Aftermath of my SI

[Guest ballerinababe88]

This summer I went to a great SI! I had amazing teachers, made lots of friends, and improved a lot! Now that I'm home, I want to go back! I feel like I have lost a lot of the improvement I made this summer. Is this a normal thing? If so, do you have any advice about how to deal with it? Thanks!

[Victoria Leigh]

Why do you feel you have lost what you learned or accomplished in the summer? Do you not have enough classes or similar quality of classes where you are? Normally one would hope to take what they have learned in the summer and continue to improve as the school year begins. Summer just gives you the opportunity to work at a more intense level, concentrated and focused totally on that without all the distractions of the year, and therefore there is more improvement, generally, in a shorter period of time. However, one should be able to continue to improve, although maybe at a slightly slower pace, once school starts.

[Guest ballerinababe88]

I guess i should have made it more clear. I don't feel that I have lost everything I learned, I just feel that I have moved backwards a little bit in the progress I am making. Thank you for replying!

[Guest JRSDANCER87]

Hi! The same thing happened to me for the first couple of weeks that I was home from my SI. My teachers here were impressed with the SI I attended, and thought I improved a lot, but I almost felt like when I got back home I had to work harder at some of the things that came really easy to me over the summer. I think that part of the problem was that I didn't have all of my SI teachers here at my home studio, telling me the same things. My teachers here correct me, but not neccessarily on the same things as I was corrected on this summer. For a little while, I thought I too would go backwards in progression because I didn't have those SI teachers anymore, but that's not entirely true. I had to realize that I am my own teacher as well, and all I had to do was remember all of the corrections I got from my various SI teachers, and apply them to my own classes here. Just because someone wasn't telling me the correction that I got at the SI doesn't mean I forget it, you just learn to self correct. Also, when you spend 5 or 6 weeks somewhere, you start to adapt to it sort of. For a little while, coming home is odd. I missed the studio I stayed at this summer for the first couple weeks of ballet here at home. I thought "wow I had such a great summer there with so much improvement, I don't know if I will improve as much here" but then you get back into the swing of things with your own studio, and you sort of "get over it". Not to say that you still don't love the studio you were at, and miss it, but you realize that it's over and you have gotten a lot out of it, and then you realize you need to keep getting a lot out of yourself, being home. It'll be okay :-)