Weekend

   Finally Sunday has come. Yesterday was exhausting we had 7.5 hours of class and rehearsal straight!
Fortunately for one of the pieces that we were rehearsing, our teacher broke us up into groups and rehearsed us separately. That way we had a little break and we could eat some food.
  The pieces are starting to get easier though and yesterday I noticed that my Italian fouettes are getting much better!
 

Marianela Nunez  in Le Corsaire photo by Gene Schiavone.

Fan Dance

   Today was quite the crazy day!
   We had a  run through of all the dances that we have been rehearsing and will be performing soon. All the teachers were at the front of the studio while we performed the dances. Two of the three pieces that I am in went very well but one of them was a disaster.
   I know the dance but we hadn't rehearsed it for a couple of weeks... which isn't usually a problem but this  time 3 of the girls who normally are in the dance were replaced, one girl was missing, and two new girls had been put in. So we had no idea where we were supposed to be!!! We all start out in a straight line but then the patterns get very complex and suddenly I realized that one of the new girls had learnt my spot!!!    
     Suddenly I was doing a position that I had never been in before and I had no idea where I was suppposed to be!!! Some of the other girls behind me in the line found themselves in the same situation. We all knew the formation but not where in it we were supposed to dance. It must have looked a mess but personally I think we did quite a good job of holding it all together... kind of. No one stopped dancing entirely and the formations ending up being o.k. but kind of hilarious because everyone was telling each other where we had to go. It was very messy.
    At the end of that dance the artistic director made it very clear that the Fan Dance would definately get more "rehearsal time". Thank god!

Argh!

Just spent an hour writing a long and detailed post on saving your pointe shoes to have it deleted by mistake. How frustrating!!!!!

I am going to CHINA!

Amazing news yesterday, must go to class and 6.5 hours of rehearsal straight right now but I will update later!!!

Second Day of Class

   I could hardly get out of bed this morning I was so sore!!! Almost everything was in pain especially my calves, back, feet, glutes and strangely enough my ribcage! After a nice long shower, and a bit of massage I managed to make it out of the house to class. Warming up was a challenge but I did some running around the studio to loosen up my muscles and then stretched before class.
   All of my classes went well, a lot of international students are still not at dance yet, because they have gone home to visit their families. We are having very small classes which is nice. Our classes today we quite difficult but I really enjoyed them. Everyone taking them was working very hard and so inspiring! It is lovely to take a class and watch your other classmates' beautiful extensions, strong technique and amazing turns and be able to think: "I am in this class! I know these people!!!'.
   Anyways that is all the news from me today, next post will be about pointe shoes <3

Class Again =)

   Today we had our first day of classes after a long Christmas break!
I had such a hard time waking up in the morning and getting out of the house early. It was really nice to see all of my friends again and chit chat while we were warming up and stretching. I didn't feel too unflexible or weak, so that was good.
    However once I put my soft shoes on I realized that I had lost a lot of muscle in my feet over the break! My shoes felt quite a bit looser than usual and sure enough during class I felt my poor feet wobbling around when I was on demi-pointe. First class went well, I got some good corrections and while it wasn't the best class it certainly wasn't the nightmare I had imagined it would be.
    Then we had our lunch break, I ate my lunch with my friends talking about our holidays. After lunch I turned my iPod on and stretched for an hour and a half. It felt really good to loosen up all my joints again ( I did very little stretching during Christmas break). I also did lots and lots of theraband exercises for my feet, and ab work.
   Second class went really well too although it was quite nerve wracking! My muscles were quite tired and shaky and my quad muscle cramped up very painfully during adage.... not a good sign, I shouldn't have been using my quad. The principals of our school kept watching class through the open door and walking in and taking a good look at all of us. We knew that they were starting to do casting for our next performance so it made many of us nervous. Especially seen as we were wearing nothing but leotards and tights which are very unforgiving after Christmas time!
    We did extra jumps and then had a short pointe class which was lucky because many of us were in a lot of pain after all of the jumps we did! It is important not to overdo yourself on the first day back... even though I took it easy I don't know if I will be able to walk tomorrow!!!!
    Then the teachers had a meeting while we were left to practice on our own for half an hour (unusual and kind of scary). They were figuring out casting, I'm quite excited to find out what ballet we are going to do. There have been talks of Raymonda, Paquita, Spartacus, and even Swan Lake... I hope we do Swan Lake!!!

All in all a very good day and a great start to the new year <3

Some of My Favourite Videos

Here are some youtube videos  that are amazing!

Natalia Osipova's Esmeralda at age 17
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WV0jT1Do6NQ

Svetlana Zakharova as Odette in Swan Lake
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8nSUBcYk5w

Le Enfants de la Danse, Paris Opera Ballet School
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltrZnTbmSyk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYVNuCsSK7w&feature=related

Shanghai Dance Academy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5I-FbAdmsM&feature=related

I will add many more in the future!

Things to Do with Tights

Tights, tights, tights, they always seem to get holes and runs.
Not only that, but they are not cheap either so here are some tips for tights!

-Buy your tights a size larger than the height/weight chart tells you to. Buying your tights a size larger means that the material is not pulled as taught and therefore less prone to get holes... I wouldn't recommend doing this with mesh tights because they tend to be a little less stretchy and therefore baggy.

- Wash your tights by hand. I don't follow this rule because I go through a pair of tights a day at least but if you can, washing them by hand doesn't make them lose their colour and stretchiness the way a washing machine and dryer will.

Old tights: If you have tights with holes that simply won't go away no matter how much darning it takes try using them for something else such as:

- Warm up shirts! Cut out the crotch of the tights (don't make too big of a hole or it will fall off your shouders) and cut of the feet of your tights. Turn upside down and voila you have a shirt. It might look nice if you dyed it a pretty colour!

- Shelf bra for leotards, make the warm up shirt and then put it on under a leotard you have sans lining. Then mark where you will need to cut the tights so that they are not visible. Take the leotard and warm up shirt off and cut along your markings. Sew the new shelf bra into your leotard, for added support you could double the tights up.

- Hair elastics, cut the legs across horizontally. You can use these as a hair bands too!

- Waist belts, cut the elastic waist band out of your tights

- Footless tights... just cut off the feet if they have holes in them. My school will not allow these to be worn in class but for most summer schools and open classes these are a nice change!

- Dog toy, braid/knot together a couple of the legs


Now go find that pile of old tights you have lying around xxx <3

First Post!

Today I have decided to go online with my life and it's various ups and downs.
The sweat, love, tears and passion that belong to ballet.
Hopefully you will find my little tips and tricks that have helped me along the way useful and my daily life interesting.
<3