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.