Tenth workshop and loving yourself

There has been a very big news recently from my home country China that a young girl in the country’s best university committed suicide because of her abusive boyfriend, who is her schoolmate. The boy lamented the fact that she is no longer a virgin, and therefore asked her to get pregnant with his child and then abort it, as both a punishment and a demonstration of her love. It really made my heart sank, as I am sure many many girls have felt the same way and was there for her. As a girl growing up, especially raised by traditional Asian parents who are usually very strict and critical, it is easy to have doubt in yourself and not believe you deserve the best. Growing up in such an environment, girls always have a tendency to please other people and over compromise themselves to fulfill other people’s requests, and would be afraid that rejecting such requests would mean they would lose love and respect from others. It is this kind of thinking that negatively affects girls’ approach towards dating, as their willingness to over compromise prevented them from leaving their abusive boyfriends.

Being single and actively dating, I also sometimes find myself in the trap of being afraid of saying no, and would always terribly regret me not being sincere and genuine to myself and do what I actually want to do - especially after I said yes to a second date with a person I have no chemistry with, or go home with someone when I am not ready. I do tend to find myself being stronger as years go by, and would always remind myself to always reject whatever I do not like to do- something that seems easy to many people but hard for me sometimes. I did had a few moments of feeling free and independent, once after I had a very frank conversation with my ex and broke up with him, and I consequently had the best year of my life so far just by dating myself, exploring New York, visiting museums, going to shows, etc. Most recently, I also said no to a museum date in MoMa and had a great time going with my friend instead. Loving yourself - seems easy but is sometimes very hard. It means stop needing love from the outside and give love to yourself from within. It means it is ok that to not get love from everybody in the society, because at the end of the day, you will always be there for your own support. It means defending yourself in front of something you do not want for yourself, and care less about what other people think.

Anyways, a very heavy topic for an otherwise thrilling class of dancing!

Today we did many difficult dance moves, including coupé, grand battement, fondu, soussus.

Grand battement:

You need to make sure your alignment is still there when doing a grand battement. That means not over compensating your leg and raise it above your head. That is not right, you need to raise it till the highest while also not compensating your gesture and alignment at all.

Releve/Soussus

When doing it, it is also critical to strengthen your inner thigh when doing it. Meanwhie, for a soussus, the two ankles need to be strictly together, touching, like zipping a zip lock.

Meanwhile, it is very crucial that your back is raising higher, and your chest is open to the front while shoulders down and relaxed. Put your chin to the back instead of to the front.

You neck should also not be stiff. You should be able to freely move it. It is easy to tense all up when dancing, but it actually hinders you on a lot of moves.

Facial expressions

The teacher said you should always look like you just smelled flowers when you are dancing ballet. Your cheeks should be up and your mouth behind your closing lips should look like you are about to sing soprano. Again, hard to do! Our teacher always jokes that we all look so angry when dancing - because we are so busy focusing on the dance moves and getting all tensed up!

Coupe

That is basically like doing tendu with leg bending and changing your leg from front to back. You need to experience the same heel-ball-toe, and then toe-ball-heel movement that you did previously when doing tendu.

Fondu

Basically doing a tendu in one leg while the other leg is straight. You need to still think of having your heel forward. When moves gets more complicated, it is very easy to forget the basics and loosen up on your gesture and alignment. Should always alert on these!

We also practiced a lot of moves with both arms and legs. I am terrible at memorizing the steps and coordinating all of my limbs. But it is still super fun! I am optimistic I will get better.

Lastly, want to end today’s blog with a beautiful piece of dancing from Ava Arbuckle, a 14 year old ballerina I saw from instagram. So elegant! and look at the techniques! and she is only 14 year old! Ahhhh