Photo Dump from 3.2.2015

     So, Mondays have been a frustration for me at the studio I teach at. Before the December show, I had more students in my Monday class (I only had one Monday class and one Friday class at the time). A problem with the area I live in is that it's a spread out desert area and jobs are harder to come by than in many other areas. This leads to people not being able to afford to put their kids in dance (or adults not being able to easily afford hobbies that cost nearly $50 a month). 

     This, paired with the fact that the only time I could get to the studio was three hours early, led to me getting in some much needed pointe practice. I just got back into technique classes again and though I have been en pointe for nearly five years, I have craptastic feet and I'm not where I could be. 

So, though I'd taken Intermediate Ballet at the junior college en pointe that day, I decided to get in some extra practice. My feet were hurting. Especially my big toe on my right foot. I decided to try to get some photos of me failing dancing en pointe. Most are stills but I took screen grabs of a video for some chaines that definitely need work. I had thought they were okay, but seeing the pictures...no. haha.

Anyways...

Purple tights I forgot I owned. I need better turnout. 

.

.

What photo dump wouldn't be complete without a smudgy mirror pic?

I need to work on turning out my back foot.

.

.

I'm over my box...but my feet suck. It's an issue I need to work on. Perhaps some love for my elastic band is needed. Okay, ALL the love.

.

.

And strettttchhhhh. I'd possibly love this if my knees were over my toes.

.

.

I actually really like this one (shitty turnout aside).

.

.

Now, some motion!

At first, I was not aware that my feet were so far apart.

.

.

Better...ish. (took off the top because I need to face being able to see myself like this. Ick.)

.

.

At the front desk after. Where are the students?!

.

.

ALL THE CHEESINESS.

Though I'm not exactly proud of these photos, it gives me something (everything) to work on. But I'm sure I'll have this next Monday to work on things too. *sigh* 

Why Are The Barres Always Gone?

     Today my Intermediate Ballet class finally started back up. My student Jenny (name changed) is back and when she walked in, I was so happy to see her! She is 20 and an adult beginner. She took my class for about 2 months before we had our studio's first annual winter show. Because she came in so late, but determined and passionate, we had quite a few long rehearsals, going as long as three hours!

     Today started like most have, with floor stretches. Ouch, that hurt, as I haven't been stretching nearly as much as I should have been. I do floor stretches and barre with her, so that she can follow the combination. I introduced an ab routine. I have yet to smooth it out, as today I basically jumped into it, but I am going to make a regular routine to some faster, catchy song. Since we were just back after a month and a half, I went easy on her, but the ab routine will be more difficult next week. I was just doing it on the spot today.

     After that, I went to start our regular barre session, but looked around and discovered the barres have been, once again, removed from the room by the owners of the studio next door (the two rooms were one studio before but has been split, literally down the middle since new ownership took over our side). This barre thing is really becoming a problem. I mean, it's BALLET. Barres to ballet are like bananas to a banana split. We could do it in center, and we did, but as she's still relatively new, I didn't want to do that to her already. She's still building the foundation and it's much harder to get used to everything with also having to worry about balancing everything in center.

     We went through plies, tendus, degages, battements (for all of these these, the arms were altered for center), and rond de jambes. After that, I skipped our developpe/enveloppe combination because of time and also, I wanted to teach a few new things. I showed her frappes, with the working foot flexed in between. We spent some time going over singles, and then I showed her how for any even numbers (when to the side/in second), you put the working foot to the original direction and then the opposite vs odd numbers, where you put the working foot to the opposite from where you came first...and so on. This took some time. We did singles, doubles, and triples.

     I also taught a new (to her) combination with fondues and glissades. It's fondue en croix and then the second time to the side, leave the foot out, glissade away, glissade back, returning the outer foot to the back to reverse the whole thing. The second set of glissades returns the outside foot to the front to sous-sus to turn and do the other side. In this case, we had no barre, so I had her skip the sous-sous turn and we instead just did the other side.

     Because this all took so long, and we only had an hour, we then skipped across-the-floor and I instead worked it into learning the first section of the dance. I explained degage walks, as we do them to start the dance. I added some funky arms (basically, flexed hands, with eppaule), as the music is a funky French song. Then, we did a few degage walks with more fluid arms and prepped to go into two side pique arabesque steps. We did all of this basically across-the-floor to practice/learn then worked it in with the music, traveling forward.

