There are some days

When you feel fantastic. Today was one of those days.

I woke up in a state not uncommon to myself, and I guess not uncommon for most teenagers. Tired. Aching. Completely unenthusiastic for the day. School was okay. Not horrible but not spectacular. Today's a day that school gets out at 11:15, leaving only fifteen minutes to get the entire carpool group from school to ballet and change in fifteen minutes. Not my favorite. Got to Julio Montano's trainee A (the lower of the two trainee levels, in which i reside) class just on time. Good class. Julio is a Cuban teacher and certainly has la passion. His barre is very technically challenging and is one that I've had to learn the hard way to be especially studious about learning the combinations. His center often revolves around pirouhettes; all pun intended, and a particular style to his petit allegro and across the floor combinations akin to that of the ballet "Don Quixote". It was in his class that I first accomplished a consistent number of triple pirouhettes on my left (and least favorable) side. He's a brilliant teacher and I'm extremely lucky and thankful to have him. I felt alright in his class but the foot that I rolled over was bothering me and made turning and jumping on it an unpleasant experience which distracted me from my ability to work efficiently after barre.

Following his class, I had a rehearsal for "Aida" with Peter. He adapted the choreography of the men's section and it looks even better than it did originally, and frees up our mobility so that the opera director can make changes as needed. My foot was still hurting but not as bad now.

After that, i had a fairly long break. So I stretched, changed into my ordinary clothes, did some homework, read some of my book; Plato's "Symposium", and went for a walk with some friends, enjoying the sun. I had enjoyed the past two days of near breakless scheduling, but I was happy for the chance to relax.

Then it was another technique class, this one with Peter. Peter's style is much different to Julio's. Julio's combinations are long and part of the difficulty is learning them fast and remembering them while still focusing on technique; a useful skill. Peter's combinations are shorter, and simpler, but because of his stress on technique and the Balanchine inspired speed that he often applies, they are still very effective. I struggled in Julio's class in the morning. But by now the swelling in my foot had gone down and I was in the top of my game. My feet seemed to point more, my leg seemed to go higher, my split seemed closer to the floor (with a little help from Peter), my turns felt better, and this encouraged me to push harder. I was drenched in sweat before barre was over. I went with both groups during center combinations. Before getting water during our barre-center break, I did a few reps of pressing the center barre, which I repeated after class. Peter commented to some parents observing the class;

"Good, Michael. As you can see, Michael is going to be getting the tall girls. And you can make a career out of that. Press lift the tall girls and do a double toure and you're set."

Some times, work can be drudgery. You put everything into it and nothing seems to come out. But those moments when you begin to see the tiniest benefit from only a small portion of the work that is to come? That is inspirational. I didn't do a new trick or leap to a new height. But today, my leg seemed a little higher and a little more turned out in a developee and it seemed easier to push myself to maintain that. And that's a start.