Thursday, June 19, 2008

More of the Good Stuff

Some pictures today, yes I know I am way behind on updates! It is busy here!

Monday started with the camp photo, which is always fun! Heidi's husband is a professional dance photographer and he does a great job with our rabble. He is shooting the cover of Dance Teacher Magazine next month, which is very cool!

We then had technique with Kathy followed by an intro to our variation for the Friday performance with Danile. It is from Coppelia and is a little strenuous; but nothing compared to a certain pointe piece recently attempted!
After lunch we were back with Kathy working on the repertory performance piece, which is from Paquita. If you go to this video, we are doing the first 4.10 minutes almost exactly as this corps does, but without the excessive wobbling of the girl on the right at 4.04!

After 'rep' which went incredibly well, we had a jazz class, which was actually more of a modern class, we had some Horton in there! By this time my head was about to explode, so I stopped when she got into some turn sequences!

There was a trip to the dance store (Ellman's) arranged for the evening, and I managed to find my first ever low back leotard ( I was covering up my bra in basic tanks from the age of 16 on!), it is even in a Tall size, so it fits really well.

The evening ended with a 2 margarita dinner at Nacho Mama's handily located near the dance store. It was probably one margarita too many, but I was not feeling any major muscle pain!

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Pushing it a little far?

Sunday was pretty rough! We got into the studio at 11am, for orientation and placement classes. What was pretty cool though was that Heidi asked me what levels I thought I should be in; being a returning student has advantages. I stuck with the intermediate level for technique (3a) and asked to be in the intermediate level for pointe too, and for modern.

Those of us at dinner the night before had decided that 3a had been enough work last year, and as many of the same people had returned, and we knew that the teachers would teach to the level anyway, I felt pretty comfortable with it all.

The 1.5 hour placement class was with Randall (who we only saw for pas de deux last year). I was much less stressed out about it, and was able to relax and check out the newbies! Randall's style is very lyrical, lots of epaulment and using the breath, even in basic barre. It was fun and straight forward, and felt good!

After a 15 minute break went on to the intermediate pointe with Tristi, and it was hard, but I felt it was not out of my reach, and I fared ok on all the one foot releves etc. A couple of people voluntarily left during barre and went down to the lower level class, and I certainly didn't feel that I had to do that, but it was a long 45 minute class!

After another quick break we had kinesiology (interesting stuff about the way we move, concentrated on backs and shoulders) but I was lying on a mat on the floor and felt decidedly sleepy! I roused myself for the last class of the day which started at 5.15 and I was soooo tired, but it was the intermediate modern class with a drummer and I couldn't wimp out of it!

Our teacher was Judy Steele, and thankfully she started us off with some slow stretching, but we worked up to a cool combination with some floor rolling which, of course didn't phase me at all, and some nice across the floor but it was to a 5/8 count and by this time I was beginning to loose it!

Our first day finished up at 6.30pm and we stumbled back to the hotel, went to the local Wholefoods style grocery store for supplies and retreated to our rooms where I had a long overdue appointment with re hydration and the foam roller!

Trying not to loose my head.

It is Tuesday morning here in Richmond and we are about to go into day three of Adult Dance camp. I honestly think it has taken me this long to get over the jet lag and 4am start on Saturday.
There was a slight sleep issue on Saturday night too, when after checking in, drinking several glasses of good Rioja at the welcome dinner and finally trying to get some sleep; the entire hotel was awoken at 4am by the emergency evacuation alarm. We all filled down to emergency exit stairs ( I am on the 6th floor) to the ground floor level only to find the fire exit locked! Not good. We came back up to the 3rd floor and tried another fire exit and were able to get out into the early morning rain.
It was quite the scene. Several other groups were staying in the hotel over the weekend, notably the triathletes (mostly male, young and very scantily clad) and the rappers (again mostly male and high or drunk and LOUD). It was the parents with young children I felt the most sorry for.
After waiting in the street for about half an hour, having seen the fire department arrive, we then all filed back in, seemingly with no instructions from any hotel staff ( I think I only saw one staff member the entire time and he looked as bewildered as we were) and back to our rooms.
Quiet was restored until about 45 minutes later (exactly the time it takes to start to settle back in to sleep, it turns out) the alarm went off again. I considered ignoring it,then decided to get up and got as far as the door before it cut out mid sentence ( " An emergency has been reported please leave your rooms by the closest emergency exit") I decided they must be trying to reset the alarm, so I went back to bed. They continued to try to reset the alarm at 45 minute intervals until about 7am, when I finally got back to sleep!

The next day one of the other dancers overheard a conversation at the front desk which confirmed her suspicions. The Rappers (on her floor, hence her suspicions) had been partying , 'toking up' and set off the fire alarm.

The rest of Sunday ( sleep deprived, dehydrated as I was) consisted of the all important placement class, orientation, intermediate (yay!) pointe, kinesiology, and intermediate modern. To say that I was feeling a bit 'out of it' would be an understatement!

More technical gory details to come. I have to rush off to Pilates now.

Thursday, June 12, 2008


test with fiscus.