Second Class: Allegro and Pirouettes

Welcome back!

I had my second ballet class just last night and I am exhausted! My legs are a little bit sore too- thankfully that just means I worked hard! Last week I think I was too focused on what direction I was moving in to actually work hard on the movements, but this week I was able to keep up with the basics. Arms are still absolutely befuddling to me though! I can do arms when we're at the barre, but as soon as we move into center I have no idea what's going on.

This week I earned some valuable corrections focusing on pirouettes and the RAD Intermediate Foundation Allegro 3. There are some rather complicated changing-of-legs parts in this dance, and while it may be easy to get in a slow practice, it's very difficult when you're combining it with your other movements! I'll be practicing this one at home and learning it off over my holidays. Port de Bras is also getting me but I think I'm picking it up now. Syllabus work is very strange because we do almost the same thing every week, whereas if I were in a company or a vocational school we would have to learn combinations in a matter of minutes. I'm not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing!

We also did a lot of pirouette practice, working on bringing our legs up to a nice relevé and moving from fourth position into turns. I'm having trouble with balancing and pulling upwards and I keep falling forwards- does anyone have any tips? We were told that we should practice standing in a relevé on one leg, as the longer you can balance and the stronger you are, the more turns you'll be able to manage. It makes a lot of sense but I never really thought about it until now!

 I'm also struggling with arms in a high fifth position- some girls in my class have their arms tipped forward, some have them straight above their heads. I'm somewhere in the middle! If anyone knows how the high fifth arms should be, it would be really helpful. I definitely did a lot better in class today than I did last week. My Adage is a lot better than it was and I'm finding it easier to hold my leg in one position. I've also been working on arabesques over the past few days and I'm finding that my leg is already higher and straighter than it was! It's amazing what a week can do in ballet- you may not be able to do one turn one week, and the next you're spinning like a top!

It's disappointing that it's the Christmas break and we won't be back until January, but that gives me plenty of time to learn my syllabus and practice everything. I can see a lot of ballet in my future to help me de-stress during exams! If anybody knows of any useful methods for learning the RAD Intermediate Foundation work, please feel free to leave a comment below. I'd love to hear from you about your ballet story, so feel free to share in the comment section.

Good luck and happy dancing,

-Sam

UPDATE: I was working on some of the pirouette tips our teacher gave us and I managed to perform a double pirouette with a nice landing from fourth position! Practice really does help an incredible amount.