Friday, January 07, 2005

Term 1 Week 1

We're done with week 1 and it was a crazy week. Usually, the first week of the year is a slow easing into the routine and allowing your body to recover from the shock of the 6 am alarm. But not this week and not this month.

Things done in the first week.
1. Run around trying to put together a resource package for teaching the idea of history.
2. Two full afternoons of "How to be a Mentor" course
3. Debate training
4. Track and Field training
5. 3 department meetings.
6. 1 staff meeting that was an hour and a half long followed by the aforementioned course for the next 3 hours
7. 1 department luncheon
8. Borrowing a tutu, digging up pointe shoes that haven't been used since Melbourne days- they've turned a strange shiny shade of orangish gold from it's original peachy pink.
9. Use everything in 8. to be a famous person in history from the twentieth century that only girls in the audience knew. Actually, it would be hard to keep surprise off my face if a boy actually knew who Margot Fonteyn was. Even some of the male tutors kept referring to her as Margaret Fonteyn. It was fun though. R insisted that I enter to some music so it was off to the music department to find some familiar ballet music. I came back with Waltz of the Flowers from the Sleeping Beauty but didn't have time to hear the music and create steps for it. I had to settle for R humming a few bars of it and marking it out backstage. Totally improv and out of synch. The minute I finished it and heard the entire bar of music, I knew what I could have done. Oh well. Thinking on your feet kinesthetically.

It was the one thing out of all nine that I enjoyed immensely even though my toes protested even more than they did when I did the quarter marathon. 2 toe nails totally bruised from the running, one nail shedding its former appearance and regrowing, with another that has about a quarter of it left- that was the total damage of the months and months of long distance running. Then, 3 minutes of prancing around the stage on pointe causes one bruised one to start bleeding without my knowledge and caking round the nail. All sounding more dramatic than it actually was.

What I realised though is that I really miss ballet. I miss the music. I miss the beauty of it. Running's good in a different way. It's more raw effort and you feel like you're going to collapse from all of it. Ballet, it's more controlled, especially when you need to make it look pretty, light and dainty. In that way it's harder because you can't show how painful it is or how exhausted you are and strangely, I miss all that. I can't pick it up now. Not in the next two months at least. We'll see when I come back from Calgary but I think it'll be more wistful thinking then ever finding another opportunity for a long while yet to get into those pointe shoes again.

The sad thing is, the longer I wait, the more I miss it but the less likely I'm going to be able to do it. I guess, it's time to stop dreaming about being the Sugar Plum Fairy or the Swan Queen.

Ondine tossed this thought in at 15:31

0 thoughts...

0 thoughts...

Post a Comment

" Far in the stillness, a cat languishes loudly"