Well, in spite of being out for nearly two weeks, Will tells me that he can't tell. So either I am hopeless and practice doesn't help, or I am starting to 'get it'. I choose to believe the latter. :)
I will say that things are starting to settle in, at least from a technique standpoint. Will keeps throwing new stuff at me, and I manage to have at least one "a-ha" moment in each practice. The problem right now is that it doesn't FEEL like it LOOKS like anything. "Dancer Brain" isn't happy. It all feels so mechanical - no life, no spark, no fluidity, no beauty.
I told Will as much during my lesson today. He says that it does "look like something", and that the rest will come in time. He told me today that he's actually holding me to the "kid's" standards, which are much tougher than the "adult" standards - the "kid's" standards are what leads to the normal competitive ranks, ending with nationals, worlds, and the Olympics. The Adult standards are lower, and geared to make it possible for adults of all levels to still enjoy competition. This explains the feeling I get that I'm a paramecium under a microscope all the time...
It's a good thing, though. I WANT to be held to the higher standard - I want to be that good. Most of the adults I've seen are mediocre at best and that's just not for me. Do it well, or don't bother doing it. Of course, that could be the hyper-competitive side of my nature.... heck, I'd make breathing a competition if I could figure out how :)
He has admitted, though, that the "artistic" stuff isn't is strong suit. He and Anna struggle with that part of their performances. Technically, no one competing today can touch them - they are focusing now on enhancing the emotive layer to their performances. "Getting across the footlights", as I call it when teaching dancers. Once they conquer that, there will be no stopping them. They are amazingly talented and work their butts off, and I know they will get there. I have high hopes for their performance at Nationals in April. By the end of next month, I may be able to say I'm training with a National Champion. :)
Bottom line, I need the technical rigor and microscopic focus on technique that Will brings to the table. There will be time enough to make it into art later. "Dancer Brain" isn't happy about it, but it's the right thing to do.
Oh - after 6 months of skating and two months of Blue, I noticed today that I have may ass back!
I can tell you precisely when it fell - February 8, 2003. I woke up that morning, after 3 years of no workouts because I'd opened a bar, and could tell it had moved South. I failed the "pencil test". I cried all day. I'm not much to look at - never have been - but I've had a great ass ever since I started dancing in my early twenties. My one redeeming feature was gone, and I was now officially not just plain, but homely. :(
When I was getting dressed to skate this morning, I pulled on my unitard (worn under my skating clothes for warmth), looked in the mirror and WOO HOO, the booty is back where it belongs!
If I never skate any better than mediocre, this alone makes all the work and humiliation worthwhile. :)
Friday, March 27, 2009
Monday, March 23, 2009
New Law
I am proposing a new law.
When you have been sick for two weeks, and go to see you underwear-model trainer for the first time...
It shall be illegal for him to show off the 6-pack abs he's been working on for a photo shoot.
Illegal - PERIOD.
Sigh.
I'm back to skating as of today. It's been two weeks since I was at the rink, and I can really tell. All of the fine tuning that Anna did with me two weeks ago is completely gone out of my head. I guess it's two steps forward, one back for a while. I had a horrible cold that put me out of work for over a week, and I'm just now feeling strong enough to get back to my routine, although I still have the sniffles.
I decided to go see Blue the previous Saturday (when I started feeling better), hence the new "law". To his credit, he took it easy on me - of course, that's a relative term with him, and I still felt like crap when I left after an hour. But that's nothing new, now is it?
When you have been sick for two weeks, and go to see you underwear-model trainer for the first time...
It shall be illegal for him to show off the 6-pack abs he's been working on for a photo shoot.
Illegal - PERIOD.
Sigh.
I'm back to skating as of today. It's been two weeks since I was at the rink, and I can really tell. All of the fine tuning that Anna did with me two weeks ago is completely gone out of my head. I guess it's two steps forward, one back for a while. I had a horrible cold that put me out of work for over a week, and I'm just now feeling strong enough to get back to my routine, although I still have the sniffles.
I decided to go see Blue the previous Saturday (when I started feeling better), hence the new "law". To his credit, he took it easy on me - of course, that's a relative term with him, and I still felt like crap when I left after an hour. But that's nothing new, now is it?
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Down with the flu
Well, it turns out that there is another thing that gets in the way of being able to skate every day.... catching the flu.
On Wednesday, I had my "pickup lesson" per usual - although it wasn't "usual" because Will was out with a pulled muscle so his skating partner did it instead. She's a stickler for body alignment, so we spent the 15 minutes (it was more like 20) working specifically on my body placement - and it actually helped a LOT with some of the backwards stuff. When I found out that Anna would be doing my lesson, I was scared sh*tless, but it all turned out good! I was really looking forward to practicing with these new alignments on Thursday. They made a huge difference and I could really tell things were falling into place.
Then on Thursday, I promptly got the flu.... and it went to my chest... and it wasn't until today that I started feeling good again.
Damn.
I'm going to try to skate tomorrow, and we will see how long my lungs hold out.
On Wednesday, I had my "pickup lesson" per usual - although it wasn't "usual" because Will was out with a pulled muscle so his skating partner did it instead. She's a stickler for body alignment, so we spent the 15 minutes (it was more like 20) working specifically on my body placement - and it actually helped a LOT with some of the backwards stuff. When I found out that Anna would be doing my lesson, I was scared sh*tless, but it all turned out good! I was really looking forward to practicing with these new alignments on Thursday. They made a huge difference and I could really tell things were falling into place.
Then on Thursday, I promptly got the flu.... and it went to my chest... and it wasn't until today that I started feeling good again.
Damn.
I'm going to try to skate tomorrow, and we will see how long my lungs hold out.
