Ballet class

[flexagon]

I had a fight with a coffee table over the weekend and hurt my knee. However, it was okay enough for me to take a ballet class last night with a friend. In some ways that was great (targeting my calves, which I've decided I need more of; my brain concentrating really hard because I didn't know anything). On the other hand, oh yeah, I don't really like it and all the positions feel unnatural. And what was all that opening the hips business without stretching first? If I kept going to the class I'd get better -- but it's hard to imagine having any ballet goals, even if I did. Which is strange, because a lot of people have many explicit ballet goals that they are very passionate about. It just doesn't inspire me.

Physical insight of the day: the gymnastics "hollow" position actually has a lot in common with what they tell us to do in tadasana (mountain pose, aka basic standing pose). In yoga handstands they never tell us about that "hollow" position, but handstand is called, in Sanskrit, upward-facing mountain pose. Suddenly that makes more sense.

Also, candlestick in acro feels a lot like what I call "forklift headstand" from the ashtanga second series (second headstand at the bottom of the page here). The difference, of course, is not having all that body weight pressure running through your head and neck, which is definitely nice.

According to my new morning schedule I'm only allowed to do email/LJ until 7:15 every morning. Still a little late, but if I post now I'll be doing better than I have all week. :)

Comments

[nevers.livejournal.com]

who do you know who has explicit ballet goals? i don't know that i ever did. i never seemed very conducive to that since it's hard to quantify much of anything.

[flexagon]

er, well, nobody actually. But people do get fixated about ballet and make it their life; can that be done without a zillion goals along the way? I assume if I were into it I'd be thinking I want to be able to balance in this position, I want to be able to spin 3 times around on one toe, I want to be able to do ten whatever in a row, I want a lead role... etc. But then I could be totally off base -- you know about 25x more about the dance world than I do!

[nevers.livejournal.com]

no, it doesn't really work that way, at least it never did for me. that's part of what's so much more exciting for me about circus. it's really hard to set quantitative goals in ballet. like wanting to do a quadruple pirouette was always something that would have been cool but i could and work on it and still only be ale to do one every few months. being able to balance is also very on/off. and you only ever do moves in combinations, never in a row straight, so that doesn't really figure in either.

[flexagon]

bah, well now I'm even less interested in it then.

[heisenbug]

Seems to me it would be similar to playing an instrument. I've never been very motivated to master any particular technical move, like playing parallel octaves in tune or something. What motivates me is the performance. I wouldn't see much point in practicing if there wasn't a concert coming up (hence my laziness every summer).

Although that doesn't explain my laziness this past month. I've got a concert in just over a week. Urp.