Returning to Relevé

At the beginning of June, I traveled to Salt Lake City for the  artÉmotion Adult Ballet Summer Intensive , and it was THE BEST THING EVER. The classes were amazing, the teachers were amazing, the other dancers were amazing...I could go on and on. Plus Salt Lake City had some pretty amazing weather (sunny and hot all week, which I love). To sum up (I'll go into greater detail below), I HIGHLY recommend it and would do it again. In a heartbeat. With exclamation points!!  Side note: my ankle did fine, and I wasn't nearly as sore as I expected. More details on the program below for those that are curious.

Does anyone else LOVE corrections? Well, it turns out that I really do. I've been getting increasingly frustrated over the last couple of months because the current teacher of the advanced class, while complimentary of my dancing, does not give me corrections (and Lord knows I'm not perfect). She'll sometimes give other adults corrections, but mostly she leaves us alone and concentrates her efforts on the teens/kids. Which makes a certain level of sense. I mean...she can't train any of us adults towards a goal like YAGP, or for auditioning to be in a professional ballet company. But that doesn't mean we don't want to be better dancers. In addition, she's been obsessed with choreographing a piece for the summer show so we haven't been doing much center work. We've also been sharing the class with kids, because attendance has been sparse. Barre and anything we do in center is fairly simple. Personally, I like having something to focus on, somethi...

We just finished a two week Spring Break, and I actually (gasp) took a break. I decided that if I wanted to be able to do pointe for our spring show, I should probably let my foot rest. The latest news on that front is that it seemed to be some peroneal tendonitis, which is an overuse injury (everyone is shocked, right? haha). Besides the increased pointe in class, I have been walking more than usual, and because I walk turned out and supinate (all of which is bad), I think I aggravated that entire area. Le sigh. In completely non-foot related news, I am still struggling with finding something both comfortable and flattering to wear for classes. I mean...I don't mind wearing leotards and tights, but the leg holes of many of my leos squeeze things a little too much for my liking, which makes me feel like they don't fit and, therefore, aren't flattering. It's a little frustrating. I also continue to hate normal tights and how the elastic forever makes me look like a sau...

My apologies for the lack of posts! The foot/ankle is still being a jerk, so I haven't been dancing, and therefore have had nothing to report (except for complaints about being antsy). I went back to the podiatrist today for a check up to see how/if the injection had helped anything. The pain on the inside part of my ankle has disappeared (hurray!), but a pinchy feeling is still occurring on the outside, sort of back near my heel. It doesn't hurt too badly if I just prop my foot up, but as soon as I put weight on it (a la relev é ), it gets all grumpy. The doc felt around and pushed that area a bit, and I definitely had pain. Turns out that it was my joint (the subtalar joint , to be exact). That made me a little panicky at first, but apparently it's just another inflammation thing (yay synovial fluid!) I likely had BOTH tendinitis AND the subtalar issue, thanks to my crazy dance schedule this past spring. Good times. I got another steroid injection (differen...