Friday, March 6, 2009
At the 5 month mark...
Skaters are SUPPOSED to fall down a lot. Here I've been trying so hard not to make a fool of myself (and failing miserably) and congratulating myself that I don't fall down terribly often.
Then I watched a 15 year old girl work on a double something-or-other on Thursday morning.
She must have spent nearly an hour. Over and over again, build up speed, flip backwards, spot, launch, turn once, then twice, then touch a toe back to the ice, miss the landing, and collapse in a heap. Often, in what looked like pain - the pain of falling definitely, but also the pain of frustration.
At yet she got up, brushed the ice shavings off her legs, went back to the other side of the rink, and started it all over again.
That's when I suddenly realized that falling was part of the process - falling a LOT. If you aren't willing to fall, you won't take the risks you need in order to improve.
Duh. Old people are so slow sometimes. :)
It did change the way I approach things. I started being willing to throw myself off-balance to get a position right, take a risk of leaning just a little farther than I wanted to, or throw myself into a new skill and not worry so much about doing it wrong and falling down.
If the 15-year-old could do that much, then so could I. I had some spectacular blow-outs that were worthy of "Wide World of Sports" trailers, but it did change my attitude.
It seemed to help. Will has been starting to focus on the nuances of placement and alignment, and often times that means being willing to off-balance myself in order to find the correct balance point, not just the first one I found. Anna is doing the same thing, and although I tease Will by calling her "The Micrometer Lady", I don't feel so much the fool when she does it now. Yes, I'm going to fall, and yes, it's going to hurt my ego and my ass sometimes. But if you aren't willing to risk a little, you might as well park your butt on the couch and eat potato chips in front of the TV.
Once again, work got completely in the way of skating - and that's starting to piss me off. I only got to the rink three times this week. I did spend nearly an hour on Tuesday just practicing the backwards edge control exercises - Will always remarks on my ability to do the same damn thing over and over again until I get it. It's just stubbornness - pure, naked stubbornness. Ballet teaches you that. I think it's one of the reasons that ballet dancers are such complete assholes. I got the outside edge version pretty much down now, but the inside edge version escaped me until my lesson on Friday, when Will broke it down for me again.
The other big thing he has me doing now is connecting things together into patterns and working on my body placement and eye line. I spend WAY too much time starting at the ice, and eventually it makes me hunch over and lean forward. Probably half of my lesson this week was all about "STOP LOOKING AT THE ICE". :) It's funny to me, since I used to yell that at my dance students all the time... "the floor isn't going anywhere, I promise!"
I think this week I actually started feeling like an actual, real-life skater. It's taken 5 months, but I can remember now some of the basic stuff that seemed so hard (hell, just STOPPING terrified me) comes completely naturally now, and I seem to be settling into a rhythm. When I started (and realized how flippin' hard this was going to be), I could hardly imagine myself actually doing this without feeling awkward - but it's slowly settling into my body and every once in a while, the stars align and DAMN I'm actually a skater!
That's pretty cool.
Then I watched a 15 year old girl work on a double something-or-other on Thursday morning.
She must have spent nearly an hour. Over and over again, build up speed, flip backwards, spot, launch, turn once, then twice, then touch a toe back to the ice, miss the landing, and collapse in a heap. Often, in what looked like pain - the pain of falling definitely, but also the pain of frustration.
At yet she got up, brushed the ice shavings off her legs, went back to the other side of the rink, and started it all over again.
That's when I suddenly realized that falling was part of the process - falling a LOT. If you aren't willing to fall, you won't take the risks you need in order to improve.
Duh. Old people are so slow sometimes. :)
It did change the way I approach things. I started being willing to throw myself off-balance to get a position right, take a risk of leaning just a little farther than I wanted to, or throw myself into a new skill and not worry so much about doing it wrong and falling down.
If the 15-year-old could do that much, then so could I. I had some spectacular blow-outs that were worthy of "Wide World of Sports" trailers, but it did change my attitude.
It seemed to help. Will has been starting to focus on the nuances of placement and alignment, and often times that means being willing to off-balance myself in order to find the correct balance point, not just the first one I found. Anna is doing the same thing, and although I tease Will by calling her "The Micrometer Lady", I don't feel so much the fool when she does it now. Yes, I'm going to fall, and yes, it's going to hurt my ego and my ass sometimes. But if you aren't willing to risk a little, you might as well park your butt on the couch and eat potato chips in front of the TV.
Once again, work got completely in the way of skating - and that's starting to piss me off. I only got to the rink three times this week. I did spend nearly an hour on Tuesday just practicing the backwards edge control exercises - Will always remarks on my ability to do the same damn thing over and over again until I get it. It's just stubbornness - pure, naked stubbornness. Ballet teaches you that. I think it's one of the reasons that ballet dancers are such complete assholes. I got the outside edge version pretty much down now, but the inside edge version escaped me until my lesson on Friday, when Will broke it down for me again.
The other big thing he has me doing now is connecting things together into patterns and working on my body placement and eye line. I spend WAY too much time starting at the ice, and eventually it makes me hunch over and lean forward. Probably half of my lesson this week was all about "STOP LOOKING AT THE ICE". :) It's funny to me, since I used to yell that at my dance students all the time... "the floor isn't going anywhere, I promise!"
I think this week I actually started feeling like an actual, real-life skater. It's taken 5 months, but I can remember now some of the basic stuff that seemed so hard (hell, just STOPPING terrified me) comes completely naturally now, and I seem to be settling into a rhythm. When I started (and realized how flippin' hard this was going to be), I could hardly imagine myself actually doing this without feeling awkward - but it's slowly settling into my body and every once in a while, the stars align and DAMN I'm actually a skater!
That's pretty cool.
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