I’m Back!

Guess who’s back? It’s been a wild couple of weeks! 🙂 I moved into my apartment and I’m absolutely loving it!! I have tons of floor space to craft and prance around! I also had a double whammy this week when I bought my FIRST CAR and got a really good haircut! 😉

Dance wise, I’m not where I thought I would be a week before CPYB which is a little disappointing but no sense looking back, I’m just going to move forward and work as hard as I can. So far, I’ve taken ballet three times this week. Today at Jose Mateo with Molly. Yesterday at Boston Ballet in the South End with Murray and Monday night with Froelich! My mom is coming to visit tomorrow but I do hope to take class tomorrow evening at Boston Ballet in Newton. We’ll see what happens! 🙂

I really enjoyed Molly’s class tonight. Even though the combinations aren’t complicated, you really get to work through things. I remember not liking Jose’s a couple of years ago because I felt like they didn’t give enough corrections but I’m really liking my experience now. Molly is funny, gives good examples, and compares ballet concepts to real world things like you don’t have to do ballet like you would jumping jacks. You arms and legs do not have to always go out and in together.  A couple of years ago she compared something to getting to dance right on time but not factoring in parking (I wish I could remember what she was talking about ballet wise haha).

Cool combo alert: Tendus at the barre

• tendu front, front, front, hold
• tendu side, side, hold, side
• tendu back, hold, back, back,
• hold, tendu side, side, side

She demonstrated this exercise three times and I was struggling to get the pattern for some reason until I realized that the holds happen in descending order from 4. To the front you hold on count 4, to the side you hold on count 3, etc. Once you’ve got that it’s not too bad but you definitely have to count! 🙂

My only big gripe about today was that I found myself spacing out when she was demonstrating the exercises. They are simple enough that I could follow someone for a bit and then get it but I don’t like that I wasn’t able to really focus. I had to ask her to repeat an exercise not because it was overly difficult but because I had missed part of it. I know I was distracted on Monday because I had just bought a car but today nothing really big had happened. That’s not actually true, work has been pretty stressful lately, but still. I think I need to get myself used to being in ballet mode so that I can remember combinations better and more quickly. What do you think about when you’re watching a teacher demonstrate? Sometimes I feel like it’s just white noise in my head. I retain the combo for the time required and then after class when I’m trying to remember…it’s already left.

Last week or the week before I took Molly’s class and decided to sit out during the very last across the floor combo – I was feeling a little light-headed – not too bad – and I just didn’t want to deal with chaines right then. After class Molly asked me if I needed help going through the last combination since I had sat it out. That was so nice of her!!!!!!!! It really made me feel like she cares about her students, that she cares about me. Thanks Molly 🙂

I’m trying to get myself used not feeling guilty over every little thing. I’m trying to give myself some slack so that if I want to go home and relax and read book I don’t feel horrible for not going to class. I think it’s going to take time of course but it’s physically not possible for me to work full-time, dance full-time, socialize, learn new crafts/skills, and relax with 24 hours in a day. Something has to give and rather it be me dropping something all together it’s me dropping my expectation that I can do EVERYTHING at the same time. I’m not saying I want to become lazy – I just want to have some more freedom to juggle my life and not feel like I’m constantly dropping the ball. 🙂