don't quit your day job

Today was Day 3 back on scholarship. 

For those of you who don’t know, the schedule is pretty intense. Day 1 was fun and games and nice to catch up with friends after the holidays. Day 2 (yesterday) was dandy because you could start to feel your body coming back from the dead. Day 3, today, was just...STRUGGLE-VILLE. Everything felt heavy and tired and as slow as molasses! I even pushed the 12 oz. button on the Keurig this morning where I usually try to limit the coffee to 10 oz. I need an espresso machine. 

Of course, the (amazing) teacher who teaches ballet on Wednesday mornings had some wonderful insight to offer us: the idea of 5^th position as home and letting the spine just dangle down/out of the head from there. It's easier said than done, but in theory it provides a wonderful weighted sensation all the way down to the toes. 

Throughout the course of the barre, it occurred to me that 5^th position in the ballet vocabulary is the aesthetic equivalent to tadasana (mountain pose) in yoga, but transition wise more equivalent to downward dog. In a vinyasa based yoga class, everything moves through downward dog and meets in downward dog and flows through downward dog and rests in downward dog just like 5^th position in a ballet class.

When 5^th position feels rigid or tight or gripped there is nothing worse. It’s like breaking up with your boyfriend, getting stuck in the rain without an umbrella, and then getting splashed by a cabby on your birthday kind of bad. You may as well sit your butt down and open a magazine at the barre because you will be miserable! I find that many of my beginner students in yoga find downward dog to be an awful position to hold whereas advanced practitioners use it as the time to find length and charge and strength. The same thing goes for ballet.

When 5^th position isn’t used as a juicy transition/evenly balanced place, it doesn’t serve any purpose other than a detailed prescription for knee replacements.

It comes down to time spent practicing in both arenas I suppose. Downward dog isn’t something you can copy cat and learn in one day. It needs to be found in your own body, as does 5^th position. 

(a must watch)

 The Tragedy of 1st Position

Practice makes perfect? Unfortunately, not in yoga. And definitely not in dance. There is no such thing as a perfect 5th (because there is always more rotation to be had) and there is no perfect downward dog (because that's not the point of yoga). 

So, what the HECK am I doing every day? (good old Uncle Dave S. reminds me of this question every time I see him). Dancers strive for the unattainable. Makes you want to quit your day job and jump on the dance bandwagon, huh?