Progress...

Thrives on little victories and short term goals. Today I got the March test results of one of my Kaplan SAT students, who has just received an 800 on math and brought his overall SAT score up a total of 300 points.

There's something constant in the ebb and flow of subway trains as they sweep you along the course of your life. It's soothing, even, a balm to the scratchy edges of a New York soul. Even though a man on the 6 train stepped on my toes, and it's 35 degrees and raining, I can see stars glimmering through the orange haze of streetlights on my block.

Tonight, life is beautiful.

Bill Clinton Just Smiled At Me in Buddakan

Enough said

Met Opera Audition - Supernumerary to the Rescue!

I'm still vibrating with nervy excitement after my Don Giovanni audition for Tony award-winning director Michael Grandage in the bowels of the Metropolitan Opera House.

I felt very profesh, walking right up to the Metropolitan Opera stage door - they announced my name and had someone come to chaperone me and everything! On my way down the spiraling staircases, I passed two massive timpani drums, an antique looking set of leather luggage with J. Levine inscribed on it, a tech rehearsal of Wozzeck, and a vocal rehearsal for the newest installment of Wagner's Ring series. My handler Richard got into the fun of pointing out everyone and everything that we passed along the convoluted path to the audition room.

It was hard not to feel overrun by frenetic enthusiasm - just to be in the building, surrounded by glorious arias ringing through the hallways and the raw magnetism of stage props, intimidatingly large baritones, and super burly but gregarious stage hands.

The audition itself was something else. We were asked to prepare a minute-long improvisational scene as a woman at a window trying to attract the attention of men passing by. Once we met the director, he took it a step further and asked us to imagine ourselves as workers in the red light district, growing increasingly more desperate as no one stopped to "look at the wares." Epic!

As per usual, I was almost obnoxiously friendly and exhuberant while shaking Mr.Grandage's hand.... he certainly held on to it for a long time and I hooope that was a good thing. There were four girls in the room at a time, no music, no noise other than the slightly off kilter ticking of the studio clock, and a panel of three dudes (two companionably gay and well wishing, the third of questionable intent). 

They just sat there. And stared.

Since I've got some inspiring hotties in my life, I fell into the role with focus and determination. Who KNOWS what will come of it, but at least I got a fantastic core work out, had a lot of fun, and got to toss my hair around and wink at Mr. Grandage.

Cross your fingers for me!!!

Love,

A Broadway Baby

Rediscover Wonder

The ability to express yourself + the courage to do it = finding a way to connect with the world around you 

http://www.hulu.com/watch/225645/tedtalks-sarah-kay-if-i-should-have-a-daughter#s-p1-sr-i0

How Ballet Can Change Your Life

Chronic pain can become so routine that you hardly notice it after a time. Any change to that routine, however small, can be so dynamically exciting that you feel like a beam of sunshine radiates through your bones, instilling warmth and hope where before there was a grim acceptance slowly spiraling into futility.

Sometimes all you need is a great dance class to (literally) lift your spirits.

Faced with having to leave dance behind forever, my determination has kicked into hyperdrive. Looking to people like my mother and my dancer friends - who have overcome seemingly impossible odds to keep doing what they love - I've found inspiration to work my way back into ballet, painstakingly reshaping my muscles, sinew by sinew. Through the grace of a few classes of smaller size, combined with particularly attentive instructors, I've realized that my back and hip injuries are not as dauntingly untreatable as western medicine considered them to be. By breaking some very bad dance habits, the injuries keeping me from auditions can actually be avoided by others and perhaps even resolved in my case.

Courtesy of Wesley at Steps, and Koppel at BDC, these critical tips have given me new agency, and I urge other dancers to employ them as soon as possible to avoid injury!

• In posse, pull the heel up toward the nose (this focus helps you to engage the hamstring and to prevent over engaging the quads)
• Lead with the heel for almost every movement in ballet. Do NOT grip the quad or the hip flexor, because this causes grinding and forces an unnatural turn out.
• Improve turn out by working to connect the backs of the heels. Squeeze the inner thighs together.
• Pull up out of the hip with the upper body, pull away from the pelvis with the lower body. Initiate every movement (plie, degage, grand plie, tendue, developpe, etc) from the heels
• In fifth position, the weight needs to be slightly forward, and distributed equally in the balls of the feet without gripping the toes (this guy can improve the way you walk for ever!). **One should be able to releve by lifting the heels easily from fifth if this balance is attained**
• To attain the perfect plie: do NOT lead with the knees. Instead, press the heels down into the floor, engaging the dorsal muscles of the leg. Press down into the ground with the heels to return from plie, the rest of the leg will follow!

Anyone who, like me, has been taught to tuck their pelvis probably has some extensive gripping in the hip tendons. Or extreme flexibility that is not healthfully supported by adequate muscle tone. These pearls of wisdom from my teachers have revolutionized the way I stand, move, and dance. Here's hoping that the addition of Alexander Technique to my regimen will make the lasting change I need.

Alvin Ailey auditions are in two weekends!!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XezU_P7vGx4

Adaptation

You are what you love, not what loves you.

Patrick, Chance Encounter Number 2

Dearest Mr. Demarchelier,

At the risk of being irrevocably sketchy, we must stop meeting like this! Well... I suppose you haven't the foggiest idea who I am. I'm not perturbed, the third time's a charm... Next time we pass each other in the street, no more friendly waggling of the eyebrows. I shall introduce myself and we'll become friends for life!

Admiringly yours,
A Broadway Baby