The First Pointe Shoe Fitting

I left work early on the day of the fitting, appointment secured and spirits high. I thought back to all of the “first pair of pointe shoes” videos I’d watched on YouTube. I can’t believe I’ve come this far, I thought. This is something I can be truly proud of. I have accomplished this by myself. Let me tell you, as someone who made it a regular thing to start and quit things way too easily as a kid, it feels bloody good to stick to something and see results. 

So I got to the shop. I’d actually been there before… when I was about 13 years old looking for jazz shoes – one of the many short lived hobbies of my childhood. I perched on a seat. I actually recognised a customer at the cash register as a girl who used to be in my class when I went to a different studio. There was another girl who was probably 14 years old, waiting to be fitted too. I don’t think it was her first pair. I realised in my nervousness to not be late I’d arrived 20 minutes early. I got up and browsed the leotards, spotting a black Bloch one with a cool back. I made a mental note of where it was hanging. 
The shop assistant told me I could go into the fitting room. 

AHHHH.
With one last look at the leotard, I followed the girl into the room. Now look: I know for a fact that I can come off as cold or unfriendly due to the unfortunate gift of Resting Bitch Face. I’m not though! I swear. So I try to compensate by being really polite and chatty when I can. I dunno, it’s a habit. Anyway. So I chatted away with the girl, who was really lovely and helpful. 

She sussed my feet. Relatively narrow with an average arch (sob) and strong ankles (yus). Do you know what she asked me to do? This super weird thing I didn’t expect. You stand in parallel and hold onto the barre, then rise up onto your literal toes. Using toe muscles and shit. She supported my heel a bit but it was so weird. I used to do it all the time when I was younger until someone said it would wreck my feet. It probably does if you do it as much as I used to. 

On with the the gel pads and the first pair of pointe shoes. Parallel position, rise to demi, rise to pointe. “You’re sickling a bit.” Oh. Whoops. Fixed. Too big and too painful on my toes. Off with the first pair. 

That’s the thing, you just have to guess what feels right and what doesn’t because wearing pointe shoes is such a random incomparable thing. I remembered what I’ve learnt from reading/viewing other people’s experiences and based it off that. Also the girl was like ok hell nah these are wrong, so that helped. 

Second pair: too small. Definitely too small. 

Third pair:….okay? Like… Decent. Do you sense my suspicion? Yuh. That’s because they were hella weird looking. It looked like I was wearing two tissue boxes on my feet. I thought I might get stuck with the tissue box pair, but thankfully she was like”they look bulky” and I quickly agreed. 

I tried a smaller size of the same pair and they were still bulky and wide, but with a little extra toe suffocating pain to go along with it. 

She thought for a second. This was just as I had imagined it. A lightbulb moment, and “maybe…” She reached for a box and pulled it down.

“These are the Bloch Heritage,” she explained. “They’re an older pair but a definitely a classic.” 

First of all, I loved the V shaped vamp. They were the only pair with a V shaped vamp that I’d tried. They were delicately shaped, with a distinct lack of tissue box-ness about them. I hoped they would feel okay. 

Demi, and then pointe. They DID feel okay. The best yet. I mean, it wasn’t comfortable per se but it was manageable and not terribly squishy, and best of all, I realised what supportive shoes felt like. I had a feeling about them. She did too. She said they looked really good on my feet. YES. I had found The Pair. 

Something I noticed with every pair of shoes I tried was that it was pretty damn hard to get over the box. Maybe it was because they were fresh outta the box but damn. I get it now. 

She packed up some ribbon (they have elastic where they make contact with the Achilles’ tendon), gel toe pads, elastic, a Bunheads stitch kit, and of course the shoes.

“Anything else you’d like?”

Yes. I stress shop. It’s something I do. I’ve accepted it as a character flaw.

“Well there was this leotard…”

I got the cool black leotard, folks. 

On my way home in the Uber, my driver was telling me about how he recently drove Li Cunxin home from the Queensland Ballet which I thought was a groovy coincidence. By the way, I took a class there the other day and it was great.

