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Our Christmas show is over, and as always it's a little bittersweet. I have such fun making new friends in the cast each year, and bonding over choreography troubles. Blurry stage light picture. Those suckers get HOT! I do have some happy news on the injury front--I was finally able to see a PT with a background in dance medicine, and met her the week before the show. She showed me how to properly KT tape my leg, and gave me other exercises to add to my repertoire. I was also given instructions on how to ease back into full classes properly (floor barre, then regular barre, then barre AND center, then pointe, then finally jumping again). First order of business: REST for at least a week (no releves!) Weirdly easier said than done for me! I have a tendency to dance around my house more than I thought... We don't have floor barre at our studio, so I've been investigating methods to do at home. That in itself was a little overwhelming, but I settled on the one that not...

Our summer show was last night, and I finally feel like I can relax. The whole week was stressful, what with fretting over the little ones and getting ready myself (and trying to remember all my choreography). Luckily, things seemed to go pretty well for the bitties.  Me, however? Ugh. I messed up little things in both tap numbers I was in, though both jazz numbers went well. We had two pointe pieces, one more modern in flavor, and one classical (a variation from La Bayad ère). The modern piece went super well, but the classical piece? My strong suit? I totally botched it. There was one pirouette section in particular that I've always had a little trouble with because I don't get my weight forward enough, and last night I lost my balance a bit and had to fake the last turn. Ugh. I also messed up the beginning entrance, and a bit at the end I've never had trouble with before. I'm annoyed with myself because the last few times we did it in rehearsal it was actually go...

The last month has been a little intense, and not just with dance things. Two weeks before Christmas, I suddenly found myself unemployed. The company I had worked for for 10 years lost a contract, and thus all of the planned work for the next year; nearly everyone in the office was laid off. It was very sudden. Ironically, I had been considering a career change (to what, I have no idea, but still wanted a change). I guess we'll see what the future holds? Luckily, I had dance to focus on right after it happened, as we had tech/dress rehearsals and our Christmas show. Everything went really well--I had a small solo bit and managed to not mess it up once in any of the three shows. Go me! We had a two week break and started classes up again this last week, though not everyone is back yet so things are slow. Going back to class after a break is always an interesting time, and while I somehow managed to get in some decent double pirouettes to the right, the left was a complete disast...

Rehearsals for our winter show are in full swing right now, which means all of us are starting to get a little exhausted and stressed. We're all doing our best to stay healthy, but it doesn't help that dance studios are giant incubators for germs. I caught a cold last week despite my best hand sanitizing/washing efforts. Boo. I'm in the same role as last year, a dancer in the corps (which performs all the big group dance numbers). I've managed to remember some of the choreography (yay!), though several dances are changing slightly, plus they're adding one!  We're in seven (!) numbers, and it can be pretty exhausting. I feel like a corps part is actually better than a lead part (of which there are very few in our production) because you're basically in the ENTIRE show. Plus, lots of dancing, which is what I adore anyway. I think I own more dance shoes than regular shoes. In the land of silks, things are progressing a little more slowly, but I've ...

My apologies for the radio silence for the past few weeks! I haven't had too much to report because we've been in the "calm before the storm," period of the fall session, gearing up towards preparing for our Christmas show. We just had auditions, and rehearsals will be starting soon.  Here comes the crazy! (In case you're curious, I didn't [have to] audition; they just throw me in the corps, which basically dances the entire show. It's exhausting but fun!) I started up back on pointe again last week (I've been easing up to it so I don't irritate my foot), and did about half a class (both because of caution and comfort). I'm going to have to build up my pain tolerance again, it seems. My poor, neglected RPs. I have been up to some other shenanigans, though. One of my co-worker buddies has been taking aerial silks for several months now, and has been trying to convince me to try it out. A couple of weeks ago, I went with he...

We had our show last night, and things went pretty well for me.  We had some hiccups with staging/timing on a couple of numbers due to not having had a full dress rehearsal, but overall it went well!  There's always a little something that doesn't pan out quite like you want, but they're always minor things that I'm sure the audience doesn't even notice, so I try not to dwell. Two of my coworkers came to the show, much to my surprise!  Neither of them had said anything about coming, so when I spotted one of them in the audience I couldn't help but give her a big grin (luckily, it was appropriate to the character I was portraying). I had spent most of the day being anxious and nervous, but by the time we started dancing I was as calm as can be.  I was glad, because during our Christmas show I'd been super nervous (for reasons I can't explain).  In the past (when I was younger and doing Nutcracker every year), I'd get nervous right before going on,...