Ballet: Pirouettes, part 2

Ok, I should have guessed. Right after I say my pirouettes are going fine, I run into trouble. The trouble being terribly, terribly slow pirouettes to a strange position.

Nelli was away on Sunday, and her class was taught by Christina Tuurna. I like her style - it is slow and simple like Nelli's, but she pays attention to different things. I'd love to attend her classes more often, but her Int1 is at the same time as Suvi's Int2, and Beg2 is a bit too too much, I think. We'll see. But, anyway, she had this centre combination with slow en dehors pirouettes to fifth after a sissone-tombe-pas de bourreé, and three really slow pirouettes en dedans. I had been doing doubles the whole week and all the pirouettes after s-t-b had been closing to fourth, not fifth. Thus, I was having extreme difficulties: I start a pirouette, then realize that I'm not supposed to do a double, end the pirouette abruptly and with a wobble since I also remember at the last moment that I'm supposed to close to fifth, not fourth. It took some time to remember how to manage these slow pirouettes properly; the thing is to float around really slowly (just think up and spot and try to make the pirouette slow) and then think a bit more up to end at the correct moment to a retiré balance, then close down to fifth.

Yesterday (on Monday) I went to the jazz class that is before Emma's Int2. It is for total beginners (Beg1) and it is packed, mostly with teenagers. It was fun, and I notice I haven't forgotten everything, although I've forgotten a lot. (I've taken jazz classes for 4 or 5 years.) Afterwards, I realized that at least part of the familiarity of the movements comes from aerobics, not from what I remember from actual jazz. There was a combination with "laukka-askel". Tammikuu had said that it is terribly heavy. I felt it was very light. I was puzzled at first, but then understood: I had taken the steps like in aerobics, feet hardly bending - where as in jazz I should have been really really down in deep plié.

As a sidenote: I know it is proper to compare, but since I do so anyway, it was refreshing to attend a class with teenagers who really did not excel in the subject. In adult ballet classes, the teenagers who do attend are generally the ones in special training programmes or otherwise incredibly talented. While it is great to see some good dancing, it is depressing to know that I can never achieve that much myself. In this jazz class, the teenagers were more like I was as a teenager, which was comforting.

Oh, right, corrections: CT pointed out that I have a bad habit. Doing port de bras, I draw my upper arm close to my body when it should stay quite far away from it. I must watch this and try to remember to correct it. Also, in third port de bras, arm goes first down, then head. I got a good for frappés, though. And also for something else which I cannot remember. On the other hand, she took my leg in developpé á la seconde and tried to lift it. It did not get up much. Depressing, since the leg was in about 100 degrees. I know I should see the positive side of it: I have so much strength that I can almost achieve the maximum height for my feet. But the problem is that the maximum isn't that much.

Ballet: Pirouettes

I don't like this temporary blog, therefore no updates. Besides, I've been busy.

Anyway, a summary of the classes so far:

I've had two flus, thus two weeks worth of missed classes. Otherwise I've managed to attend almost all the classes I've planned; my regular classes Emma's Int2 on Monday and Wednesday, Suvi's Int2 on Friday and Nelli's Int1 on Sunday. In addition to these, I've attended Suvi's Int1 on Thursdays and Emma's Int1 on Wednesdays.

Int2 classes seemed terribly difficult in the beginning of the term. Either it was the terribly simple classes during the Summer term or the fact that they really were so much more difficult. I had troubles to keep up. Now things have gotten a lot more easier, either because the combinations are easier or because I'm really catching up.

One clear point of success and development this Autumn has been pirouettes. Unless I'm having a really bad day, all the single pirouettes at the barre are clear, easy and end up in a neat finishing position. Of course, there are places for improvement, but there are no more wobbly total disasters anymore. And in the centre, unless it is a question of a really fast pirouette, I can do doubles consistently quite well. Of course, again there is a lot of place for improvement, but still, most of my doubles are controlled enough to end them quite neatly, and I get around the two times easily unless the floor is really sticky (like it gets in KAS and BUS sometimes) or I'm having a terribly bad day.

I've also started the pointe work again. I've had some bad luck with experimenting different models of pointe shoes, but I think I've found a good model now. My old ones (Bloch Sonata) were nice and comfortable otherwise, but the shoe never got soft enough to arch quite as much as my feet do and thus I was never able to get on the pointe easily. Well, the shoes got soft enough after having them on for 20 minutes, but with our 15 minutes pointe sessions, that wasn't enough.

Then the pair of Grishko Elites turned out to be completely impossible - my big toes were touching the floor after 5 minutes, and I hadn't even softened the shoes beforehand. Then I went through every possible pair of pointe shoes in Piruetti, and none of them felt good. Finally, I was recommended a pair of Capezzio's Airials in Footlight, and they seemed to fit like magic. Now I've done 75 minutes with them, and they really are good. Now I'll just have to change the ribbons - the ones I got from the store get loose from the wrong places very quickly.