Dancing at home

I've had 3 classes back at my home studio since returning from ballet camp. At the first class, it felt very strange not to have my fellow 3As with me. I feel like I have so much more control over everything I'm doing in class. It makes it so much fun! As with all things dance, I feel like the more I learn and the better I get, the harder it is!!

Returning to 'Kansas'

Today is our last day and it's so sad. Danile does a final pilates class for us and I feel how much stronger I am than on Sunday. We have one final technique class with Kathy. I'm going to have to skip Pirouettes and Pointe. Last minute pictures are taken with Randall, Stacy (our resident grandmother from Georgia), Shannon, and Lesley. We have a long trip back to Dulles and then on the plane. As we drive to Dulles, all we can talk about is the week, going over our experiences, discussing our fellow campers, the performance. I am determined to come back next year. It's going to be difficult to get back to my real life for the next week or so. I have a hard time concentrating because my mind keeps drifting back to the performance, to things that happened in class, to funny things fellow campers said at dinner, funny images the teachers used to explain things, the beautiful music and the choreography that we learned. We all worked really hard at something we love passionately. We were taught by teachers who are completely dedicated to making us the best dancers that we can be. But that's not the only thing that made the camp special. We also had the best time with each other. In between all of the hard work and learning, we laughed a lot. Real life is definitely going to feel very black and white after this.

Performance Day!

Today was the big day and it went really well, considering we had all of a week to learn everything. I dance the pas de deux with Burr and with John. I just adore this dance. It's over so quickly! Why can't we just keep dancing? Leslie and I decide that we ARE going to do our variation on pointe! We're in this together. The things that were giving me trouble in class are fine, but I miss things that I didn't have trouble with. I'm really nervous, I just hope it doesn't show on my face. Again, over so quickly! We do our bows, do our ballet runs off stage. The repertory piece is last for the 3As and we go through the whole thing smoothly with no major problems. What a relief and feeling of exhilaration when it's over. We'll have to wait until the DVD to see if we did all of the things that Danile and Randall taught us in class about presenting ourselves, like making diamonds with our legs, extending our arms, using our plies, etc. The variation by the advanced classes is unbelievably hard! Wow, makes ours look like a piece of cake. I am finally able to see how some of the other campers that I've gotten to know all week dance and they are all amazing. You can learn a lot by watching other dancers. And the performances by the level 2s reminded me of how far I've come with my own dancing. The advanced group's repertory piece is Serenade and I don't know how Kathy has done it, but they look amazing, with so many dancers moving precisely across the stage. Lars and Heidi dance the solo couple, she's such a beautiful dancer!


The celebration dinner afterwards is back at the hotel. Only about a third of the dancers participates but Heidi joins us, as does Nestor. The young teachers have come in their party dresses. After dinner, Cheryl gets her iPod and Nestor does an impromptu hip hop dance routine for us! Heidi also lets loose and everyone just has a blast. Despite our tiredness and soreness from a week of ballet, we continue dancing the night away! Sadly, goodbyes have already started, as Mary and Cynthia leave early tomorrow morning.

Week's almost over!

I can't believe tomorrow is the performance. We have had 2 variation classes, 4 repertory classes and 2 partnering classes to learn the performance pieces. Yikes! Many of us are freaking out a little bit over all of the things we learned. Today I woke up feeling really quite good. Somehow all of the soreness from the previous days which had been building is gone. In class I was able to put together a few things so that I actually could maintain what little turnout I have while doing steps across the floor. My pirouettes were more controlled than they've ever been. We had character class today and boy, it's so much harder than it looks. There is a lot of coordination with the feet. We learn chugs, mazurkas, polonaises, and harmonica steps. As with so much else in dance, I gain a new appreciation for it the more I know about it.


The previous nights we have gone out with various groups of campers to nearby restaurants for dinner. Tonight, after Suzanne had her photo shoot, we were so exhausted that we decided to order in chinese food. The hotel gives us a menu from a local place and after some confusion with the restaurant folks, we have a delicious meal delivered to the hospitality suite. One thing we have all noticed is how our appetites have all become ravenous towards the end of the week. However our eyes were bigger than our stomachs and we have too much food. Some of the 3B's, Suzanne, Avis and Cheryl, are running thru their pas de deux. Cheryl, who is tall, acts as partner and does a great job! Joyce and I have a good time watching their routine, which is harder than ours. Avis and Cheryl are from Florida and are an anesthesiologist and surgeon, respectively. Amazingly, in addition to her job and raising 3 kids, Cheryl also makes tutus!

Tonight, I can't sleep thinking about all of the pieces we will do tomorrow. In the middle of the night I have this image that we are all currently in Oz and that on Saturday, we are returning to Kansas. The old black and white life is just not going to feel the same.

