And 5-6-7-8...

I took my first dance class on Friday.  Our orientation doesn't officially start until Monday, but I was getting nervous since I didn't dance all summer.  I took a ballet class, and it was incredible.  In Houston, when you take "Adult Classes", they basically assume that you are just there because you used to love dancing and you just want to stay in shape.  There's not really a lot of emphasis on you actually growing as an individual.  I guess they just assume that you aren't there to get a ton of corrections, you just want to sweat for an hour and a half, then be on your way.

This class that I took on Friday reminded me of what it was like when I used to dance as a teenager.  At first I was terrified because my teacher's mind tended to wander a lot, so she was a bit hard to follow.  For the first few exercsises, she would quickly rattle off the steps to a combination (without showing it to us): "Tendu 1, close 2, tendue 3, close 4, degage 5, and-a-6, posse 7, close 8. Same thing, en croix, front, side, back, side... then cambre forward, cambre backward... releve balance, and hold..."  And then mid-sentence she'd get distracted and give an elaborate analogy about some part of the body.  But then instead of returning to her instructions for the exercise, she'd just say, "Ok, and here we go, 5-6-7-8."  And all of a sudden we were supposed to recall the rapid instructions she had given 5 minutes ago!  Nevertheless, I eventually caught on to her style, and I began to thoroughly appreciate her side conversations, as they gave my muscles a chance to recover and my brain a chance to process.  

Anyways, what I most loved about her, was her commitment to correcting us and actually helping us to grow as dancers.  During each exercise, she'd walk around giving each student individual feedback: pushing down on our shoulders, rotating our hips, pulling at our legs, etc.  By the end of class she was addressing me by name, or sometimes affectionately calling me "The Southerner."  At one point, I apparently was trying to force my rotation from my knees rather than my hip socket, so she had the whole class lie on the floor, touching our hip bones, and identifying our "true rotations."  :) She was a wonderful teacher, and I'll hopefully be taking her class regularly.

As far as the actual program goes, we start orientation week on Monday which will include a self-defense class to help us feel more comfortable in the city, an alignment class to teach us proper technique to avoid injuries, and a placement test to see what level classes we should be taking.  In addition to those mandatory classes for week one, we're also expected to take dance classes of various genres so we can start to decide on a concentration.  For all the remaining weeks of the program we'll be required to take 12 dance classes a week: 2 ballet, 5 in our concentration, 3 diversity, and 2 electives.  My concentration will most likely be jazz/contemporary, so my diversity and electives classes will probably include a mix of hip hop, theatre jazz, vocal, and yoga.  There are 5 other American students in the Training Program with me (four seen in the picture) and on Monday we'll be introduced to about 40 international students doing a similar program with us. 

I'm super excited to start training!  I keep trying to figure out what my end goal for all of this is, but I really don't have any idea.  Honestly, I just love dancing and I want to get better at it.  That doesn't have to mean dancing on Broadway or So You Think You Can Dance; I'm just excited to develop my craft.  Besides, I think my true calling might be simpler than I think: it involves body paint and a milk crate...