sube
i haven't really been in the writing mood. i am in hardcore grad school waiting mode and it makes me feel like i do after i turn a story in for workshop but before i get comments: stalled.
last week i went to paris and gent to visit breton and see dirty dozen. it was a good trip. there are many things to say about it. here are two.
-- i'm proud of myself for going to gent alone and having a good time.
-- i'm proud of myself for riding bikes (for the first time in ten years) with breton in paris and eating brie. and then buying brie last night at hipercor. it's so much cheaper than parmesan! not like they're comparable cheeses. it's just that i didn't eat parmesan until recently either - when i made that asparagus risotto, i think. time to bust that recipe out again..
monday night i got through an entire pointe class with my shoes on.
my teacher (miss shannon, though i call her shannon now) put me on pointe when i was nine and a half, i think. i was a little bit young but i was a good student and pretty strong. the teachers whispered that i reminded them of shannon when she was little. miss barbara was disappointed that she wasn't the one to promote me to pointe - she said it would have been soon. i was shaking when shannon said she thought i was ready - i must have asked her after saturday class, even though you're not supposed to do that. (can you imagine? it would be like, after every class, every kid comes up to you and wants to know if they can go on pointe now.) and i was expecting her to say "soon, but not yet."
my first shoes were capezio pavlovas. they were that dark pink satin, very small and very hard. beginner shoes are supposed to be hard, to support your feet while your ankles are still figuring stuff out. but i could never manage to make an arch in mine. i probably didn't weigh enough to break the shoes in. the teachers told my mom they wanted to take the shoes off my feet and break them in for me. they were like little bricks.
we weren't allowed to wear lambswool and this was years before bunhead pads. we were permitted one paper towel sheet to cut down on friction. when the gel pad came out, miss debbie let us use those. i don't know what the difference was between that and lambswool, but we all got the pads, despite the argument that they make it harder to feel the floor. mostly i notice it's harder to point my toes because they're half-numb - your shoes over the pads really squeeze the hell out of your feet. but i had a hard time getting past the bourreé exercises with just the paper towel - you can feel the 'hot spots' forming, even with tape on your toes.
in the year or so before i got on pointe, the studio had a chart on the wall noting the progress of all the students. at the intermediate level there are lots of little advancements. two ballonné, two pas de basque was to see if you could jump high enough off one leg to clear a few inches (marked at the bottom of the pole in the center of the studio) and get a fully pointed foot on the jumping leg. this got you promoted to beats. soubresaut, royale, entre che quatre, and échappe batu (aka 'back-out-front-back'). we were obsessed with the chart. i used to stare at it and wonder at the pointe promotions. two feet on the barre, one foot on the barre, two feet on the floor, one foot on the floor. i didn't understand why one foot on the barre was harder than two. how could you even put both feet on the barre? this wasn't gymnastics.
it turns out that they were referring to how you get up on your toes. you start off doing exercises while holding onto the barre - going up on two feet at the same time, at first. then you move to piqués, a 'one-footed' traveling exercise, but you get to stick your foot out and step directly onto pointe. then you progress to 'one-footed' relevés. this is when you start from both feet in fifth position, but then you bring one foot up to passé (at your knee), and you go up to pointe by 'rolling through' the other foot. so most of the burden of getting up is on that one foot.
then you start all over again, without holding onto the barre.
so i moved merrily along, trying not to grip the barre too hard during the exhausting bourreé exercises, doing my relevés in center, the whole deal. then we got to pointe turns. it's the same: 'two-footed' pointe turns (doubleés, assemblé turns), 'one-footed' piqué turns, and then pirouettes, which come out of that one-footed relevé. i was fine until pirouettes. pirouettes scared the shit out of me. it's hard enough to get up on one foot, but turning?
this is where it all went wrong.
at most studios, there is a designated pointe class once a week, where all the combinations are geared toward pointe work. the rest of the week you get to dance on flat and work your general technique. but at my studio, once you're on pointe, that's it. you wear your shoes every class. the downside of this practice is that it's frustrating - when you're starting out, you just can't do stuff as well on pointe as you can on flat. you can do double pirouettes in ballet slippers, but you can barely manage a single on pointe. even standing flat is harder in pointe shoes. the soles of the shoes make it harder to balance. so you spend a few years looking terrible at everything. on the other hand, we were stronger on pointe, and smoother at it, than girls at other studios. the girls at my baton rouge studio are light years ahead of where we were technique-wise, but i'm startled at how awkward they look in pointe class.