     I then showed her emboites. I gave her a quick tutorial, but as time was running slightly over, we will work on them in more detail next week.

     I am so thrilled that she loved my choreography so far. She actually smiled so huge and said "Oh my god, I LOVE it!" This is a great start to this season. I'm so excited!

Subbing Foundations

     Today I got to sub for a Foundations class. I was asked to about a week ago because the instructor for the class (the studio's owner) was having surgery today. I got there after that class started because I was told more than likely, nobody was coming. One of the seven year olds that takes that class was sitting in the parking lot with her mother in their car. Whoops. I opened the studio (we normally open at 4pm and it was well after 3. After being asked if the class was going on, I said I could teach in my 4pm slot as I was not expecting students until next week. I teach my 17+ ballet at 4 (and then 12+ Lyrical at 5). The mother said that would be fine and I called the manager so the mother could pay over the phone and then the mother went to wait in the car. I actually prefer the parents to not be in the room as I find it to be distracting for the kids. We don't have a hallway or anything, just some beautiful handmade wooden benches that are right on the sideline of the dance floor and sometimes the parents/grands are a little bit...loud. I love them but yeah, it's sometimes difficult working with them right there, sometimes saying things to the kids.

     Anyways, I had "A" color for a bit until 4pm hit and then I had her sit on the floor so that we could start with some stretches. I have subbed a class that had her once before, months ago, so it was nice to be able to work with her again (though it was just half of a modern class before, as the instructor was running behind, and this was ballet technique, basically). After some stretching, I had her do some ab work. She is only 7 so it was fairly easy. After around a minute and a half of that,it was time to do some barre so we dragged it to center and got to it! One of the things stressed that I do was to work on getting her to remember some vocab. That was good since I try to do that with my Littles class that her age falls into (my class is 5-8 year olds). I have noticed that no matter how many times I've had my Littles repeat terms after me and no matter how much I say the terms as we're at barre (a lot), it never seems to stick, so I thought I'd try something new today. I wrote out everything we would be working on at barre and center/across-the-floor on the mirror with a dry-erase marker. After I felt she knew that term, I had her find it and cross it off. We were pretty much going top-to-bottom, left-to-right so that was easy enough but I wanted her to see what the words looked like as well.

     We started with just foot positions, which she mostly knew. She did get stuck at 4th and did 5th in it's place but I told her we could go 1,2,3,5,4 because to get to 4th, I do find it easier to slide forward from 5th. After she got the feet, I showed her the arms for each, which she hadn't done before. After I felt she had them all down, I crossed that one off because it was too high for her to reach. Then I moved on to plies. We, again, went through all five positions (both hands on the barre...the young ones do that here). Then to help with tendus, I told her to imagine drawing a line in the sand , but had her going ball THEN point the toe. We did these en croix. Then we did degages en croix. Then after both were done, I showed a tendu and asked what it was called and she said "Degage?" so I gently reminded her that degages pop up off the ground. Then I mixed them up, doing a degage back, tendu side, degage side, tendu front (for example) until I was certain she could remember the term to the move. She was excited to cross two things off of the mirror. She was so adorable!

     Next was rond de jambes. She said the first two parts right and then was having trouble with "jambe" so I asked what she thought "rond" meant, and I held my arms overhead in 5th. She said "Round!" so I said "Very good! And 'Jambe' means 'leg,' so 'rond de jambe' means 'round of leg'." Then she caught on to what I was talking about and showed me a rond de jambe, so I told her she had it and we did them en croix a terre. Then I went over the difference between a terre and en lair. Once she had those, she crossed them off. We then did battements. I had her say "Batman" and then "Bahtmahn" and she recognized it and we were golden for that one too!

     She was really bright, enthusiastic, and had an excellent memory. We were almost finished with barre at that point, and across-the-floor was just as fun. I swear it was! Once we were done with everything I had for class, we had under ten minutes left, so I went over the whole list with her, but this time, I'd point (must resist spelling it "POINTE"!) to a word and have her say it aloud and then demonstrate it for me. Would you believe this seven year old girl got all but one right? I was so happy! I rewarded "A" with a handful of marshmallows once we were done and sent her on her happy little way. I seriously had a blast and I'm certain she did too. I will definitely be using this method in my Littles class.

