Hey everybody! I've been having a great time in San Francisco! And if you have no clue what I'm talking about go to my first post here!
Since much didn't happen in the second week I'm putting the second and third/final week into one blog post. Today was my second to last day so tomorrow is my last day. Last week was pretty repetive. I complained a lot about my pointe shoes on my other post, but I slowly got better at pointe and got new pointe shoes.
I went to San Francisco Dancewear last week and wanted to just get my current model of pointe shoe in a bigger size since my old ones were much too small. Just so you know I wore Freed Studio II's and the box, or hard part of the pointe shoe wasn't very good for my feet, so the staff kindly kept giving me shoes to try on. I finally decided on a pair of Suffolks which fit incredibly well. Went we went to the cashier my mom realized this was the brand my teacher had recommended for me but we hadn't been able to find it in Oregon. So it turns out life finds a way.
Also one of my teachers, who I will keep anonymous for her sake, was correcting the pianist more than us. She even made him stand up and do our preparation so he'd do the correct counts. And even after that she still was like, "No two counts and then, and one!" And he looked kind of confused. We, the dancers, all always looked at each other in disbelief and laughed. Like her correcting the pianist probably took up 15 minutes of our time which is 1/10 of it which to me is a lot. Great to know we paid for teachers to correct the pianists...
So, my friend and I have an inside joke about bellies. I'm not gonna go on and rant about where it came from, but just how it made me crack up in the middle of class. Alright, one of the pianists we had was named Billy, and before you cry out I'm revealing private property, do you think you can find Billy out of thousands in California? Yeah, no. So his name is Billy and one of my teachers has an accent so everytime she says "Billy" really fast it sounds like she is saying "Belly". My teachers tells us our combination, which is an adagio, or slow combination, and then tells the pianist quickly,"Adagio, Billy!" but I heard it as "Adagiobelly" and of course that made me smirk and forget the combination. Good job, me!
I had pantomime today. It's basically a dance mime, just to help clear things up. We had all made up little mime stories and we went one by one showing our stories. So eventually, this one group goes. There's was about a betrayal in love, which sounds super dramatic, but doesn't look that dramatic. They tell this story then afterwards one of the girls watching was crying which I find kind of funny since it takes a lot to make me laugh or cry or basically feel emotion. I mean "Inside Out" made me cry but that's been in development for around six years.
Finally, I was called a lobster in one of my technique classes... The story behind this is that I turn extremely red in class since the blood is rushing to my face while I work. It also happened to be that I was holding my breath, and yes you may find it strange that I forget to breathe but I guess I forget to breathe sometimes. And of course my teacher correlated those two things and said I was starting to look like a lobster since I was holding my breath. Great.
Overall this experience was amazing and it made me work very hard and I really think I have improved. Thank you San Francisco Ballet and thank you for listening to me!
An improved Anna, Signing off!
Since much didn't happen in the second week I'm putting the second and third/final week into one blog post. Today was my second to last day so tomorrow is my last day. Last week was pretty repetive. I complained a lot about my pointe shoes on my other post, but I slowly got better at pointe and got new pointe shoes.
I went to San Francisco Dancewear last week and wanted to just get my current model of pointe shoe in a bigger size since my old ones were much too small. Just so you know I wore Freed Studio II's and the box, or hard part of the pointe shoe wasn't very good for my feet, so the staff kindly kept giving me shoes to try on. I finally decided on a pair of Suffolks which fit incredibly well. Went we went to the cashier my mom realized this was the brand my teacher had recommended for me but we hadn't been able to find it in Oregon. So it turns out life finds a way.
Also one of my teachers, who I will keep anonymous for her sake, was correcting the pianist more than us. She even made him stand up and do our preparation so he'd do the correct counts. And even after that she still was like, "No two counts and then, and one!" And he looked kind of confused. We, the dancers, all always looked at each other in disbelief and laughed. Like her correcting the pianist probably took up 15 minutes of our time which is 1/10 of it which to me is a lot. Great to know we paid for teachers to correct the pianists...
So, my friend and I have an inside joke about bellies. I'm not gonna go on and rant about where it came from, but just how it made me crack up in the middle of class. Alright, one of the pianists we had was named Billy, and before you cry out I'm revealing private property, do you think you can find Billy out of thousands in California? Yeah, no. So his name is Billy and one of my teachers has an accent so everytime she says "Billy" really fast it sounds like she is saying "Belly". My teachers tells us our combination, which is an adagio, or slow combination, and then tells the pianist quickly,"Adagio, Billy!" but I heard it as "Adagiobelly" and of course that made me smirk and forget the combination. Good job, me!
I had pantomime today. It's basically a dance mime, just to help clear things up. We had all made up little mime stories and we went one by one showing our stories. So eventually, this one group goes. There's was about a betrayal in love, which sounds super dramatic, but doesn't look that dramatic. They tell this story then afterwards one of the girls watching was crying which I find kind of funny since it takes a lot to make me laugh or cry or basically feel emotion. I mean "Inside Out" made me cry but that's been in development for around six years.
Finally, I was called a lobster in one of my technique classes... The story behind this is that I turn extremely red in class since the blood is rushing to my face while I work. It also happened to be that I was holding my breath, and yes you may find it strange that I forget to breathe but I guess I forget to breathe sometimes. And of course my teacher correlated those two things and said I was starting to look like a lobster since I was holding my breath. Great.
Overall this experience was amazing and it made me work very hard and I really think I have improved. Thank you San Francisco Ballet and thank you for listening to me!
An improved Anna, Signing off!