i was eleven or twelve, and i was scared and frustrated, and i pretty much hit a wall. i stopped wearing my pointe shoes every class. i would start again when we got close to recital time, but by then i was weaker than the other girls, and they eventually passed me up. to get promoted to fouettés, you had to be able to do sixteen tour fini (pirouettes from fifth) right and left, on pointe. i didn't wear pointe shoes, so i was stuck at the barre doing fouetté preparation exercises. i think i did my first fouetté when i was sixteen, in natchitoches, where we didn't wear pointe shoes at all. that was the beginning of my ballet renaissance, sort of. my classes at lsmsa were the first experience i had with another style of teaching - no set barre, no set center work. it's not as good for endurance, but there's no way not to pay attention. i picked up steps faster. i improved my turnout. i discovered that i had above-average balance. i learned how to use my head and arms. fuck pointe shoes. i had a lot of polishing to do.
but after lsmsa, and ailey, and years at the baton rouge studio, and years with the lsu dance ensemble, i got to be pretty polished looking. i'm a decent dancer. the baton rouge studio and another new orleans studio asked me repeatedly to audition with them. except - you have to dance on pointe. and i don't. so no dice.
this is sort of humiliating. what kind of ballet dancer doesn't dance on pointe? i could switch to modern, except...i'm scared of what we do in modern, too. barrel rolls scare me. shoulder rolls scare me. the floor terrifies me.
so i get to granada and i find a ballet studio. pointe class is on monday. i didn't bring my shoes last semester, so i took class on flat. but i noticed that the other girls didn't look that hot on pointe. honestly they're not exceptionally good in general, but they work hard and they're mostly proficient. i am one of the strongest students in the class. the girls really are nice to me, but usually no one feels very affectionately towards the stranger who drops into class and shows everyone up. if i do a triple turn, everyone watches but no one nods.
in baton rouge, i wanted so badly to dance with the company that i tried to get back to pointe. the class is on fridays. i was dancing with level VII/VIII but i went to the level V pointe class at 4:30. that's a shitty time to get over to bluebonnet, and a shitty day for a pointe class. i went a handful of times and even bought a new pair of shoes (i hadn't realized how dead my old ones were; getting up to pointe is so much easier with arch and box support!). but dancing with ten year olds is depressing, even though i was much stronger than they were. and i was still scared. still.
so i'm watching the girls in my class in spain and thinking, i could take this class. i could try to dance on pointe with these girls and not feel really bad about myself. although then i would bust my reputation of being the good dancer. on the other hand, maybe they would like me more if they saw how much i struggle with pointework.
when i went home for christmas, i found my pointe shoes and begged bunhead pads off of catherine. i did something to my achilles tendon right when i got back to granada, so i held off on pointe class for about a month. and then i got sick and missed a week. but i've been wearing my shoes at barre on mondays and thursdays for about four weeks. the first two classes i couldn't even get all the way up over my shoes. it was hard not to feel like i just suck at pointe and have ugly feet with no arches. by the third class my shoes were decently broken in and i was all the way up on them. after ten years, it actually hurt the muscles in the front of my foot to make an arch. i decided there was hope. sylvia saw me taking my shoes off after the barre and ribbed me a little. i told her i wasn't ready for center yet.
but then i saw a youtube video about the etoiles of the paris royal opera ballet and they had a bunch of close-ups of the dancers' feet on pointe, doing boureés and stuff. and you know what. they didn't have perfect banana feet the whole time they were on pointe. sometimes they didn't even look like they were totally up over their toes.
and then i was walking back from the bus stop, i don't remember where i was coming from, but i decided i just needed to stop being scared. i needed to stop freezing up every time i went on relevé. it's not that much further to get from demi-pointe to pointe. i needed to stop thinking about it and just do it.
so on monday i did it. i got through the barre and kept my shoes on and did all of center. everyone was watching. the teacher was literally craning her neck around to watch me do the exercises. (every time she looked, i fell off pointe. typical.) i did relevés instead of pirouettes (my old nemesis - i'm still not ready for those turns). but i did do these sissone relevé things, which is when you kind of glide into an arabesque from one foot - it's not an easy thing to do. you're pretty much going up on one foot without even starting from fifth. and then i did piqué and assemblé turns from the corner. i told the girl from portugal - i think her name is marta - that i was going to have to go half-time. she laughed and said yeah, and you'll finish with a perfect double turn. they really do think i'm the freakishly good dancer in the class, which is crazy and nice. i didn't do any double turns, but i did the exercise up to speed. and then class was over and i took off my shoes and admired the way my taped toes make me look like a real dancer.
