no one gets to come in
ballet classes haven't really been running smoothly for me recently, but today's made me breathe a sigh of relief. instead of feeling like a weight was pressing down on my chest, it felt like air was breathed into my lungs. in part this was probably due to my attitude in approaching the class. for most of the year i'd been really strict with timing - i wanted to be well on time so i had plenty of time to tie my pointe shoes comfortably. today i didn't care very much, so while i was a little late, i felt way more calm and comfortable en route and when i got there. it was like i'd untied a ribbon that had been tied really tightly across my torso.
generally i did okay too, a little less blocked than i usually get in this class. sure, i made mistakes, but i felt mostly okay. very little moments of panic and god-i-just-want-to-break-down-in-tears. and hey, what have things come to when that's what i measure my classes by? well.
and can i just mention something that makes me lift my chin up a little higher? in contemporary yesterday we were doing developés, and my teacher came to stand next to me to correct me. she held my leg up and turned it out some more, and she told me that i can actually get it really high, and that i can turn out way further, too. lovely things to hear, especially the latter since i'd been worried about my turnout. in my ballet group there's a girl with, i'm sorry but it's true, terrible turnout, and i was worried mine was similar. it isn't. this made me feel better in today's class as well.
next week, after the pointe class, we're going to do part of the barre in our general advanced class on pointe as well. i'm a little worried, i've only been doing this for maybe seven months, which sounds so much longer than it is when you're talking pointe at my age. my teacher told us we were going to do this, and eventually added "that means you too, sabienne." then smiled, and said "you're so studiously avoiding my eyes." oh.
and lastly, a weird little thing, in contemporary we've been doing a dancey thing to the song colorblind by the counting crows for the last few weeks. now, this is not a new song or anything, and i had to think a little bit when she played it the first time. i smiled, remembering how i listened to it all the time when i was sixteen. then today my ballet teacher used it in warm-up. i actually laughed out loud a little, since - how odd is that coincidence? i told her about it when the song finished, and she said she'd just though 'oh, i'll download this now,' and was similarly amazed. "it's not a very well known song!" she kept saying.
oh, universe.