One woman has excellent turn-out, but said it's all from yoga (she's an yoga instructor) and this was only her fifth ballet lesson. Another new one was a guy I'd place in his late 20s (my friend thinks he's much younger) and it looks like he's also very new. Sometimes I feel really inept, but when I have true newbies to compare myself to I don't feel so bad.

We're doing this combo of two ballet steps and an odd dip/brush through/step. As she explains it, this is how a couple enters a ball, resplendent in their finery. She walked over to the huddle of students, picked me out and asked me to demonstrate with her. Starting on opposite feet, we alternately turned to or away from each other on each brush-step. It was kinda fun.

After class my friend and I hung around a little while watching the kids practice for the upcoming Nutcracker performances. It was fun to see, though watching a 15 year-old demonstrating mastery of steps that I can't even dream of attempting yet is a bit frustrating.

Just like starting over

Wednesday evening we had a new instructor, who will be taking over our class likely for the rest of the calendar year. It seems our regular instructor has decided to put her health and the health of her baby ahead of teaching our class. The nerve of some people!

(For the humor-impaired, that's a joke.)

Since the new instructor hasn't taught our class before, she started over at the beginning so she can figure out where we are. I can always use some focus on the basics, so this doesn't bother me at all. This class we worked on posture and core muscles, doing tendus and pliés slowly so we could pay attention to these rather than keeping up with music. She even gave us homework!

Frankly, this was a bit of a relief. Noting it was chilly in the studio, the woman I was sharing a barre with said, "I don't start to sweat until we do jumps", and I replied, "I start sweating as soon as I hear 'passé relevé'". I understand it's important to develop strength, but I thought we were over-doing it a bit. This week I've developed a tightness in the back of my right knee that seems to be aggravated by things that put weight on that leg in demi-pointe. I'm tentatively blaming overstress from all the stuff on one leg. My normal attempts to stretch out that calf muscle just seem to make the tightness worse, so I scheduled a session with a massage therapist to see if he can loosen things up. I'm hoping I won't have to miss Sunday morning's class because of it.

Overheard outside of class

I overheard the following exchange in the hallway outside of the classrooms after ballet class this morning:

Person 1: How was class?

Person 2: It was good.  Any time I walk out of class instead of being carried out is a good class.

I kid you not.

November already?

Still here, still going to class. The big storm gave us two days of heavy rain and some localized power outages (never more than 20 seconds in my neighborhood) but otherwise no real problems. I feel for those further north who caught to front side of the storm rather than the back.

The Wednesday night regular instructor came back after missing only one week. She really loves teaching and said she really missed teaching while she was sick. This week she showed up using a cane due to a bone inflammation, and she's spending most of the class sitting in a chair up front animatedly gesturing with the cane like an oversized conductor's baton. She joked that she was going Russian on us and would beat students who weren't keeping up, then hurriedly reassured everyone that she really was only joking. Even with her sitting up front her enthusiasm makes it a fun class.

I've started finding ways to stretch during normal, everyday activities. For example, laying in bed with my laptop computer on my chest (what a friend calls "Belly TV") I can bend my knees, put the soles of my feet together, and let gravity work on my turnout.

A friend is taking classes on the weekends at yet another school, and I'm going to join her tomorrow. I've now been exposed to enough different styles that I'm noticing the difference. The teacher I started with in May '11 at the "old" place was ABT, while the current teacher is Cecchetti, and my current teacher at the "new" place is RAD trained. Kind of interesting.