Chapter Thirteen

Yesterday's class began much like Monday. The Theif struck again. This time he/she stole CD's from her office, her locked office. "Alright now, I'm pissed. I'm beyond pissed." She stated as she collected our cards.

The girls in my class began offering suggestions. "Call maintenance and demand you need a new lock, a deadbolt even."

"I am, because this is just plain rediculous! I cant stand it! I have other equipment in there, drums from africa. This is rediculous!"

More chatter continued when one girl who, I figured, must have been dying to ask for weeks said to me, "So, how OLD are you really? I mean, I heard you talk about your kids." I gave her my age and got a "Wow! really? You dont look that old! I mean, not that you are old, but" She began digging a hole "I thought you were more like 21!" Then another girl looked at me and remarked, "I just have to ask, and this is a compliment, I dont mean to offend, really this is a compliment, but do you get carded still?" Then the attention of the class began being directed towards me as I heard the girls around me "Doesnt she look young? I didnt know she was that old?!" I was eating it up.

My prof looked at me and said "Dont you just love it?"

I replied, "Yeah, when I was mid-twenties and everyone thought I was twelve, I hated it..."

She finished my thoughts "But now you love it, right? You'll love it even more when you're my age." She then turned the class' attention back towards dance, and hollared loud enough for all to hear, "Ok ladies, to the barre! We're gonna start with our positions and plies, and today I'll talk about the arms."

During the first few weeks of dance class when we were doing modern, I thought the problem resided with the equipment, namely the CD player. But one thing I have learned, dancing aside, in the last six weeks, would be that that the real problem lies with the playee, namely my prof. It has become a daily ritual to cuss out the CD player as she struggles to make the music "go." Today was no exception. First, she couldnt get the music to play. Then she couldnt get enough volume.

In the past, when she would finally get the music on, and the volume to be loud enough, she would push the play button again to re-start the music and then run with her wild curly hair fluttering behind her, all the way to the front of the class to conduct the exercise. To add to this amusing visual, for the ballet portion, she has been using a chair to demonstrate what we should be doing at the barre, holding on to the back of the chair as we would hold the barre. Now, it would make sense to most, to let go of the chair when changing the music or turning on the stereo, but apparently, my prof hadn't figure out the art of leaving the chair behind. Because, as she ran back and forth on monday from the front of the class to the back of the class, to the stereo, hair flopping away, she dragged this chair behind her as if her hand was permanently glued to its back. About halfway through the class yesterday, she figured this out and said to herself "What in the h**l am I doing? This can just sit right here." Noticing we were all watching with amusement she shrugged and remarked, "I'm just dragging this all over the place without thinking." And proceeded to laugh at herself.

(I'll pause here to say, I found a few sites with ballet terms, so I'm going to try to do my best to use them. haha).

We went rather easily through our positions, adding hand and head movement. Memories of early childhood ballet classes ran through my head. I couldnt believe I was recalling this stuff. Then we continued through our plies and grande plies. My knees were in better shape yesterday than on Monday, thankfully. Our next technique was explained to us, we were going to be learning Rond de jambe a terre. According to my handy-dandy online dictionary of ballet terms a Rond de jambe a terre is a rond de jambe on the ground. (How helpful). The moving leg describes a semicircle on the floor, either from front to back (rond de jambe en dehors) or from back to front (rond de jambe en dedans). Basically, our feet were in first position, which is where the toes point outward like duck feet, and we brush our toes forward and circle our toes to the side, then to the back and through first position again. Not too bad, until she said those most dreaded words, "ok, now up to tempo!"

I'm beginning to hate the words "up to tempo!" why must it be "up to tempo?" We are beginners after all. Why can't we just do everything in slow motion? Sigh. I've begun to think that this is also a dreaded phrase for the rest of the class. Because, as soon as she said it, everyone in the gym groaned, and my prof smiled.

"Now, the problem with this is, when we go up to tempo, beginners usually try and use their bodies to make this leg move since their knees are locked out and it looks something like this, with their torso's going forward and backward and wobbling all over the place. Keep your upper body still, only work the leg. Keep yourself pulled up out of your supporting leg or else your hips will HURT!"

She began with her customary fumbling with the stereo, got the music on, ran to the front, and we started the Rond de jambe a terre slowly at first, and then after a bit, brought it "up to tempo." Until that point, the class was doing the exact same thing at the same time. Now we were all just forty-five people wildly swinging our straight legs in a most hideous fashion all over the place. Semi-circle? Who cares about making a stinkin' semi-circle when we're moving that quickly. And you can better believe I was 'wobbling' all over the place.