This all happened two weeks ago now, but I haven’t been to a class yet. Last week I had a bit of a health scare (very low white blood cell count) and couldn’t go to work let alone ballet class, but all is well! I just wish the stress breakout on my forehead would get the memo. 

And there you have it. 

Pointe?!

My teacher has given me the green light. I’ve booked a pointe shoe fitting for tomorrow afternoon. Who knew I would ever get to this stage? Not me, that’s for sure.

I feel nervous but so SO EXCITED. The lady I spoke to on the phone when I booked asked which dance school I go to, and it turns out she goes to the same place! Hopefully she does my fitting tomorrow.

It doesn’t feel real. I know it’s going to be hard work and everyone sucks at first, so I’m trying not to get too excited… But it’s hard not to.

I’ll make sure to do a blog post about the pointe shoe fitting experience.

theraband exercise underneath desk at work intensifies

On another note, the class I was worried about in my previous post was completely fine. I worried for nothing as per usual. The only thing I noticed was a slight decline in flexibility, most noticeable during grande battements. My releve has gotten better. And for goodness sake, I hate humidity because it makes the floor so sticky in this one room that it’s like pirouette-ing on sticky tape. Then I went to another class on Wednesday in the other studio and the floor was slippery as hell which made it tricky to land the pirouettes. The things I would do for a regular floor in an air-conditioned studio…

Regress

So it’s been almost three weeks since I last danced. Honestly, I kind of thought I would practice at home more but that’s not how it’s turned out. I took a dance holiday. I feel sloth-like. My whole body feels uncomfortably achey and stiff. I hate it. Whining fuels me.

On the bright side, I think my knee really needed the break. It’s been injured for a while and because I’m Really Very Stupid, I’ve been dancing on it. It feels a lot less hurty and more stable now.

My first class of 2016 is a level 2 class tomorrow night. I’m actually really nervous. Surprisingly nervous. The thing is, I know I’ve regressed because I haven’t danced and I’ve only lightly stretched since mid December. And that is making me anxious.

I wonder if the other people in my class have been in sloth-mode like me.

I’m probably making a mountain out of a mole hill, I just can’t stand the idea of being surprisingly bad in class tomorrow. Only one way to find out, folks. I’ll keep you updated.

It could just be a confidence thing…

Balancing in retiré is hard. There’s a lot to think about. Balancing in retiré on relevé is harder. There’s even more to think about. It can be wobble city for the ballet beginner.

So tonight I remembered how I learnt to ride a bike. My dad would hold onto me so I didn’t annihilate myself on the sidewalk. Then one day he decided to only rest his hand on me while I thought he was still holding on. He saw that I could ride perfectly well on my own so he let go and then off I went, ridin’ solo into the sunset.

You get the picture, right? I knew how to ride the bike, I just didn’t trust myself.

And then I wondered if this same logic applies to ballet.

So I balanced in retiré on a flat foot with one arm in first and the other very lightly touching the wall, like literally no pressure just a teeny tiny touch. Then I rose slowly up to relevé, controlled/squeezed/turned out/lifted, saw I could balance perfectly well, and proceeded to bring my wall-finger into first.

It worked! I was balancing in an absolutely-not-wobbly-at-all relevé retiré position! I guess learning to trust in yourself is important in ballet. Who knew?

You should try it out. It could just be a confidence thing.

A level up! Sort of

Well, it was a level up from introductory. So it was level 1.

I found it more challenging but I was definitely able to keep up and I absolutely loved it.

Except for the stupid soutenu going to the left. I could do it to the right perfectly fine but I looked like a drunk lobster when I tried on the other foot in a combination.

The class only had about 8 or 9 people in it! Which was amazing. Seriously. This is coming from someone who takes beginner classes that are filled to the brim with like 20+ people, so it felt really personal and I got more corrections.

I took that class on a Wednesday night which is when I usually have jazz. But I craved ballet so much more than jazz I figured it was logical to take one more ballet class. So that’s 4 ballet classes a week now.

