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Ballerina Corner behind the curtain exhibitions & performances Uncategorized

Madison Studio recital day!

MSDE’s annual recital, “Ballet, Boogie, & Broadway,” kicks off in just under 5 hours. We had an excellent dress rehearsal last night, I got to leave my costumes on the premises so I don’t have to carry them over there again today, I have all the correct shoes in my bag, and (hopefully) the things I wore and then washed last night are dry now. Daniel’s stuff is packed and ready to go and the video camera is charging.  Here is what I learned at dress rehearsal:

  • It’s great to NOT be in 12 different numbers (as one of my young fellow dancers is) because that’s exhausting and you sweat a lot.  But being in only 3, widely spaced apart, as I am, is slightly too few.  You get all cold and stiff in between.  I’m going to feel silly carrying in legwarmers and a shrug when it’s 90 degrees out, but I’ll be doing it and wearing them anyway!
  • If you have my haircut (razor-cut pixie, no 2 strands the same length) and have to slick it back to look like a ballerina, the secret is to wet it and then slather on gel like there’s no tomorrow.  When your ballet number is over and you have to unslick to look like a modern or ballroom dancer, re-wet it from another dancer’s spray bottle (bless you, E. J.) and rearrange with a comb.  Be prepared for Horror Hair when you brush it all out later.  Shampoo twice the next morning (buy one of these in advance to use when it’s all over).
  • Draw your eyeliner wings on carefully lest your husband/dance partner point out to you–after it’s too late, of course–that they are incongruent.
  • Something’s wrong when you regret things that haven’t happened yet.
  • If you are planning to wear a wig, bring it with you!
  • There’s no crying at recital.  Mostly.
  • He may not agree, but it was worth it for our Widow Simone to shave his goatee.
  • The big kids are so talented, the little kids are so adorable, and we’re just lucky to be up there with ’em.

Recap/photos/video coming soon!

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Ballerina Corner faaaaaaaame!

I R FAMUS BALLERINA

Not really. But I was interviewed by 4Dancers.org as part of their month-long feature on adult ballet dancers.  Behold!  You should read the whole series; all the dancers have really great, positive things to say.

While you’re up, don’t forget to check out the “Team LaJack” page for tales of Dancing Stars rehearsal, and head on over to the Dancing Stars website for tickets to the event.  Thanks!

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Ballerina Corner

I saw Twyla Tharp’s The Princess and the Goblin!

On Saturday, February 18, I went with a friend/colleague to see Twyla Tharp’s new ballet The Princess and the Goblin.  Apparently its full formal title is Twyla Tharp’s The Princess and the Goblin, which makes my teeth hurt, but I suppose one could argue that if you’re Twyla Tharp, you can call your ballets anything you want.  In any case, if my biggest complaint is about the title, you can guess that I don’t have many complaints.  The dancing was, of course, beautiful.  Maybe a few moves (which I suspect are Tharp trademarks) seemed overused at the time but now I’m glad I saw them over and over so that they are imprinted in my memory.  The story, adapted from a 19th-century tale by George MacDonald, was not at all familiar to me, but the salient contours came through clearly enough.  I could see overlaps with/references to other Romantic-period story ballets–probably inevitable and certainly interesting.  From what I have read, Tharp is trying to add to the canon of story ballets (a form whose obituary has repeatedly been written), not transcend it.  Ballet-as-storytelling has its own generic constraints and, as such, likely benefits from hewing to tradition.

The ballet makes extensive use of children, which could have been a kiss of death, but the kids did very well: they were obviously well rehearsed but also handled very naturalistically so they seemed like children rather than Tiny Professional Dancers.  The female lead (Irene, the titular princess, danced by Alessa Rogers) was an absolute knockout with feet to die for–a necessary element considering that a major plot point in the ballet involves pointe shoes: Irene learns from her great-grandmother (confusingly, a full-scale dance role played by a lovely soloist, rather than a little-old-lady pantomime/character role) to dance en pointe, an ability that allows her to enthrall, confound, and occasionally injure the goblins.  The she-goblins later find their own pointe shoes and stumble around on them in a hilarious ballet in-joke.  I think a fair few young (or not so young *cough*) dancers turn ourselves into greedy goblins in pursuit of en-pointe glory.

The action sometimes seemed a little circular or recursive to me, an impression that I credit to my own surprising lack of experience with ballet in performance.  I’ve actually seen only a handful of ballets and am thus unaccustomed to the necessary repetitions that come with telling a story wordlessly.  As a whole, the ballet is well-paced with the energy–physical and musical–building toward a climax.  I was worried when I found out it was 80 minutes, no intermission, but then I was surprised when it was over.  For me, losing track of time is the reliable sign of a successful entertainment experience, so Twyla Tharp’s The Princess and the Goblin goes in the win column as far as I’m concerned.

