Greetings at the beginning of a very full day. This morning: finishing off a going-away gift for my good friend who is leaving for college next week, baking a batch of croissants as a thank-you gift for a certain very generous favor (and, incidentally, for breakfast tomorrow), getting a decent start on the next chapter of my novel so that tomorrow when I have more time and concentration I can delve directly into the next tragedy which will propel the plot forward and in which I shall not have any sentences this long or confusing. This afternoon: demonstrating for a ballet class full of brand new adorable urchins, helping my mom set up her Etsy shop, going back for my own ballet class and staying late for photos, after which I shall come home and gratefully fall into bed.
At least I'm hoping to get all of that done today. I make no promises. The novel is coming along nicely these days, and I think my new-found dedication is starting to pay off. There are still some days where I write only very little, don't like that very little and delete it the next day, but I try to tell myself that those days are as much a part of the process as the productive ones.
Lately I've taken to reading Robin McKinley's blog. Check it out at www.robinmckinley.com if you're interested. I've always loved her writing, whether it's her YA work (Beauty, Dragonhaven) or her more adult stuff (the wonderful and unsettling Deerskin, or Sunshine). It's fantasy with real literary merit. In any case, she blogs daily -- which in itself is impressive to me -- about life in general, which for her often involves raising hounds, ringing handbells, gardening, chasing bats out of her attic, and writing of course. I find it delightful.
Just to let everybody know, I have changed my settings to allow for comments from readers who are not officially followers of my blog. I didn't do this at first because I was trying to avoid spam, but I do enjoy comments and I like feedback, so I changed the settings so that anybody can leave a comment but I have to approve it before it posts. Hopefully this will help.
Cheers!
Showing posts with label class. Show all posts
Showing posts with label class. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 13, 2011
Thursday, February 17, 2011
That Crazy Time of Year
So this is it, the beginning of the mad, fun, grueling, wonderful rehearsal season, when we pretend to be real ballerinas and not just small-time slaves of Terpsichore. Actually, we've been rehearsing one piece through February for a fundraiser at the end of the month, but the real excitement starts in March, when we begin to learn all the choreography and start working to bring the show together.
Here I really must say something about my teacher, Ann Marie Benedict, because just the fact that Chewelah possesses such a gem is amazing. In her youth she danced with a company in Los Angeles under the direction of Eugene Loring. She never talks much about herself, but the stories she does tell from that time are fascinating. She's been teaching ballet in Chewelah for over twenty-five years now. I've been her student for twenty of them. She is by far the greatest slave-driver I have ever encountered, and we love her for it. It is easy, in a small town without much competition for quality, to become content with "good enough". She has never allowed us to relax into a false sense of self-satisfaction, but always urges us to improve on what we did before -- to jump higher, balance longer, turn the double into a triple, express ourselves more. Most important, she has passed on to us her passion for art in all its forms.
Our show this year will be on May 22nd, in Colville, Colville being the nearest town that actually has an auditorium. One of the many challenges Ann has faced over the years is a severe lack of facilities. Our classes and rehearsals are held in a dirty old gymnasium, and even though we have the space reserved months in advance, we are ousted whenever they need somewhere to have a blood drive, or rehearse a play. However, plans have lately gone into motion for an actual dance studio, which would be the biggest step forward in years. There is also the ongoing challenge of making ballet accessible to the inhabitants of a small town whose exposure to it often consists solely of multiple viewings of "Barbie in Swan Lake" with their very young daughters. Chewelah does have a surprisingly strong core community of artists. But there are certainly plenty of the other.
I like to think that these various obstacles have made us all stronger, more interesting dancers than we would have been otherwise. In all events, they have certainly made us stubborn, determined, and maybe just a wee bit pugnacious.
Here I really must say something about my teacher, Ann Marie Benedict, because just the fact that Chewelah possesses such a gem is amazing. In her youth she danced with a company in Los Angeles under the direction of Eugene Loring. She never talks much about herself, but the stories she does tell from that time are fascinating. She's been teaching ballet in Chewelah for over twenty-five years now. I've been her student for twenty of them. She is by far the greatest slave-driver I have ever encountered, and we love her for it. It is easy, in a small town without much competition for quality, to become content with "good enough". She has never allowed us to relax into a false sense of self-satisfaction, but always urges us to improve on what we did before -- to jump higher, balance longer, turn the double into a triple, express ourselves more. Most important, she has passed on to us her passion for art in all its forms.
Our show this year will be on May 22nd, in Colville, Colville being the nearest town that actually has an auditorium. One of the many challenges Ann has faced over the years is a severe lack of facilities. Our classes and rehearsals are held in a dirty old gymnasium, and even though we have the space reserved months in advance, we are ousted whenever they need somewhere to have a blood drive, or rehearse a play. However, plans have lately gone into motion for an actual dance studio, which would be the biggest step forward in years. There is also the ongoing challenge of making ballet accessible to the inhabitants of a small town whose exposure to it often consists solely of multiple viewings of "Barbie in Swan Lake" with their very young daughters. Chewelah does have a surprisingly strong core community of artists. But there are certainly plenty of the other.
I like to think that these various obstacles have made us all stronger, more interesting dancers than we would have been otherwise. In all events, they have certainly made us stubborn, determined, and maybe just a wee bit pugnacious.
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