Pointe Shoes Hurt (And Other Lessons So Far)

After this post, I’m heading offline for awhile – I’ve got finals, then the busy, but wonderful, holiday season will be upon us, so I’m not going to have much time for blogging. I’ll be back in January.
So until then, I thought I’d leave you with a couple of things I’ve learned so far, coming back to dance:

1. It comes back easier than I thought it would.

When I started dancing again, I was really worried I’d be the worst in the class. That I’d be completely hopeless, falling around with all the grace of a two year old just figuring out how to run. Luckily, it turns out that my body has remembered at least a few things pounded into it over 13 years. My feet turned out and pointed naturally, my hands remembered their positions, and my head knew where to turn, etc. The details, it turns out, stuck in my head. On the other hand -

It’s The Most Wonderful (Read: Busiest, Craziest, Most Expensive, but Delightful) Time of the Year

Still working on the creating a new routine thing – I’m going to give it another couple of days before I make a decision on that.

On another topic – I’m about to head home for the holidays (I’m a college student who spends most of my time at school in Missouri, but my family lives in Boston).  I am very excited – it’s been awhile since I’ve seen my high school friends and my family, and my family celebrates Christmas, so there’s that to look forward to.  My last week or so here at Mizzou has been crazy enough – finals, papers, final projects, and the odd holiday party, but when I get home, it’s actually going to get crazier.  Different branches of my extended family are having holiday parties, there’s a work party, my boyfriend’s family is having a function, I still have gifts to buy, my immediate family will have our Christmas – it’s going to be crazy.

Don’t get me wrong – I love it.  Love it love it love it. But it doesn’t leave much time for ballet (you were wondering when I was going to get around to the topic of this blog, weren’t you? ).  I’ve been trying to figure out a)how much ballet I should even try and shove in over winter break and b)when I’m going to practice.  Because I really do believe that every now and again, we need a break.  If you dance en pointe every day all day for a month, your feet will not like you very much, and they will express this displeasure by turning colors, i.e. bruising, and complaining loudly when you walk.  I don’t dance that much, certainly, but I do think the holidays can be a time for taking a time out from regular life and just enjoying yourself (unless you’re in the Nutcracker, of course).  At the same time, I don’t want to get back at the end of January and find I’ve lost my right split again and fuete turns.  No thank you.

As of right now, my plan is this – I’m going to do a little stretching, on average, every other day, but I’m not going to kill myself.  I’m just going to do enough to keep myself loose and make sure I don’t lose any flexibility. If I miss a day, I’m not going to stress about it too much.  And every night, before I go to bed, to the extent that I can, I’m going to do some balancing exercises.  With any luck, I’ll be just fine when I get back at the end of January, but I’m planning to enjoy a good holiday with my family and friends in the meantime.

I’ll check in once more before I head off to let you know how the routine thing is going!

It’s A Routine

So I was reading this post on Dancer Universe, where they basically ask how people work as teachers, choreographers, dancers, etc.  Is it the same thing every time?  Or do you mix it up?

I am a creature of habit.  Part of that is how I was taught, I think.  For years, I danced at Krupinski’s, and after warming up at the barre we did floor warm-ups to “Black Horse and a Cherry Tree“.  Since I’ve stopped dancing there, I’ve developed my own warm-up, but the other day I was walking through the mall with a friend when “Black Horse and a Cherry Tree” came on, and all of my muscles sort of freaked out.  It was totally bizarre.  I’m so used to hearing that song and going into “and now I’m doing such-and-such exercise” that it actually difficult to hear the song and not go into ballet warm-up mode.

Since I’ve started dancing again, I’ve developed my own warm up, but it is pretty uncreative.  If I had “Black Horse and a Cherry Tree” on my iPod, I’d probably listen to it, but I don’t.  So instead, after a basic barre warm-up (I use my kitchen counter – don’t tell my roommate ), I use “I’ll Cover You” from Rent, “The Bitch of Living” from Spring Awakening if I’m floor stretching, and Bittersweet Symphony.  Anyone who has seen Mark Krupinski’s ballet and jazz warm-ups, however, will note that there are, ahem, suspicious similarities.  I do practically the same thing.

I can’t figure out if this is a good thing or a bad thing.  My current routine makes sure that I practice everything I need to, I work both sides of my body equally, but would it be better for me to switch it up every now and again?

I think maybe I’ll try a little experiment and do something a little different for the next couple of days.  I’ll keep you updated!

Dancing and Performing

I’ve always been a musical theatre dork before i am a dancer. My dance experience for a long time was focused in the musical theatre arena – I could do the opening tap dance number from 42nd Street (the dance starts about :30 in) backwards and forwards and loved the mambo from West Side Story. For years I took mostly jazz and tap classes, until I was told I needed to take some ballet. Ballet, more than tap and jazz, teaches technique. In a ballet class, there is enormous focus on the position of feet, on the exact curve of arms, and so forth. Ballet taught me how to hold myself and strengthened me, things I am eternally grateful for.