Partnering

Today we had our first partnering class. It's so much fun! A few young men come to help us out, two of them are from local colleges. I dance mostly with Burr who is a modern dance student. He is very tall and dances beautifully. The other young men are Nestor and Felix. I am also partnered with John, a fellow camper from Michigan. Randall choreographs a piece to music from the movie 'Last Exit to Brooklyn' by Mark Knopfler. It's called 'A Love Idea' and the music and the choreography are so beautiful that, as fellow camper Shannon says, we all look like we're in love when we're dancing. It is such a joy to dance this piece and to dance with Burr who is so much better than I am. He helps me with the steps and with some of the more technical aspects of partnering, but we also have a lot of fun joking around. I realized that you really need to keep your entire core (abs and back muscles) fully engaged when being partnered otherwise it's impossible to maintain balance as the man moves you and you end up looking really wobbly. We only have 2 partnering classes before the performance. Heidi and Randall demonstrate and you can see that when they dance they are completely connected to each other. It's really an amazing feeling dancing with another person, creating this (hopefully) beautiful art together.

Photo shoot day

Today we have Pointe and Pirouette class in addition to Tech and Repertory. In addition to dance classes, the camp also includes stretch classes at the end of the day, and boy, does that ever feel good. Heidi teaches the class today. Another great thing they have is Kinesiology and Physical Therapy classes. At this camp they are both taught by Lisa Shoaf who is also a dancer. She gives us really great information on skeletal and muscular structure to help us understand why our bodies might have trouble with certain positions or movements. She also gives us great stretches to help with trouble spots. This is such a treat, to have access to a resource like this, as a recreational dancer. The other dancers at camp are a diverse lot in age as well as life experience. We've got college girls, young teachers, women raising children, women who are coming back to dance after finishing raising children, and a grandmother who has come with her husband in a camper van. One of the men in camp, Lars, is from Sweden and comes every year, leaving wife and kids at home for a week. There are 3 men at camp this time.


Tonight, I had a session with Chris the photographer, who took professional ballet photos. Several of the campers cheered me on as I posed. I borrowed one of Suzanne's cute skirts and wore my shiny new pointe shoes. Kathy and Heidi helped with poses. I discovered that it is really hard to pose! You have to be at your maximum turnout and hold the position for a long time. On some of the pictures, my face shows the effort, on others you can see it in my neck. I have a new appreciation for this! The photos turned out great and Chris was kind enough to print me out one of them, with some slight retouching!

Photo of Kathy Sawyer demonstrating a pose is by Chris Winton-Stahle.

First full day

Wow, I'm sore in so many places at the end of today! We started out with the group photo in the morning. Our classes are Technique, Variations (for the performance), Repertory (also for the performance) and Jazz. Danile taught Technique this morning and she is teaching us the variation, which is from Paquita. The music is beautiful. I can't recall if I've seen this ballet (or our repertory piece) performed or not. I'm going to have to look for it. We can choose to do this in pointe or flat shoes. I really want to be able to do this in pointe shoes, but we'll see how my feet are on Friday. The piece is quite speedy and there are some backwards piques which tend to be tricky. Also the jete, jete, pas de chat, pas de bourree part is going to mess with us all week. It goes right, left, right left and changing directions is giving us all problems. When we perform the variation, we will do it in small groups, in our case 4 people per group.

The piece for the repertory is from Les Sylphides which has music by Chopin. So far we're 2 for 2 in the great music department. This piece will involve all 8 of the 3A campers who want to perform. We will need to learn how to move together in patterns as well as the steps and the timing, and of course, how to present ourselves so we look like we're sylphs (whatever those are) and not a bunch of women clomping around on stage. Jazz is being taught by Ashley, who was in "So You Think You Can Dance" recently, making it through a couple of rounds. She's a ball of energy. Again, I've never taken jazz. Ashley's style is kind of hip hop-y so we learn a fun routine with some moves called 'yo-yo', 'shakey shakey', shoulder rolls, and of course everything is done in parallel not turned out. However, I just cannot figure out how to 'shakey shakey' and make it look like something purposeful. We have fun music (Justin Timberlake, for example) and some of the younger campers loved that. Sadly, I didn't know what most of the songs were.

First day of camp

The studios where the camp is held is in the school of the Richmond Ballet. They are gorgeous! The floors are beautiful (very important for a dancer, the floors can't be too slippery or too sticky), there are lots of windows and natural light, and ballet barres in the hallways for in-between class stretching. After registration, introductions and lunch, we had a technique class where Heidi (the director of the camp) has an opportunity to check that you have placed yourself in the appropriate level. I assumed I was a 3A because Joyce said she was, and I think we are fairly comparable. The technique class today was taught by Randall, who will end up teaching us the Repertory piece and the pas de deux for the performance. Kathy taught us Pointe and I realized that I should have spent more time in my pointe shoes before camp because this class is 45 minutes long!! Ouch!

I took my first ever modern class and it was so much fun. Theresa Bautista taught the class, she is also one of the level 4 campers. It was amazing to see how Theresa put the leg movements with the arm movements to create something beautiful. Part of the warm up involved walking and running around the room and she told us we had to look our fellow dancers in the eyes! She has us do a little routine which involved getting down on the floor, very 'modern'. Throwing yourself on the floor is harder than it looks. My butt was sore after this class!

Ballet camp!

I'm off to ballet camp tomorrow. These are my shoes before camp. I wonder what they'll look like in a week. I'm travelling with Joyce, Kelly and Peggy who also take class at Westside, and Suzanne who is a friend of Joyce's living in Orange County.