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!