August Awesomeness

[appleblossom]

Dance camp in less than 2 weeks time! WHOO HOO.

[Sharon B]

fantabulous private lesson and classes yesterday - resurrected the variation from last summer, surprisingly I remember most of it, cant wait to work more on it in 2 weeksAlso worked on pointe as well, left foot is so strong, right not so much ( this is more of an August angst with respect to the right foot). Was told I look like I've lost weight, made my whole day lol. Teacher also said that both he and his wife ( both teach classes I take) have noticed my improvement. Made me feel that all the hard work is worth it - and that I am actually improving.

[Claude_Catastrophique]

Have fun at dance camp. I came back yesterday and it was amazing. I can't wait until next year. I love it so much there. Teachers great, lessons great, students great, organisation great, everthing great.

[Niina]

I will be returning to classes after a long long break, it's been almost nine months! I can't wait to get back to dancing, a ballet studio is where I belong.

[Marjolein]

My ballet intensive starts tomorrow! 5 days of ballet, pointe, pas de deux en character. The week after that I'm doing a dance intensive with classes in ballet, jazz, tap, musical theatre. And I just got back from a 2 week intensive at the Guildford School of Acting. This is the best summer ever!!

[dancingjet]

Niina, I have recently returned as well, after about 6 months off! It is good to be back in class.

[actionwoman]

I recently found a new studio with two excellent teachers and last night's class was probably one of the best ones I've ever had.

 

The teacher dedicated the entire class to epaulement, a concept I'd never learned. She first had us position one arm bent at a 90-degree angle (hand up), against a corner wall or beam and stand a bit forward so we could feel the back muscles working. We did that on both sides, then worked at the barre adding head movements. My chin had been way too far down and moving it up and using my back muscles really helped my alignment and extension.

 

I've always had trouble in the center with balancing on one leg or standing too far back on my heels. By thinking about the muscles in the shoulder and back of the standing leg, I dramatically improved my balance in a single class.

 

I can't believe I've never learned about this before. I'd read about epaulement but I thought it had more to do with port de bra and head movement. I'm so happy I found this studio - the classes are also half the price at what I pay at other, inferior studios. Yay!

[appleblossom]

I survived ADC Richmond. Yay!

 

and last night in class i did attitude turns and they were pretty nice.

[ripresa]

I survived two weeks of back to back dance camp.

 

WOO!

 

And hi btw, I haven't posted in a while, but was reminded by robync and appleblossom while at camp that this still exists

[RobynC]

And I also got to Dance Camp, had an awesome time, and was put up from last time to Level 4 AND Intermediate pointe class!

 

And now I'm in Chicago having a great time - the only downside is whether Hurricane Irene will let us fly back into Richmond tomorrow as planned in order to catch our Monday flights to Dallas and then onto Sydney.

[BlleFille]

I made it through my 95 minute ballet class followed by my hour long pointe class after three weeks in vacation having done next to nothing! Relieved... and sore but happy to be back!

[Je Suis Aimee]

A variation class is now being offered and my teachers all but pushed me into it. I'm so excited to be finally taking variation, plus I feel complimented. Maybe I'm wrong but I'm sure if I was utterly inept, I wouldn't belong in such a class.

[Chihiro]

I had a great time in Richmond too! It was so much fun to meet Appleblossom and RobynC (who are both beautiful dancers and really fun people, by the way!) =) I was a level 2, and my goal for the week was to focus on alignment and undo bad habits. My first class back, one of my teachers (who did not know about camp) commented confusedly about how much better I looked after my "time off", so I'll consider that a success! ;)

[appleblossom]

I was surprised to not meet more BT4D people at camp. Maybe they were all flying under the radar.