Midsummer Update!

Doing a quick check-in for June and look ahead to July!

With the close of Boston Ballet’s Sleeping Beauty on Memorial Day weekend I was able to get back into the home studio on a more regular basis. As much as I love super-ing time with a professional ballet company has meant (ironically) less time dancing. Though watching all those amazing professional dancers up close is certainly a great motivator!

The home studio’s school-year schedule went through the first two weeks of June. After a week off we launched in to the summer schedule (though we’re on a two-week break from that for the July 4th holiday and such). I’ve been able to remind myself how to plié and tendu and all that good stuff! Which was important especially because…

We started rehearsals for MND!. So far for me it’s been all fairy stuff. We’ve got a large group of faeries of assorted ages: tiny ones and tween-y ones and younger teens and then the “big” faeries. There’s a lot of wrangling involved, but since I hardly ever dance with the little kids it’s kind of cute to watch them learning their parts. The lead faeries still have more to learn beyond these large group pieces, but we were able to go over some of our sections with Puck last week. There’s some dancing to learn for that, of course, but a lot of these parts really carry the story and it’s been fun to start getting into character and figuring out how to be Starling and not just Rori-with-wings.

Managed to squeeze in some dance-related fun in June, too! One of our teachers took advantage of her newly-renovated kitchen to have some of us adults over for a party. It was perfectly timed between the end of the year show and before MND got going (actually it was the night after auditions!), so we were able to take a breather and remind ourselves how lucky we are to be part of this crazy but loving community.

I made it to the BBS studio in the city for a few classes during our most recent break and used up the rest of my class card (before the expiration date… an accomplishment!). Their summer dance program has started up which means that walking to the studio one is bombarded with very long, lean bunheads heading in the opposite direction. They make me feel very fire-plug-ish! But they also have this contagious enthusiasm that makes me want to work even harder.

So on to July.

We’re on break for the rest of this week thanks to the holiday, but I’ve been working my way (once more) through “The Perfect Pointe Book” for the past month+ and am in week 7 of 8 of that. My feet are showing the effects which is great. I think it’s also been helpful to keep me from getting too far out of shape with my sporadic dance class schedule. The footwork and turnout muscle work and core strengthening has made it a lot easier to jump in to class and not feel totally wiped even if it’s been a week or more since my last one.

Today also marked the start of the Breaking Ballet 5-day Ab Challenge which I learned of through The 109th Bead (thanks, Lorry!). Registration is now closed, sorry! But hopefully there will be more of these;  “ballet” + “abs” + “free” + “5-days” seemed to be a no-brainer to me. I can do anything for 5-days and my ballet abs can always use some work! I really enjoyed the first workout. It clocked in at just under 15 minutes, wasn’t too terribly taxing (though I can tell I did something!), and I loved that the exercises included real ballet stuff. I talked one of my friends from the studio into signing up for the challenge, too! Largely because…

We’re heading to Saratoga Springs later this week to watch NYCB perform and I wanted her to be forewarned that I might be doing some weird ab routines on the floor of our hotel room and she wasn’t allowed to laugh at me during such! 😉 Luckily she was totally game and now we can laugh at each other (which will provide an additional workout for our abs!).

I’m really looking forward to the time we’ll be spending out there. This will be my 5th (?) trip out there with the studio and it’s always a great experience. Saratoga is a beautiful town, for one. Lots of cute restaurants and shops (including Saratoga Dance). There’s also the National Museum of Dance which has had some interesting exhibits not to mention a school with open classes to keep up on our dance technique! And, of course, SPAC and NYCB. It’s such a unique venue to watch ballet in. All that, plus random opportunities to be in traffic and spy Peter Martins zipping through town in his Bentley!

After this week the crunch will be on to learn and rehearse MND! The divertissement I’m in will start rehearsing next week and the lead faeries still have a lot to learn. Sadly I’ll be away for part of that process since I’ll be out of town for a wedding. A little stressful, but it will all come together.

I also found out that our director is putting together a piece for an outdoor event the local art museum is hosting later this month. Not sure whether I’ll be able to perform in that one because of the rehearsal schedule, but I’ll definitely be in the audience if nothing else!

I’ll hopefully be checking in throughout as I try to reinvigorate this blog. I’m not great at remembering to take pictures, but trying to get better so I can make it a bit less text-heavy. Hope everyone out there is having a great start to their summers. Happy dancing!