New York Times story about the development of TP&TG.

And the Times’ review (avec video clip).

YouTube promotional video from Atlanta Ballet.

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Ballerina Corner dancing in the media in other news

Black Swan: WHAP!

Last night, thanks to the mysterious appearance of the HBO channels on our cable lineup, I finally watched Black Swan.  I approached the movie with extreme trepidation: because I get creeped out really easily and I don’t like to be startled, several people had told me I shouldn’t see it at all.  But I had Daniel next to me making fake-scary faces, waving his fingers, and going “WOOOO, it’s just a MOOOOOOVIE,” so I went for it.

At the end of the movie I posted on Facebook: “Saw Black Swan finally.  Kind of want to slap Darren Aronofsky upside the head.”

Here’s the thing: I am entirely willing to believe that the world of ballet has the potential to attract and/or create psychologically damaged people.  (It helps that I was obsessed with Gelsey Kirkland’s autobio Dancing on my Grave  when I was in high school.)  Stage mothers living out their frustrated dance dreams through their daughters are real.  Emotionally and sexually manipulative company directors are real (depending on the view one takes of George Balanchine, who by some accounts was the model for the character of Thomas in Black Swan).  The consuming desire for perfection is real.  The anxiety about career longevity and advancement is real.  The bloody toes are real.  Even the characterization of Nina, simultaneously sheltered and damaged, coddled and neglected, rang somewhat true for me: a promising dancer who commits to a company at age 18 is making a decision she probably isn’t developmentally prepared to make and ends up coming of age in a hothouse atmosphere where her usefulness to society is very narrowly defined (see also Sergei what’s-his-name, 21, who just left the Royal Ballet to run a tattoo studio or something).

So my beef with Black Swan is not with its portrayal of the world of professional dance.  My beef with Black Swan is with its cinematic style.  Doesn’t Aronofsky trust his audience?  The beginning of the movie was so in medias res that I actually thought we had missed the first 15 minutes or something.  We have no indication of how Nina became the psychological train wreck that she is (potentially a more interesting story, IMO).  The movie starts with the melodrama-o-meter dialed up to 11 and then keeps cranking on it all the way to the end.  Stop it with the claustrophobic interiors, the grey-on-grey-on-grey color scheme, the relentless distastefulness of the characters.  Couldn’t I just have spent the whole movie with Mila Kunis’s character?  She seemed like a cool girl.

I wasn’t bothered by the creepiness/grossness per se, or the sexuality–I am on record as loving the movie The Libertine, one of the most explicit and nastiest movies I’ve ever seen.  But, again, memo to director: WE GET IT.  Girlfriend needs therapy.  And her own apartment and a normal boyfriend and some friends and maybe a protein shake.  Nor do I mind Natalie Portman having used dance doubles and then kept quiet about it.  High-level ballet training is a 15- or 20-year pursuit requiring that one start with a fairly specific body type.  Hardcore dance nerds would notice that she was using a double (“There’s no way that’s really her”) and we’d have noticed if she hadn’t (“That was terrible; she should have had a double”).  The rest of the world probably wouldn’t care, and the awards that she won were for acting, not for developpés. Keeping the use of doubles a secret till after awards season was a dumb decision but probably an administrative one.

While I’ve got you here, though, I have to say that I don’t understand giving those awards for what I felt was largely a one-note performance.  She spent 80% of the movie crying or trying not to cry.  I don’t believe, come to think of it, that such fragility would have survived in the professional dance world as long as her character supposedly did.  Even if you take into account that she hadn’t had a piece of cake in at least 15 years.

The dance world is an insider’s world. I think that’s the reason that ballet movies are always flawed.  Educating an audience and then creating compelling characters and telling an engaging story is a lot to do successfully in two hours.  I credit Black Swan for its ambition but fault it for being headache-inducingly melodramatic (true fact: I had a headache at the end of the film) and, in the end, unoriginal.  I would venture to suggest that the truisms of ballet that I enumerated above are widely enough known to stand as clichés.  And I would happily watch a movie of much greater subtlety and originality in which an insurgent dancer equipped with good mental health, supportive friends, and actual body fat (just a little) successfully pushed aside the punishing atmosphere and mind games of her company, opening the way to its re-creation as a creative juggernaut of positive energy.