But the thing is, I really love performing. Last dance class, my instructor brought in an audience to watch us perform a few variations, and afterwards, he commented that I seemed like a performer first and a dancer second. “Which,” he added, “is not necessarily a bad thing, because people will pay more to see a girl do a semi-difficult dance with iffy precision but expression and energy in her face than they will to see her do a dance with perfect precision blandly. But my job is to teach you to be a better dancer, and then the performance aspect will be even better.”

iCal Can’t Put More Hours in the Day

I am a big Malcolm Gladwell fan.

That said, I am not a huge fan of his latest book, Outliers. However, there is one idea that he talks about that I found really interesting. Gladwell develops this idea called the “10,000 Hour Rule.” Essentially, the idea is that to get good at something, to get good at anything, you have to practice. You have to spend time on something to get good at it. A lot of time. 10,000 hours, to be specific.

It’s not a new idea. It’s a cliche, actually – practice makes perfect. But for some reason, I seem to expect myself to be good at something right away, and I don’t think I’m alone in that. We learn how to do something new – editing video in Avid, say, or html code, and so forth, and expect ourselves to be good at it right away. That’s crazy, when you think about it. Granted, learning new skills generally involves building upon old skills, so it doesn’t really take 10,000 hours, because it’s not entirely new. But it does take time.

Muscle Memory (and Forgetfulness)

Last class, we started with a very well-known variation – the Bluebird variation. In ballet, variations are solo dances (though more than one person can perform them at once, of course) with traditional choreography. The bluebird variation is from Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty. Long story short, the princess does a dance with a bluebird. The variation that we did is the part of the princess, as everyone in the class is female.

When I danced at Krupinski’s, we did the variation all the time as a warm-up. It’s one of the easier variations, so it allows dancers to really work on very picky, specific things, like flowing of movements, exact angles, and so on. Last week, it was turned on at Dance Arts, and it was practically instinctual to start doing the dance. I’d done it so many times at Krupinski’s that I snapped into it, even though it’s been years. Now, I’m not as flexible as I was, so my leg didn’t go as high, and it wasn’t as good as it was, but it worked. It was nice to have that happen – to have everything just click. Muscle memory is a good thing.  I’d wondered if dancing would be at all like riding a bike – you know, they say you never forget how.  It turns out some things are – things like memory of choreography, turning out, and so on, but other things, unfortunately are not.

On the other hand, I would give quite a lot to have them remember how to do good pirouettes. Part of the problem is that pirouettes were always my weakest turns, when I was dancing all of the time. There are so many things to think about before, during, and after the turn – don’t pop your heel when you go up on relevé, snap the leg up to retiré at the same time the supporting leg goes up on relevé, spot (spotting is focusing on a spot in front of you and locking your eyes onto that spot until you absolutely must turn your head, and then whipping your head around so your eyes focus back on that spot. The idea is to keep you steady, and if you’re traveling while turning, it keeps you going in one direction, instead of going all over the place), keep your arms low (don’t want to whack your partner), don’t use your arms for momentum – and I’ve just covered about the first second of a pirouette. And if just one of those things is off, then I wobble, or my retiré doesn’t hold, my supporting foot doesn’t stay in its high relevé, the turn doesn’t work correctly.

Now, all I need is time to work on that. Time, time, time. If I could just get 36 hours in a day, I’d be golden.  And if any of you figure out how to do that, please, give me a call.

Scabs, Burns, and Bruises

Ah, unanticipated setbacks. Where would we be without them?

Yesterday, I was at the gym, on a treadmill, as I am generally every-other-day. Normally I start (after a quick warm up), by running a fast half-mile, and then jogging the rest of it. When I started yesterday, though, I just did not feel like running fast. So I didn’t. Then, as I was nearing the end of my run, I thought – no, no, I really do have to do it. If I don’t do it now, then the next time it’ll be easier to not do it, and then before you know I won’t be running that fast half-mile anymore. Well, I thought, I’ll just turn up the speed and get it over with really quickly.

Great idea, in theory. Only problem was that I was tired. My legs were tired. I didn’t feel like running. I wasn’t paying attention. One moment, I’m running along, and then, I feel my right foot cross in front of my left. Hm, I thought, that’s not where that foot is supposed to be. Right foot hooks around the left, and down I go, onto the treadmill.

Quite suddenly I found myself splayed at the end of the still-running treadmill, nothing injured except for my pride. That’s what I thought, at least. Not so.

And I’m off!

Before I graduated from high school, I was spending minimum five hours a week dressed in a leotard, tights, and either a ballet skirt or cotton gym shorts. Most of those five hours were spent moving on the balls of my feet or on my toes, limbs flailing this way and that, trying to keep an eye on where I was going and not whacking the person next to me with an out of place arm or foot, hoping I at least looked like I knew what I was doing.

And sweating.

Sweating a lot.