Second workshop #2 + balancing your life

Second workshop, we did similar things to the first 10 minutes of the royal ballet morning class (2018):

Tendu, pique, brush to the front, to the side, to the back. Port de bras.

Some key takeaways:

Tendu

Today I forced myself to turnout more than usual, which actually forced me to do the moves with better posture. My glutes and hamstrings are more strengthened when I did my tendus. Our teacher said you should be firing up your whole leg when doing a tendu.

On doing tendu in fifth position

In the first position, you should always imagine there is a wall/line in between your two heels in a first position, and your heels should trace that wall when doing a tendu.

Ok, now your right heel is aligned with your left toes in a perfect fifth position in a perfect world. The wall/line still hasn’t changed and it is still at your left heel. You need to tendu and point your right foot toes along that line that connects to your left heels.

P.S. Life thoughts this week…

On balancing all aspects of life:

I am recently reading up on investing, as I started buying ETF and am picking which mutual fund to invest in, and I am curious to know where we are heading in terms of the market cycle. These things take up a lot of time - having been guilty of reading newspapers at work for at least 1 hour each day during the past week…oops.

I now kind of envy people who only have one interest and devote their life to only one thing. Like if you hope to be a professional investor, you just read constantly about companies and the market. Or if you are a professional ballerina, you just train all day and devote 100% to dancing. Not me. I have my job to do, I have ballet, and I now need to read up about the economy because I am gonna be an investor of my own money. Each commitment requires 100% of my time and effort if I want to achieve excellence. It’s kind of a struggle to balance all these stuff because I want to be good at all areas but I don’t have enough time and effort. Ugh.

On making changes within an organization:

Previously I had some thoughts on improving our investor targeting service, and our managers finally met with me to hear me out in detail. However, all my ideas were rejected - either because implementing them is more complicated than I thought, or that my managers disagree with the necessity of them. I am now realizing that it is very hard to make changes within a large organization, when there are so many moving parts floating around. Too young, too naive, on my part, which could be a great lesson for something further down the road.

Restarting the workshop one more time + New Years!

Happy New Decade! Today I restarted the Absolute Beginner class again… and progressed to the side barre! I am so excited that I am finally among the more advanced people!

The side barre is def more practicing on our own… the teacher taught us a few moves and left us practicing while teaching other people at the centre barre. It is actually pretty good, as we now all know what the moves are supposed to be and thus are allowed time to come to it on our own terms. We’re also supposed to remember quickly the steps that the teacher taught. Def more advanced!

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