I feel like I’m getting so immersed in dance, and apart from seeing my dog at the end of the day it’s the one thing I really look forward to.

Also can we just take one moment to mentally frown at all the people who walk into a beginner class and start talking and then don’t stop talking when the teacher is teaching and act like they know exactly what they’re doing and mark the combinations with their hands and head tilts. And then if there’s a group of them like 1 or 2 will be good and the rest will be not good. Y’all are intimidating. Stop that.

PS I’m fairly certain my feet are getting stronger and more bendy. Yasss.

Pirouwhat?!

I can coupe devant just fine.

I can get my leg up to retiré just fine too, if that matters. Not great! Probably not even good. But fine. I can do the thing.

We attempted half pirouettes in class tonight and well

yeah.

If my life was a comedy show there would have been a canned laughter track playing.

PliiieeeeUP PULLUPPULLUPPULLUPPULLUP and then down like the Leaning Tower of Pisa I go. Every. Time. I fell out of the HALF turn every time! There’s a goal for myself this year. Land one acceptable pirouette.

That’s not aiming too high is it?

The new first ballet class – update

I was the second person to get there (I got there 20 minutes early). I signed in and chatted with the only other person who was nervously waiting. She’d never done ballet before. More people started turning up and I continued chatting to her and this other woman. There were lots of people! And one man!

The teacher called us into the class and we put on our shoes. She checked the first timers’ shoes to make sure they were okay and there were no drawstring bows on show. I thought that was a great idea! Ballet shoes are foreign territory when you’ve never taken a class.

Then we took to the barre. There were only two barres in the centre and the rest were along the walls. Except on one side, the mirror was obstructed so you wouldn’t be able to see yourself… I don’t know why. I feel like being able to see yourself is imperative for beginners. Anyway, I was at a barre in the centre of the room. It was good!

The teacher was even better. She explained everything really thoroughly, including posture. She was quite funny, actually, she had everyone laughing! When she was explaining the posture she told us we should practice pulling our belly buttons to our spine and pulling our shoulders down in the car. She said we’d all look like right tossers but it’ll help the posture.

After barre came centre (obv) and we did balances and plié relevé jumps (what are they called?) and bounced around in a circle doing something that I forget the name of.

And then we did a little reverence.

I honestly sweated so much. What is it with a lot of dance classrooms lacking air conditioning? It’d be great in winter. I can’t wait for that. Queensland summers are brutal.

There were two little 5/6 year olds who were the daughters of a woman taking the class, I think. They joined in a bit during barre and during the bouncing-around-in-a-circle. They were so cute. I told them they were very good and asked how long they’d been dancing. Since they were four! They told me proudly. Adorable.

I can’t wait for next week!

First class of 2015

It went. So. Well. I REALLY enjoyed it. It’s the same class with the same teacher that I took for about two months mid-last year. Except it was the first class of the year, so there was literally about 25 people as opposed to about 6-8 last year. I’m 100% sure the number will dwindle though. It was actually pretty ridiculous. People kept trickling through the door and the teacher was like “ohHhhHHkaaaay LOTS OF NEW PEOPLE HELlo 3 TO A BARRE ohHhh??? More??? 4 to a barre HAHhah wow.” I got a good spot though.

I was actually better than last year?? Like minutely, not significantly. I don’t know how that happened. Not that I’m good. I was not good, but I was ok.

My ankles are like “help what has occurred” but I think they’ll feel fine tomorrow.

Yay!!!

I was feeling on top of the moon for a good hour and a half afterwards until something someone said poked me in the wrong spot and it made me quite sad. I’m reading and drinking tea (and writing this) now which is helping lift my mood.

The next class I have coming up is jazz on Wednesday, and you may or may not know that I am terrified of this class because I haven’t done it for years and what if everyone is decent!!!??? Make way for the wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube girl.

So yes there’s that.

I hope you’ve all had a fab day. Treat yoself.