Yay for Ballet…

Our first class of the day was pilates.  I heard rumors that our teacher actually learned from Joseph Pilates, but I’m not sure.  Either way, it was supposed to be very true to his classes.  It ended up being much less stressful than I anticipated.  I felt that I was well trained enough from the few pilates classes I’ve taken over the last few summers to easily keep up with the class.  I was even able to get a few ‘excellent!’s in process.  Yay for me.

Ballet class was class as per usual.  We worked on the same or similar combinations at barre and in centre.  More emphasis was again put on such concepts of putting heels down and also upper body and heads.  Today I finally figured out why the mirrors look so weird: they are all on a tilt.  I guess it’s so that if you’re jumping rediculously high closer to the mirror you can still see yourself, but I think it throws just about everyone off in centre since you’re looking slightly lower than usual to see yourself.  It’s weird but I guess it’ll just be a challenge.

After a two hour lunch break, I had variations.  We’re starting out by learning Diamond from The Sleeping Beauty.  It’s to the music that we used for the Gold, Silver, and Saphire (and possibly Diamond) Fairies when we did portions of the ballet.  I’m not sure who’s choreography it is, but its a duet of sorts with one guy doing each side.  I start on stage right, if that matters at all.  I think I like it, but it’s way too soon to make a decision as we’ve only learned a short part of it thus far.

For pas de deux, we are now learning an actual pas.  And not just any pas, but the Bluebird Pas de Deux from The Sleeping Beauty.  Yay.  I guess we’ll learn that, the variations, and the coda.  That sounds like it will take forever.  More girls were in class, so I guess that now I’ll get to have my partner all to myself from now on, which will be nice so I’ll have more practice time.  From what I know so far, we’re doing pretty similar choreography to what we did when I did the piece a few years ago.  My partner, Sami, has also done a modified version of the piece, so in general we’re just plain awesome.  The half that we’ve learned so far includes pirrouettes, finger turns, promanades, and a press in arabesque.  The press is kind of… interesting, but I think we can actually get it.  This may be a first.

After classes finally finished at 4:45, a friend of mine who went to SAB last summer and I took a detour over to a dance store, which included a long walk through a ghetto-esque portion of town.  We survived though, and ended up getting on the same bus as the SFBS students who had to stay till 6:00.

On a completely unrelated note and with knowledge that I’m not posting nearly enough pictures as I should be:  It’s Nakanishi Rina’s 20th birthday today.  I had pudding to celebrate!