But then, I am a Pollyanna.

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Ballerina Corner

Sugar Prune Fairy

YOU GUYS. In ballet tonight we started learning the Sugar Plum Fairy variation.

For the first few minutes I did not think much about the fact that this experience represents a milestone in my ballet life.  I was busy thinking “Oh, cool, Sugar Plum.  Wonder if I will get to perform this at some point?” (haha, “at some point.”  See what I did there?)  And then I was thinking “Gaaaah, so much pointe work that I’m not sure I can do” and then “I don’t understand these counts and second arabesque and flip around and somehow second arabesque again and WHAT.”

Then we started doing it to the music a couple of times.  I got a sense of where the accents are and thus an idea of how the choreography is supposed to look (note to self: watch some videos).  And I went out to get some water with that music thrumming in my head, remembering how excited I was as a kid to learn that it’s not a HARPSICHORD and it’s not a XYLOPHONE, it’s a celestina.  And it finally struck me (I’m slow to catch on) that at age 38.5, I am learning Sugar Plum for the first time ever.

Holy Nutcracker!

It is very exciting even though I’m not very good at it right now, and I don’t know if I’ll ever do it in front of people, and I’m not sure I am Sugar Plum material in the first place.

Every version of the variation is a little different but this is the one I found that is most like what we are learning:

This is the part I think I’d like, but I’ll have to start working now on lifting my leg up next to my head. Daniel already thinks I’m totally capable of doing the partnered penché move at 2:43:

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Ballerina Corner competitions exhibitions & performances social dancing

Back to school/Back to getting schooled

Well, sports fans, it’s been a long, hot summer.  Not much to report…or is there?

At the end of July I went to Austria for an academic conference and also found out about the Vienna ball season.  The Viennese waltz is called that for a reason, y’know!  My dream is to attend the New Year’s Eve Kaiserball at Hofburg Palace, but I would also settle for a lesser ball such as the Coffeehouse Owners’ Ball.  The challenges are considerable (airfare, ball ticket prices, transcontinental ballgown transport), but wouldn’t it be an amazing experience?

A week after my return from Austria, we performed our rumba exhibition at the third annual Dancing for our Heroes charity ball at the Museum of Aviation.  It went REALLY well, probably the best we’ve ever danced it even though we had to put water on our shoes because the floor was so slick.  Somehow (absent-mindedness) we did not get any video of our routine, but I think I have video of Jim and JoyDawn’s gorgeous waltz as well as Derrek and Wendy’s très avant-garde cha-cha to Rammstein’s “Du Hast” on my phone.  It was a great night for everybody!

That was the last time Daniel and I danced before he went to Canada for two weeks to see his family.  He returns early next week and we are going to jump into preparation for Carolina Fall Classic, Atlanta Dance Classic, and maybe Christmas in Dixie if we have any money left.

We are also starting to work with a new wedding couple (Hi Tiffany & Tyler!), looking forward to seeing Stacey & JT dance at their wedding over Labor Day weekend (thanks for the invite, guys!), and getting excited about jumping back into ballroom class on Wednesday nights.  I am practically counting the HOURS until my first ballet class–either Tuesday night or Thursday night depending on exactly when Daniel rolls back into town (relevant because he went to Canada in MY car).

Meanwhile, I went to Academy Ballroom last weekend with JoyDawn and Beth for their monthly party and the next installment of the Jack & Jill competition (read up on the J&J here and here).  This month’s dance was the cha-cha.  My standard line re: the cha-cha is that I love it, but it doesn’t love me back.  I am slowly getting better at it, but doing that characteristic Latin hip motion at cha-cha tempo continues to be a challenge.  Plus, I am really out of shape right now and the cha-cha requires some stamina.  I had NO expectations whatsoever.  Well, check that: I expected to make it through the first round and into the final, which I duly did, dancing with a cool gentleman named Phil.  For the final I drew another cool gentleman, Martin, who seemed (unlike me) not to be wheezing even though the song went on for a while (it’s possible that I’ve been spoiled by 90-second competition rounds).  When Rachel announced the placements and I was not 5th, 4th, 3rd, or 2nd, I thought “Oh, I didn’t place, minor bummer.”  Then she said that the first-place couple was “possibly the oddest pairing ever in the Jack and Jill” and it turned out that Martin and I had won!  We were an “odd couple” because with dance shoes on, I am a good bit taller than he is.  So now I am tied for the top of the J&J leaderboard.  Can you believe it?

I’ve now ended the majority of the paragraphs in this post with questions.  Can I keep it up?

