Progress

The other day I was having a look at older posts in this blog and it is really amazing to see that some things that seemed impossible some years ago, now are not only really simple, but also  I almost do them unconsciously, like a totally normal thing.

Sometimes you can find swans in the river ;)

I still remember the first time my ballet teacher asked me to tombé, pas de bourrée across the floor around four years ago. It might sound simple to any dancer, but it is not easy at all for someone who just (re)started dancing, for real. And then I bumped into this post in which I was super happy because I had my front splits, which I now do on a daily basis, kind of overstretched.  And then my Timehop App reminded me that other time when I congratulated myself for being able to hold my balance in passé for a couple of seconds. Now I can hold it for as long as I want (or as long as my calves want, depending on the day), as well as balances in attitude derrière or in arabesque (well, this one is a little trickier, I must admit!).

What I mean with all this is that no matter how hard anything you try to do is, if you persevere and work hard, you will get to a point when you master it, even if you need years of practice.

So work hard and keep dancing! Never stop dancing!

Nerea.

Ballet is French

When I was a child I was very normal. And as a normal, Spanish, little girl, I did not speak French.

When I went to ballet class, I used to learn the names of the steps by their sound. Actually, I think I didn’t know it was French, anyway. My mind worked this way: if Mrs. R said tandí*, I quickly pointed my foot. If Mrs. R said yeté*, I did the same, but separating my toes of the ground. No questions.

How could I imagine that those words had a real meaning and that they were in French? Nobody had told me! There’s no way I could know that my tandí was actually a tendu, which means extended; or my yeté, which is really a jeté, something thrown away. This makes things easier to remember, huh?!

It is funny that just some months before I stopped my ballet training, I started with my French lessons at the High School. I realised that I had a deeper knowledge of that new language than my fellow classmates, and most of all, because of ballet. You know, when you’ve heard many times that shanshmán* thing, you freak out when you realise it is spelled changement and it means change… But you don’t find it hard to remember! The same happened with many other steps: my padeshá* didn’t really look like a pas de chat until I knew I was doing a cat step. Same with my beloved padebugué*, which I still remembered when I (re)started a year ago, but I hadn’t realised it was a pas de bourrée. And finally that awesome gran ecar* of which I was so proud! Because, nice reader, there were some lovely times when I could actually do a grand écart! Unfortunately, those times are not here. But French is. And believe me: it’s making ballet easier and more fun (if that is even possible).

So… put a little of French in your lives. Give ballet a chance!

Nerea.

(*) I write the sounds just like I heard them when I was a child; c’est-à-dire in Spanish.