Flexibility in the adult beginner

Yesterday I came across this beautiful picture of a young aspiring ballerina named Robbie Downey stretching her leg with ease.  She was advertising a stretching tool called Stretch Strap I.  I don't own that particular stretching strap but I have another I use and like.  She has info. about this strap here.
 


Aspiring ballerina Robbie Downey
Her website is here.



I have been following Robbie's FB page and have watched some videos of her dancing and she's wonderful to watch.  I KNOW I should not be comparing myself to her in any way shape or form, but I am in awe of how flexible some people are.  I know it comes with hard work and is much more easily attained in younger dancers, but I have been stretching every night and have improved over the last few months. 

I can almost do my right side splits (my left side needs work) and my middle splits are probably not attainable in this lifetime, but I'm trying!

In the meantime here is my attempt to pull my leg over my head like Robbie above.

my valiant attempt on the right to pull my darn leg up. I'm working on it folks.

I think my biggest frustration with ballet so far has been my lack of flexibility (relatively speaking).  My turnout has improved drastically since I started back in Sept., my port de bras has gotten better, and I'm able to follow simple choreography- but damn the flexibility required is so hard in ballet.  This is probably why there are not all that many adults who take ballet.  Although throughout my journey I've found some great resources.  Here are some of my favorite Adult Ballerina resources:

Adult Ballerina Project run by Kristen Gillette

 

 

The Legal Ballerina- a lawyer and beginning ballerina!

I know.  I love her.

 

Adult Beginner- exactly that, although she's been dancing for a few years now.

I love her "first class" stories.

 

 

Pointe till you Drop: This dancer is most definitely NOT a beginner

but I love her site and her pictures are an inspiration to all adult dancers.

 

Adventures of an Adult Beginner.  She has a great list of other adult ballet bloggers here.

 

 Keep dancing!



My ballet teacher wants to put me in a recital!

A RECITAL.  You know, where you perform in front of people.  The recital isn't until June but you have to understand that I am the queen beginner of all beginners.  If there was ever an inexperienced adult ballet student, it would be me.  I have zero dance experience.  I never danced when I was younger and knew absolutely nothing about ballet before I started taking classes in Sept.  But here I am, thinking about performing in a recital!  (Albeit a tiny recital probably at a libra

So I have no idea what my teacher has in store for me as far as choreography but she knows my limitations so I know it will be a nice simple (and hopefully short) piece, but I'm still incredibly nervous. 

The first thing she asked me to do was to pick the music or performance I liked, so I finally found this one:

Nutcracker- pas de deux



It's at the end of the Nutcracker.  Yes I know it's a piece for a couple to perform but she said she can alter it to be just for me.  I LOVE the music and I always have and it's nice and SLOW so I figured it would be easy to choreograph.  So, we'll see! I'll keep you guys posted!

I know my weak points are my lack of flexibility (relatively speaking) and my inability to execute nice pirouettes so we'll see what she thinks of for me.

In the meantime I will continue working on my technique!

Being an athlete

It's funny that no matter how many years have passed since I played sports in high school and college, that I still consider myself to be an athlete.  Nowadays, a mediocre athlete, but I still put on my shiny new gym shoes and work out clothes and when I look in the mirror, I think I still might pass as an athlete.

Look, shiny new gym shoes, appropriately in 5th position

I know it's all relative since our accomplishments are so very personal and really shouldn't be compared to other people's, but I still find myself trying to compete and keep up with other people in ballet and other sports I still play. 

Ballet by the way, is totally new to me.  I started in September 2013 and I'm very much a beginner.  In fact, it's funny because I'm not even a beginner, I'm lower than a beginner.  There is a "basic" ballet class and a "beginning" ballet class offered at this one studio I attend and I wouldn't even dream of attending the beginning class.  I'm happy in my VERY difficult basic class. 

These three steps are our preparation for turns- which I can't do at all.  Maybe one day?

Anyway back to being an athlete.  I played softball and volleyball in high school and I was pretty good.  I was better at softball (I was captain of the team my senior year) than volleyball but I enjoyed playing both about the same.  By the time I got to college I had a bad shoulder injury that required surgery so there went any dreams of playing sports at a D1 school.  Instead I played club volleyball after my surgery which was actually really fun.  We got to travel to other D1 schools and played in tournaments all day on Saturdays without the pressure of maintaining a scholarship.

And anyway I could never have played D1 volleyball at Northwestern.  First of all I'm between 5'5 and 5'6 depending who measures me, so I could have maybe been a libero, but I wouldn't have fared very well in the front row against girls who were over 6 ft tall.  I've also never been a very good setter and even the setters in D1 schools are probably over 5'10.

At my Monday night league warming up, that's my butt in the picture and my Hello Kitty socks.

After college I continued playing softball and volleyball in fun but competitive leagues around the city.  After I had kids I had to majorly scale back my sports and I'm down to one day of volleyball a week and two of ballet.  Maybe this summer I'll do one softball league too.

sometime after college, still in my 20s

Ballet has really been a challenge for me.  I'm still challenged and have fun in volleyball on Monday nights, but since my 3 year old daughter is taking ballet now I thought it would be great if I tried it too.  The problem with adults taking beginning ballet (or rather "basic" ballet) is that it's FREAKING hard and the learning curve in the beginning is impossibly hard.  Not to mention, it's addicting, especially for former athletes like myself.  I don't want to just be able to do plies and tendues at the bar, I want to do pirouttes and fouettes! I want to increase my flexibility and eventually be able to do the splits! I want my kicks to be high and my feet to be pointed!

I didn't really know what to expect when I started taking a basic ballet class, but I quickly toned down my expectations.  I realized that just remembering to point my toes was going to be hard, not to mention knowing what in god's name to do with your arms while frantically trying to follow the choreography in class. 

I immediately learned that my turnout needed work, and that just standing in first or fifth position was brutal. Everything a ballet dancer or ballerina does, she's doing while completely turned out.  This makes a seemingly simple task of balancing yourself on one foot very hard.  My standing foot is constantly slipping out of it's turned out position to help support myself. 

same preparation for turns as above, but this time on releve

I can hold my positions on releve for exactly 1/10th of a second. And my right leg needs to be shoved back like 2 more feet.

But I still continued with ballet on Sundays and even added a new more personalized class on Tuesdays.  Our teacher on Tuesdays is a former Russian ballerina and she really focuses on technique and precision, while on Sundays the class is a large drop-in class so we do more complicated moves, but don't do them very well.

I was talking to my dad recently about being an athlete and he recalled his glory days as a semi-pro soccer player in Mexico.  He first played for a local team in Uruapan called the Aguacateros, then moved up to a semi-pro league playing for Morelia.  He then said that he almost made it big and tried out for a big national team from Mexico City called Nexaca, (in the first division back then) but at the last minute didn't make it on the team due to some kind of drama they had with the coaches.  Still, he remembers his semi-pro days fondly and even remembers certain games like they were yesterday. 


I think this is the right logo for the Aguacateros de Uruapan

 

Here's my dad in the middle with the green shirt and khaki pants with some of this former teammates in Mexico

Which brings me back full circle to what it means to be an athlete.  We never stop being athletes, despite how many years it's been since we played competitively.  And we continue being athletes when we take up new sports or endeavors like ballet at age 33!  I have toned down my expectations of what I will ever be able to perform in ballet, but I'm sticking with it and I know I'll improve.

What sports did you play in your prime days? What sports have you picked up since?