As soon as I hit “post” I’m going over to the Local Dance Opportunities page to post some updates.  Will you please look at them?

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Ballerina Corner exhibitions & performances teaching

Madison Studio Recital 2011–Videotastic!

We had an amazing time at the Madison Studio’s annual recital yesterday.  Nobody threw up or passed out, everyone remembered to throw away their gum before going onstage, and we all danced GREAT.  (Okay, I may have kicked someone in the contemporary ballet number, but we don’t need to talk about that.)

We had not really told our dancers what to expect from the recital experience.  I’m still second-guessing that choice.  Not that one can explain what it’s like to be onstage, but given another opportunity, I will be more explicit about the logistics of the whole affair: there will be parents and dancers scurrying everywhere; come already dressed unless you are willing to strip down to your skivvies in front of 10 other girls*; apply your makeup “in triplicate”**; be ready to hurry up and wait, probably multiple times; yield to exiting dancers; yield faster to dancers exiting faster; watch your sight lines when you stand backstage; and it’s true that you can’t see the audience when you’re performing.

Oh, and: after it’s over, not remembering anything about your performance is normal.  So is being exhausted and starving once the adrenaline wears off.

And: SMILE.

And: BREATHE.

And: HAVE FUN.

*This willingness develops with repeated exposure–I am obsessively modest in my professional life but practically exhibitionist around other dancers.

**A member of our group came out with this slightly cock-eyed yet very accurate description of stage makeup.

No matter what, it was a huge success and I’m sure the dancers learned much more by doing it than they ever would have from listening to us talk. Click through for rundown and videos…

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Ballerina Corner dance events exhibitions & performances teaching

Dress Rehearsal

This afternoon is dress rehearsal for the Madison Studio recital.  Daniel and I are dancing 3 times: once on our own, once with our class, and once in the production finale.  I am dancing 2 additional times: in my contemporary ballet class’s number (to Seal’s “Kiss from a Rose”) and then in that class’s part of the finale.  You wouldn’t believe the amount of stuff I have to lug along with me today.  It’s making a competition look like Casual Friday.

  • Costume for “Kiss”, including hair decoration that I swore I’d lost until I discovered it was pinned to the inside of the costume.
  • Costume for our class number, i.e. sequin camisole top and ballroom practice skirt.
  • Costume for Daniel’s and my solo, which is the rumba we did as a solo exhibition at Garden City Challenge.
  • Costume for the finale, i.e., black leotard and black ballet skirt.
  • 2 pairs of tights (1x ballet pink, 1x fishnet).
  • Body liner, which is like underwear in leotard form.
  • 3 pairs of shoes.  Well, 2 pairs of shoes and one pair of “FootUndeez” (speaking of underwear).
  • Makeup, hair spray, bobby pins.

And I have it easy compared to some of the girls who are in the Performance Ensemble as well as 2-3 regular classes.  They might need to employ pack animals!  But as far as I’m concerned, it’s all worthwhile.  Given my introverted tendencies in general, the fact that I love to perform doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, but there it is.  I am especially excited for our ballroom dancers who are having their first taste of performance.  They have lots of family members coming to watch and cheer them on.  Hooray!

The recital is tomorrow (Saturday, June 4) at 2 p.m. at Zuver Auditorium on the campus of Mount De Sales here in Macon.  Tickets are available at the door for $10.

Wish us merde!*

*Being superstitious like all theatre people, dancers do not say “good luck.”  For obvious reasons, they also do not say “Break a leg.”  Instead, they–we–say “merde.” Which is a bad word in French, which is why it’s so much fun to hear 8-year-olds say it.

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Ballerina Corner competitions exhibitions & performances in other news lessons teaching

Conservation of Dance Momentum

A body that is dancing tends to continue dancing unless acted on by an outside force.  In the absence of outside forces (spring semester ended on May 6;  congratulations, Class of 2011!), we have been dancing a lot and doing a lot of dance-related stuff in the last several days.  Since I haven’t had to teach I’ve been going to four ballet classes a week at Madison Studio: my usual twice-a-week “Pearls” class (average age: 11, focused on beginning pointe work and trying to remember which is croisé and which is effacé) plus two adult classes which, despite being ostensibly for beginners, serve to demonstrate that one can never spend too much time working on the basics.  All this ballet is having several salubrious effects, including finally loosening up the hamstring I pulled a few months ago and keeping me from going insane as I work on revisions to my book manuscript.

We are still working on our paso doble; on Monday we went over the videos we recorded in our last lesson with Eddie and just repeated, repeated, repeated the steps without even trying to get up to tempo.  This video that a friend sent me earlier today demonstrates just how far up “up to tempo” actually is.

