Cygnets

My Intermediate class has been making me very unhappy for the past while. I always leave feeling worse than when I went in, which is never a good thing. I am finding the combinations far too long and complicated for me personally to retain. I hate my brain sometimes!

However, as much as this one class is dragging me down, my Monday classes more than make up for it. Every Monday I find myself just itching to get my pointe shoes on.

But this Monday was the most amazing yet. Our teacher told us she has a little surprise for us - that we'd be learning repetoire from a famous ballet. I thought perhaps Cinderella, since our teacher is rehearsing that at the moment. As finished our barre work and moved into the centre, she as put on some music I knew immediately what we were doing and I was bursting with excitement - it was Act II; The Dance of the Cygnets. The famous pas de quatre!

When that wonderful bit of music came out the stereo and I more or less knew the choreography from watching it countless times. 

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VkIvhwy_o64]

This is the version we are doing. 

We are slightly challenged because there are only three of us and one of the girls only started pointe class that very night, so suffice to say she was thrown into the very deep end! 

So far, we have learned up to the enchrechat and échappées so the hardest part is over, which is the steps at the very beginning. I'm struggling with being fast enough to go from the travelling steps at the beginning into the quick arabesque, from which follows a pas de bourrée, before going onto a relevé which lands into a coupé  to repeat. It's a quick transition into each of those steps. It's very fast. Very fast! There are lots of head movements, which aren't actually as hard as you might think because the head generally points in the direction you are moving to or in the direction of the working leg.

We've only done it for 20 minutes so far, so next week will be better. Of course, I shall be practicing this until next class. I will never tire of the music so I'm happy to be practicing it every day, if needs be.

QMichelle