Ballet
I missed my first ballet lesson back today, and as most of what I consumed today was caffeine ("Do you want a double shot in your latte miss? It's free...") I decided to shove on my jogging bottoms and do a bit of ballet. My radiator makes a handy barre. I managed about 40 minutes, including warm up and a few stretches (I was a bit lazy and only did a few, and could see an angry Russian ballet teacher tutting away at me in my head), which I'm quite pleased with, seeing as after a summer away from ballet I could only remember about half my barre exercises. Most of which weren't bedroom friendly.
So, I had a little nose on youtube, and amongst other things I found THESE. They're short videos of 7th Grade girls at Vaganova Ballet Academy (for those of you who don't know, Vaganova was a 19th century ballerina who developed the old methods of teaching Classical Ballet at the Imperial Ballet School in Russia into a workable syllabus, known as the Vagangova method, which is still v.popular today, and her ballet school is widely regarded as one of the best in the world. Also, ballet did not come naturally to her, but she became so awesome through sheer HARD WORK and WILL POWER, which makes her about a billion times more awesome. And her first name is Agrippina):
That, basically, is what I want to be able to do. What is SO COOL about ballet, is that I can see so many similar exercises in what I do (beginners ballet) in what these girls who have been training for years do, just mostly a lot more basic. It all builds up and up, with everything stemming from the most basic exercises. It's like French, except being fluent in ballet does not, unfortunately, involve saying, "bah oui" in every sentence.
So, I had a little nose on youtube, and amongst other things I found THESE. They're short videos of 7th Grade girls at Vaganova Ballet Academy (for those of you who don't know, Vaganova was a 19th century ballerina who developed the old methods of teaching Classical Ballet at the Imperial Ballet School in Russia into a workable syllabus, known as the Vagangova method, which is still v.popular today, and her ballet school is widely regarded as one of the best in the world. Also, ballet did not come naturally to her, but she became so awesome through sheer HARD WORK and WILL POWER, which makes her about a billion times more awesome. And her first name is Agrippina):
Click to viewThat, basically, is what I want to be able to do. What is SO COOL about ballet, is that I can see so many similar exercises in what I do (beginners ballet) in what these girls who have been training for years do, just mostly a lot more basic. It all builds up and up, with everything stemming from the most basic exercises. It's like French, except being fluent in ballet does not, unfortunately, involve saying, "bah oui" in every sentence.