Associates

Yesterday at Ballet Theatre UK Associates, Clair Corruble, Principal with the company, taught class and solos. Her teaching style was very different to Tania's- in particular, she encouraged us to do a perfect single pirouette as opposed to the daring but messy attempts at triples or quadruples that Tania adores. Some of the steps, particularly the grand allegro, got very complex; starting upstage left, right foot devant; releve 5th, fie assemble, temps de fleche (a step i had never heard of!!) glissade en avant, saut de chat (i think- a grand jete with the back leg in attitude, landing in attitude en fondu??) heading back to upstage left, step into a jete entrelace, assemble en tournant, coupe chasse pas de bourree, glisade, jete! Then, sissone, sissone (now, what next? Her beautiful French accent got slightly confusing- Did she say 'passe'? or was it 'Vassi', which i vaugely remember reading is a similar step to a fie?)i ended up substituting in a third sissone, as i felt that the epaulement was wrong for a fie- surely i should've been facing en face instead of croise..... into an assemble battu! We began solos with a pointe warmup. in the centre, Clair set the same pirouette enchainement that we had done en demi pointe; temps lie en avant, release front foot, coupe tombe chasse pas de bourre en diagonal, releve to 4th, prep, pirouette, rotassion, en dedans pirouette, demi detournant, three quick pose turns into a fiesty little set of chaines! Easy enough on demi pointe, but on pointe....???!! We then learnt the Pas de Trois Variation 1 from Swan Lake. it was beautiful- even if I definitely wasn't!! So many repeated one-footed releves, then a diagonale of allegro which left me looking truly pathetic. To our horror, Clair asked us, at the end, to dance the whole solo, in pairs. That would've been fine, had the Artistic Director of the Company not then walked into the studio. I danced it- badly, exhaustedly. I have never felt so embarrassed in my whole life- I am pretty certain he was looking at me thinking, 'Ew. What is that?!' I felt like pleading that my pointework is normally quite strong, and the variation was far harder than anything I had ever tried en pointe- instead, I smiled sweetly at him, and determinedly resolved to myself that i would be a lot more perfect next time....