My Summer So Far

Ok, so I know that I haven't written in a post in like 19 days, but I have been really busy with ballet/pointe and I have also been hanging out and going to the pool with friends quite often. I also have had two garduation parties to go to in this past weekend. I had ballet and pointe today from 12-2 pm. Pointe hurts, but I still looove it and I love the challenge that ballet and pointe brings me. Every class I am learning something new (especially in my pointe class) and I am vastly improving.

What holds next summer will be very hard to say. This winter I am going to do lots of auditions for ballet summer intensives for next summer, but they are very hard to be accpeted into and are extremley expensive. This summer and this fall I am going to train and work harder than I ever had in ballet. I am starting the school year (unlike last year) at my current ballet school and I am en pointe. I also have the possibility of performing in my school's nutcracker and our spring ballet so I definitley have a lot to be happy about and alot that's inspiring me to keep working harder.

My Pointe Shoes

At the beggining of this week on Monday I was fitted for my very first pair of pointe shoes. I was so excited. I've wanted to get my pointe shoes since my first ballet class and getting them was awesome. I went to the dance store with my mom and my amazing ballet teacher was there with the really nice pointe shoe fitter. After trying on two pairs of the same pointe shoe that were slightly too wide I tried on the third pair of pointe shoes my teacher and pointe shoe fitter had picked. They were the exact same pair except slightly less wide and they agreed that the third pair I tried on was a perfect fit for me so, I am now wearing Chacott Veranese II's. They are a really pretty peach color with a very soft pink tint. My mom and I only had two days to sew on my pointe shoes before my first pointe class which was on Wednesday. It was an hour long class. There are six of us students beggining pointe for the very first time this summer. The first half of the class we learned more about putting on our shoes and how to tie our ribbons. The second half of the class was spent solely on simple pointe excercises at the barre. We did three different excercises. The first was going up all the way onto releve and then doing plie whils still on releve so, that we could really focus on pushing into our arches and then going up onto releve to see if we could maintain it. Then we would reverse all that. The secong barre combinations we did battmant tendu a la seconde and then we would bent the leg in tendu so, we could again focus on pushing into our arches. We would then do that on the other leg as well. The third and last exercise we did was pas de bourres at the barre which I loved. The entire class seemed to fly by and luckily, other than sightly red toes I didn't feel any pain or get hurt toes or anything yet which is good because I've read and heard about many dancers in lots of pain after their first pointe class.

From now on, though I won't be dancing on Wednesdays. Instead I will be dancing for 2 hours on Tuesday and for 2 hours on Thursday. This will start next week and go until I believe the last week in July. Tuesdays and Thursdays I will have an hour and 15 minutes of ballet which will be followed by a 45 minute pointe class. Other than the six of us starting pointe the other girls have already been en pointe for at least a year so, class will be pretty challenging, but I think for most of the summer we will be at the barre when en pointe. I don't think there will be many of us though. Altogether I imagine there will be no more than twelve of us.  I can't wait for class on Tuesday, though! I will keep you guys updated. Got to go know and order a mesh pointe shoe bag on discountdance.com to prevent mold build up in my pointe shoes.