Ballet

I'm heading out to ballet class in a bit, and so I thought it would be a good time to talk about it with you.

You can't tell because no one else is in the picture,
but my feet are totally backwards here.

Last summer when we had out little family reunion at Lake Tahoe, one morning I had Loo teach me some of her sweet ballet moves. At the time, she'd been taking ballet for something like 6 months or maybe even a whole school year and she was in love with it. I just wanted to spend some quality bonding time with the kid sis by having her share something she loved with me.

This picture clearly shows my typical "ballet face."
It's super awesome.

She taught me to plie and I think we did some tendus and holy cow, I LOVED it. I could really feel how the movements were engaging all of my core and leg muscles and it was great. Later, I was talking to Ames about it and she mentioned she had gone to a 'toning barre' class that was basically focused on using ballet movement to build tone. And I though that would be perfect for what I wanted out of ballet and determined that I would look for a similar class once I got settled in Virginia

I'm totally making this demi-grand rond de jambe look easy.

Several (okay two) months later when I was finally settled in Virginia, I started really looking into ballet-style toning classes. But as I thought about what I really wanted to get out of ballet, I decided that I would be better off looking for an adult beginning ballet class. I wanted to learn how to move my body differently, and to really 'live' in it. I know that sounds weird, but I'd always kind of had an 'inner me/outer me' disconnect and I decided that I didn't love that, and I had this theory that taking ballet classes would help me get over that.

Posture could have been better, but I didn't fall over.
And that's something.

I was right. One thing that I have learned to really love about ballet is the way that it focuses your mental energy on your physical movements -- to do it right you have to find that mind-body connect, that inner me/outer me union. When ballet is working it's you, your body, and the music and I love that. It's different from running, where you can set your body almost on autopilot. I like running for that reason, actually, it's physically hard, but it leaves your brain mostly stimulus free and I find running a really good time to contemplate life, the universe and everything.

Soutenu turns are my favorite.

Ballet for me is the opposite. It doesn't (yet) require the same level of intense physical exertion that running does (mostly because I'm still beginning), but it does require a kind of single-minded focus on the moment, the movement, that drives out all other mental considerations.

I'm totally in this moment, and enjoying it.

A couple weeks ago, as part of national dance week, the studio that I go to had an adult showcase for their adult dance classes. One of the other girls in the class and I decided to participate and our instructor put together an adagio routine and a little waltz. Mostly I did it to please some friends who'd been wanting to see me dance, and it was really fun to perform actually. Never mind that I started in backwards fifth and that obviously neither of us was at "we've been dancing since we were three" level of ballet awesomeness.

We were no corp de ballet in perfect synch.

And it was obviously not as pretty and graceful on us as it was on our instructor who had been dancing since three.

This looked AMAZING when Rachel did it.

But I looked through the pictures that Annie took of the recital and was pleasantly surprised at how well I'm wearing ballet these days.

Just like a real ballerina, right?