No lesson this past weekend, but on Sunday we had an all-studio blocking rehearsal at Madison Studio for the recital on June 4.  Having the entire population of the studio in one place at one time was an impressive exercise!  It was our dancers’ first time doing their recital piece for any kind of audience and they did great.  We also managed to remember our rumba routine despite not having done it for a while.  The real high point was running the “production finale” in which every class appears, one after the other, and dances a short additional routine.  Lots of us are in more than one class, so there was a lot of dashing from one side of the studio to the other, hurried changing of shoes, and general crowd control.  The ballroom dancers also had a good laugh at the “FootUndeez” I wear for the contemporary ballet number I’m dancing in.  Yes, they look like panties for your feet.  Hence the name.  Can we all just move on now?  (Okay, they are pretty funny, especially the ones I’ve seen that have a little pink net tutu ruffle around the elastic part.)

After regular classes on Monday (Pearls class, paso practice with Daniel, ballroom class) and adult class Tuesday at noon, the ballroom group reconvened at the studio on Tuesday evening to get pictures taken.  The marvelous Keiko Guest (check out the “Fine Art” side of her site for sure, but a couple of those may not be SFW) comes to the studio once a year to take individual pictures of everyone in their recital costumes.  She brings along a staff of 3 or 4 people, a small photography-studio setup (lights, background, even one of those fans to make your hair blow around and look glamorous), and more computer equipment than I ever thought possible.  In less than an hour we had lined up to wait, had a jolly time getting our photos taken, and looked at our proofs to order prints.  The pictures were amazingly good and I can’t wait to get the prints.  Ms. Guest is a former dancer herself, so she understands what good lines look like and how to adjust people’s positions so that on film, we look like better dancers than we probably really are!  Daniel and I had a lot of fun coming up with poses for ourselves and then inflicting them on our other two couples.  The best part was taking some shots of all 6 of us together.  She somehow made us all look attractive and dancerly while crammed into about 4 square feet of space on her backdrop.

So it’s been a great couple of weeks, and the beat goes on.  This evening we’re dancing at Pinegate with the performance ensemble from Madison, then on Saturday we have a lesson from Eddie.  And today we got a call from another retirement community here in town, wanting us to schedule a performance.  AND…according to the counter on their website, Gumbo is just 5 days away.  I’m pleased to report that the counter is not accurate!

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Ballerina Corner

Fish, ponds, totem poles

Had an interesting conversation with a ballet classmate’s mother last week.  She mentioned that she wants her daughter to stay in her current level for another year rather than moving up to the next class.*  Meanwhile, I am supposed to move into Ballet Tech, which is nearly the most advanced class in the studio.  I will be in over my head in that class whereas the young lady might have an advantage in her class, having been through it before.  It made me wonder which position is preferable.  The class I was in this year has been “too easy” for me in a cognitive/intellectual sense.  I learned the difference between effacé and croisé 30 years ago and never forgot it; even things like conventional patterns of steps (e.g., doing barre exercises en croix) have stuck with me so I found the choreography in that class really manageable.  The physical exertion, however, was challenging at times and I know it helped me a lot to build strength & flexibility–especially for pointe work, which is a big part of the reason I chose the class in the first place.  Next year I’ll be at the bottom of the totem pole in every sense, being asked to do things that may be beyond my capacity both mentally and physically.

I’d rather be over-challenged than under-challenged but I know it will be a…er…challenge [cripes, who’s editing this stuff?] to be in that higher-level class.  Everyone says You Shouldn’t Compare Yourself to Other Dancers but the reason everyone has to keep saying it is that everyone keeps doing it!  Being in class with 9- to 13-year-olds afforded me a break from Comparison Disorder because measuring myself against girls practically four times younger was genuinely pointless.  I can sit here and tell myself that measuring myself against girls 20-25 years younger is equally pointless, but the part of my brain (hint: most of it) that still thinks I’m 17 will not buy it.  Plus, the comparisons are useful if they make me push myself a little harder.

Right?

It’s ego-building to be a big fish in a small pond but ultimately it wouldn’t improve my dancing, so I am pleased (to say nothing of terrified) to be moving up next year.  It will require me to keep a slightly closer eye on my sanity.  And to work on my splits.  And to get a grip on pirouettes.  But that’s all to the good.

Right?

*Props to that mom, en passant, for taking a constructive look at her daughter’s development instead of going the cliché Ballet Mother route and insisting on her advancing no matter what.