The 8th Day of ABT DSI

Tonight was really fun just hanging out with people and goofing around, but today wasn't much fun because my achilles was hurting really badly so I had to sit out of everything except pilates. At least we had the bad ballet teacher today because I didn't have to take the class. Also, there were three other girls sitting out today so I was alone. Since I was so bored I took about an essay's worth of notes. I just hope my achilles starts feeling better because today it hurt basically whenever my foot is actively pointed or flexed :(. Besides the bad day, tonight was fun just hanging around, talking, and playing games. I had fun talking to the chaperones, and Ashley, I am very sorry that I insulted your teeth. Alligator teeth really aren't ugly, even if you say so, they are beautiful :D. (Imagine beautiful teeth inside that smiley face and they will be yours.)

The 7th Day of ABT DSI

Today we had a fun day at Erin's aunt's house for Erin's grandma's birthday. We started out in the morning by leaving the rest of the ABT people who were going to an extremely hot baseball game and went to Erin's grandma's house. At her house we just relaxed, took a trip to the grocery store for more food for our room (I got donuts!), and then went to Erin's aunt's house for the party around four. There, we enjoyed some lovely barbecue, talked, played with three dogs, one insane dachshund, one cute, tiny dachshund, and one very friend big mutt, and also danced to a Wii game where Erin's aunt was beating all of the kids. We then came back to the dorms where I enjoyed a donut and just hung out until now :).

The 6th Day of ABT

Today, as it being Saturday, we got the luxury of sleeping in because our classes don't start for an hour later than normal of Saturdays. However, either the alarm didn't go off or Erin and I slept through and we ended up getting up only fifteen minutes before we had to be ready, but overall I'm kind of glad that I got to get the extra sleep even if I had to rush to get ready. After breakfast, my first class was injury prevention in which we learned how to prevent injuries, obviously, but also how to do some new strengthening exercises and stretches to do for my various injuries. After one class we had lunch, where the variety of food was even sparer than usual because of it being a weekend, and then went back to class. My next class was yoga where the instructor played a cool instrument which starts with an "m" but I forget the name.... Yoga was pretty fun and was very relaxing, but my neck is sore from carrying my giant dance bag everywhere so I kept on having to roll my neck around which was annoying. After yoga and myself feeling very tired and stretched out we walked back to our dorms and after moseying around a little decided to venture down to the laundry room with Erin, Courtney, Abbey, and I. After many trips of going up and downstairs, other people taking unknown peoples' laundry out of the machines, and after dinner, all of our laundry was finally done. Then some more music and interesting dancing and picture taking entertained for most of the night and here I am now. Also, over the past day or so Abbey and I have been in a contest of getting the worst pictures of each other but she seems to be winning at this hour.... However, I will make sure this is not so over the next few days, but for most of the time, in whatever weird pose her face is in she still looks fine because she is so pretty! Tomorrow I am going to Erin's grandma's birthday party so I need to go to sleep. I'll write about that later!

The 4th and 5th Days of ABT

Yesterday my classes were technique and pointe in the morning, as always, and then I had choreography and pilates. For technique we had an insane but fun Cuban teacher named Mr. Molino. He went on these random rants that he thought to have a purpose, but I'm not sure that they did, but he was still really funny and did have a lot of good points. He was also kind of strict but his character of a personality made the class really fun. Also for this class we were in a studio with no mirrors. It was weird, but not that bad. Then we had a fine teacher for pointe class, and in choreography we learned more than just curtsying in our dance. (Yay!) Pilates was okay, not great, but still I learned some new exercises. The worst thing about yesterday was the night rehearsal for our repertoire. The only reason why we had it was because the placement class day took away from the three rehearsals we need for repertoire a week. So after dinner, we had to go back to the studio for an hour and a half where hardly anyone was paying attention and most everyone was complaining the whole time even though it really wasn't that hard....

Today I had technique class with the director of the program and then pas de deux class. I was really excited for this because I really do enjoy partnering and all of the other levels said it was really fun, but since a lot of other people hadn't ever done partnering the class moved really slowly and the most turns we were allowed to do was one. After lunch I had repertoire and choreography which both went pretty well since we learned a fair amount in each of our dances. Tonight, Erin and I went over to our friends, Abbey and Courtney's room, and had a dance party! We blasted old-school music, ABBA, Weird Al, and danced around the room like lunatics in a very exciting manner. Then we joined basically our whole floor of people playing a very intense and enjoyable game of Catchphrase. Lots of fun is being had here as whoever is reading this can probably tell!

The 3rd Day of ABT DSI

Today we stayed at Wayne State (as opposed to going to the Opera House). First I had technique and pointe with the director of the program, Elaine. Elaine talked for about a third of the technique class about skeletal alignment and then we did fairly simple combinations, but she still managed to throw some stupid but funny jokes in. After a very long barre we did some barre on pointe and then center in pointe. After lunch, we had choreography with Elaine again in which we learned about four eight counts of a dance with only curtsying. "Step, step, curtsy, curtsy, step, curtsy...." Then we had modern which was really fun where the teacher went through all of the complicated combinations extremely quickly and then expected us to be able to do them, but seemed like the nicest teacher on Earth and I could never imagine him yelling at anyone. Okay, now I am going to get ready for bed, so goodbye all who are reading this.

The First Days of ABT DSI...

Sunday Erin and I had our orientation and we moved our stuff in, and yesterday we had the placement classes. Erin's was in the morning because her last name is in the first half of the alphabet and mine was after lunch. Then we just got our level assignments and I'm yellow (the lowest level) and Erin's blue (the second lowest), out of four levels. Today we went to the Detroit Opera House for all of our classes. I had technique in the morning, then pointe, then character, then repertoire. The technique was fun and the teacher was really good, and I felt as though I was about the same level as everyone else in the class, but I could've done harder stuff... However, I really enjoyed the class because of the new combinations and and really good teacher. Then pointe was easier but still fun and something different than normal because of the new corrections as before. Character was nothing that I expected it to be, and though I didn't know what was going on half the time it was still enjoyable and most everyone was with me with the confusion. Plus, the teacher's multi-colored polka-dotted skirt brightened up the classroom, but her accent was hard to understand. Repertory afterwards was okay. We're doing something from Raymonda (or whatever it's called) in character shoes. We didn't do that much today except for basically the pattern walking on. There is a solo, but since it's a girl and a guy and there's only one guy who is really short, the shortest girl got it. Overall though, these past few days have been really fun!