Your Other Right

Let's start with the first class this week, which of course, is at Dance til Dawn.

This would be the post-show class, so involved returning our costumes and getting back to basics.  To my absolute delight, the barres were back.  They'd been missing since Easter and I was feeling their loss.  I love barre work, building up fundaments and all that jazz.  And also to my delight, there were only three of us in class today, which meant we each got our own barre.  Yay for not having to share!

Dawn busted out the threa bands for our stretches today, which was great.  I've heard about these mysterious things since I've jumped into the ballet community on the interwebs, but I was still unsure of their application to ballet.  From what I can tell, just add extra resistence to stretching, which I'm cool with.  If there's any other secrets to these things, let me know.  Do I need to invest in these things?

Anyhoot, moving onto Friday.  There's a big difference between Jonathan and Dawn, mostly regarding corrections.  Dawn doesn't hand many out, while, at least with me, Jonathan has a fair few.  And I was getting LOADS yesterday.  While I get a bit embarrassed to be called out in class, I take it as a compliment.  I mean, why bother saying anything if there's no point?  This must mean that he sees a point or at least potential.  I like that.

There were some humdingers though yesterday.  So while working on ronde de jombe (horrible ballet spelling ahead) I just wasn't getting it.  From the other end of the room I hear 'You're doing like a special Hungarian character move.  Keep your feet and ankles straight, they're all over the place'.  And I take a look, sure enough my working foot is EVERYWHERE.  I just rather watch it do it's thing for a moment, wondering what the hell my foot thinks it's doing.  This isn't hard, tendu to the front, make a half circle, push the foot back through first and repeat.  My foot just didn't want to get back into first and just wiggled weirdly instead.

Right, so that's been taken on board.  So I'm working on getting my feet to cooperate, then my knees start to rebel.  My non-working knee has decided it really likes the fondue move, and keeps bending.  So again I hear his voice.  'Legs straight as possible, don't bend them just now, wait till the fondue'.  And I'm like, right, got it.  But the more I try to keep my knee straight, the more it's like, 'Screw you buddy, watch me fondue!!'  And I'm like, it's not time for this!  You can fondue in a minute.

Actually say out loud in the middle of the move, 'Stop bending!'  I just look helpless at Jonathan and tell him I clearly have homework this week.

So that fiasco over, we work on assemble, which I can't do, but neither can anyone else, so I don't worry about this.

Then we move into the centre and start this hop foward, turn and step back, hop again, turn and step towards the front.  This is not fundamentally difficult.  In my head, I get it.  It's getting my body to cooperate that is the problem.  I'm hoping on the wrong foot and then turning the opposite way, going back over myself, which takes much more work then is required.  So here comes Jonathan again.  'Your other right!'

I get told this alot.  We'll be standing in beautiful positions and while I'm sure I checked the other girls to make sure I've got the right feet in the right place, but most of the time I don't.  I struggle endlessly with keep my right and left separate.  I spend a lot of time just trying to make sure I'm not in the way.  And of course it always takes me a second to realize it's me he's telling my feet are tangled again, even though it's only me that gets this particular correction.  Only thing I can figure is that I'm American and Brits do ballet on the other side, like the way the drive, so this can't possibly, be my fault right?!

And finally, while doing the moving turning thing detailed above, my direction issues came to head again and Jonathan just took me gently by the shoulders, gingerly pushing me in the right direction.  While my face was bright red, I was grateful, being lost sucks.