P.S. This kid's feet were incredible, by the way! When seated on the floor with her legs extended, her toes were nearly on the floor. Flexible feet and strong ankles already. I'm jealous.

Class Number Struggles

     It's proving to be very difficult to keep consistency with students at this studio. I started out with my Intermediate Ballet class, which I should possibly just call Ballet since I end up with beginners or students of all levels. I really don't mind at all. I do like the complexity of more difficult choreography and barre work, but I also love seeing a student who has never taken dance (or not since they were little) grow and grow.

   I started my first class by just teaching my boyfriend, J. As I said in my previous post, he partially took my class so I could figure out how to fit everything into just an hour. The next week, I had a girl come in and take it on a whim and loved it so much that she signed up for the month. Jean kept coming, so that was great. I think I may have just had her for a few weeks. Then a friend came and brought her twin sister and their friend. I'd danced with all three in ballet classes before. T was with me for months, as was Jean. Then another of T's friends came and she was there for months as well. T was most advanced and en pointe. Jean and T's friend, Jenn, were both basically beginners. Neither had ever danced so it was interesting trying to manager the different skill levels. T and Jenn were adults and Jean was 16. It was mostly kept at a more basic level but some of the steps in the dance were more advanced (saut de basques, tour jetes, beat jumps, etc).

   So anyways, first Jean dropped off because she got a summer job. I was bummed out because she was my first beginner to teach and I was thoroughly enjoying watching her progress from week to week. Then I had to switch the class time to two hours earlier and I never saw Jenn again. Then around a month or two later, I lost T as she was transferring to a university over an hour away. I had no students for around a month and then a 20 year old I was in a musical (Hairspray) with in 2011 messaged me about wanting to take my class. She hadn't danced since she was 6 so she's basically a beginner. I am loving teaching her. She takes corrections well, is super quick with learning the terminology, and has passion and drive. I just need more like her! I heard I should be getting a 12 year old who is moving up because of the age group so I'm happy for that. My next dance requires at least 4 so I hope to get that...at the very least!

   Now on to the Littles! When I got the class handed down to me, there were two students - Lydia and Dalia. Lydia is seven and Dalia is six. My first day teaching, Lydia was absent but I had little Dalia. She was so cute and sweet! She had good focus and good technique/knowledge of the steps for her age. There was a three year old that dropped in that day to try it (even though it wasn't her age group) and we played games that I combined with ballet steps and they seemed to have a blast.

   Lydia is a little firecracker. She knows the technique and picks up everything quickly but she is always trying to test me. She'll start out doing rond de jambes right and then when she thinks I'm not looking, will just kinda move her leg a little and squint at me with a little mischievous smile on her face. She keeps me on my toes (ha), for sure.

   I have since gotten two more students. Lilly is seven and though I have a difficult time keeping her attention sometimes, has passion for ballet that astounds me. I put on some music and she immediately recognized it as being from The Nutcracker. The same happened with music from Swan Lake. That makes me happy since she's so little. Her grandma also tells me that Lilly gets up at 5:30 in the morning every day, puts on her classical music, and practices barre and stretching, and so on. Good kid, that one.

  Samantha, I fear, has come and gone. She was five and transferred from another class into mine but I haven't seen her in three weeks now, so I don't think she's returning. It's so frustrating. And I haven't seen her or Dalia since the class before Thanksgiving.

   I choreographed a little dance to Christmas, Don't Be Late when I had three students, because there are three Chipmunks and had them all (in turn) doing a soutenu turn when each Chipmunk name was spoken. "Simon" - Lydia, "Theodore" - Dalia, "Alvin...ALvin...ALVIN!" - Lilly (on the first mention). When Samantha came to us, I just had her between Dalia and Lilly so timing-wise, it still worked out. Now that I'm down to two, there is too much time. I told them to do two soutenu turns now but it still doesn't quite work, but we will have to deal with that since the show is Monday.

I have lots of flyers and now that this show is about to come and go, I can get back to plastering any place I can think of with them. I have held off for the last month or so because it would be too little time for someone to learn the respective dances. So I'm crossing my fingers that I pick up more students! I want to keep my classes. I absolutely love what I'm doing.