3 Great, Ballet Related Books!

So I've already done leotard reviews, now onto book summaries!

Marie, Dancing- Carolyn Meyer

Marie, Dancing is a book about a young girl named Marie (duh) who grew up during The French Revolution. She lives with her Mother and two sisters, 1 older, 1 younger. Marie and sisters all dance for the Paris Opera. Unfortunately, Marie's mother has a serious drinking problem,  and her sister becomes a selfish criminal, it takes a ton of courage and strength to for Marie to get through life. Later on, Marie is offered a job posing for Edgar Degas and also, a  promise from him to make her a star!

This book is a FABULOUS book, but it is also extremely sad. I give it 3.5 out of 5 stars

To Dance, a ballerina's graphic novel- Siena Cherson

To Dance is a great auto biography about a girl growing up, wanting to be a dancer. It talks all about the way dancers see the world, the stress of school with dance on top of it, and the life as a student at The School of American Ballet. It is a graphic novel (like a comic book!) so it's heavy on pictures and light on words (my kind of book!  It does have a story line, which I'll leave to you as a surprise!

This is yet another AMAZING book, I give it 4 out of 5 stars!

A Very Young Dancer- Jill Krementz

A Very Young Dancer is all about a little girl named Stephanie who dances at The School of American Ballet. She talks all about what it's like to be a dancer, and go to ballets, and in the second half of the book, she talks all about being cast as Mary in the Nut Cracker! This book has GORGEOUS photographs! Unfortunately, it is out of print, so it's hard to find copies of.

This is my all time favorite ballet book! I give it 5 out of 5 stars!

Best Way to do a Double Pirouette!

I'm such a genius! I did a GREAT double pirouette yesterday! Here's how to do a good one:

Do the combination your teacher is telling you to do, when you get to the double, forget that it is a double and remember half way through the first rotation, then keep going, and land once you've gone around twice!!!

This works for me!

I know, that was a short, lame post, I have something better to post about soon, but I'm waiting for an e-mail.

No Title necessary

I do not dance because I am happy, I am happy because I dance.

I'm spinning again!

First of all! I did come up with some choreography for my "signature line". My teacher LOVED it!

And when I say I'm spinning, I do not mean spinning, I simply mean "turning." We don't spin in ballet, just turn. And yes! I have been turning! In fact, today in ballet we started DOUBLE PIROUETTES!!!!!!!!!!! My teacher said that my first double was really good! :D I very happy that he thought it was so nice, because I generally don't like doing them, nor am I very good at them. (HEY! IF YOU ARE A NON-DANCER, AND LAUGHING, I WANT TO SEE YOU DO A DOUBLE ROTATION ON ONE FOOT KEEPING PROPER ALIGNMENT!!!)

OH! And pointe is going very well! We got to do 3 center combinations today! One was really hard! It was 8 counts of bourrees while doing 1st port de bras! (bare with me if you don't understand!) It was difficult! But I managed (somehow.)

Modern was awesome again this week! I'm the youngest, which I love! I find it special being the youngest because it means I'm the best at that style for my age! We got to do my favorite combination!!!

The Earth Keeps Spinning, but I'm Stuck!

I

The earth is constantly spinning on it's axis so that we have a day and a night and blah blah blah blah......

YES! I KNOW ALL THAT!!! But I feel STUCK! Stuck on what? My modern comp! Some sort of signature line.... movement across the floor....


If only she meant THAT kind of signature... Do you like my signature? WHY THANK YOU! I think I'll use it!

New Modern Teacher!

So..... You read the title, that's the biggest news! I'll talk about that in a moment!

First of all, I had my first OFFICIAL Jazz class yesterday. It was hard! I was the only one this year who has never taken jazz, so I felt a little out of place because I didn't know most of the things we did. I'll get used to it, I'm not the first person ever to start jazz at the age of 12.

Anyway, back to modern! So we have a new teacher! I already knew her though, because she taught joint care at dance intensive. It was really fun!!! We did  lots of fun combinations! There was one in particular that I liked, where we did a handstand (type thing)! We also got our first comp assignment! We have to choreograph 20-30 seconds of movement that goes across the floor! I'll tell you how that goes in a few days!

That's all for now!