Feb 21 2012

Rehearsal for SDB's Romeo et Juliet. Photographer: Gregory Olive. Dancers: Abby Avery & Max Tchernychev. This is a little surprise moment in the pas. Juliet runs to Romeo... strikes an arabesque... but then flips over and falls over his knee. Its a fairly easy movement for the guy, but the girl is always a bit hesitant and going for it the first few times.

Rehearsal for SDB's Romeo et Juliet. Photographer: Gregory Olive. Dancers: Abby Avery & Max Tchernychev. And this is a moment after Romeo pull Juliet off the floor. In a moment she is about to swivel into a flat footed arabesque. When you start choreographing for ballet dancers, you tend to want to put everything on pointe. After a bit, you discover that its perfectly fine for a ballerina to stand on her entire foot.

Daily Stuff -  Started working on Don Juan today. Yes, thats next year's big ballet. and you heard it here first. Rather than the Spanish Don Juan Tenorio, I am going to go a bit more towards Lord Byron's epic poem. That creates more of a Casanova-type character swinging from one adventure to another. So  for our fundraiser, we will be showing a section of the ballet where our "hero" has a run in with a bunch of flesh peddling gypsies.

We did the gypsy entrance today ad it came out quite nicely. Bouncy and fun. The girls even started getting into the whole "gypsy prostitute" vibe. And the guys got to jump around.

Afterwards, I zipped over and taught at Florence Elementary School. I had one little girl who decided to leave the program today. It was unfortunate, but I knew she wasn't happy there. I had noticed a few weeks back and had a talk with her about it. At the time, she said I was wrong, but today admitted that she just wasn't enjoying herself. (It is a bit humorous that an 8 year old would think that an adult can't tell if they don't enjoy something.) So I made sure that she was leaving for the right reasons (a lack of interest in the subject/ or desire to do better) and not for the wrong ones (peer pressure or a feeling that she wasn't up to it) and then I wished her luck and let her go off and play with the kids who don't take dance. The rest of the class went pretty well. Taught more of a polka combo and reviewed their jazz dance.