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| [Debbie Allen] |
About a year ago, my studio had organised a masterclass with a dancer from the Berlin dance company. (It's needless to say that we were all very excited about it).
Everything went fine during barre - we did the usual that you'd expect. And then we moved into centre for petit allegro, pirouettes, sautés, grand adagio and then the dreaded grand allegro...
We went in groups of 4, and he called my group to go first. If you don't know how a masterclass works, the teacher rarely demonstrates the combination full-out (or with music). Usually my friends and I are pretty good at grand allegro, but for some reason we all had 2 left feel XD.
We started of with the tombé pas de bourré, where the first dancer managed to trip over her own feet and it just went downhill from there. My best friend was next in line to trip, and didn't use her plié enough from her glissade to go into her grand jetté and fell as well... After that, we were meant to land and go into fourth position for a double pirouette, which I fell out of (pirouettes were never my strong point). At this point, there was only one dancer left who hadn't managed to embarrass herself yet. But that was soon going to change... The rest of grand allegro went fine. No one fell the second time, and we managed to make ourselves look a little less clumsy.
30 minutes before the end of the class, the teacher decided to do some repertoire with us. He taught us the famous pas de quatre from swan lake. Everything was fine while we were learning the choreography. We didn't go too far over our pointe shoes, we were quick on our feet and looked clean. The teacher wanted us to stay in our groups of four from earlier. We decided that the girl that hadn't managed to fall yet would go in the front, to 'lead' the rest of us. And this is where it all went wrong... (it's kind of funny thinking about it know XD). Somehow, non of us know how she did it, she managed to start 2 counts early. Now this doesn't sound terrible, but just wait and see... The my best friend was the second girl in the line, and wasn't as grounded as she should have been. As the first girl took off, she fell and her foot hit the back of my knee, which made me fall, which in turn brought down the last girl as well...
It was really funny, although we were all really embarrassed... Our studio director even came in and asked us if we had eaten anything before class and if we needed a break! It's safe to say that we made sure never to be the first group to go in a masterclass again. To this day, we try to be second or third. But quick tip: the first and last group always get the most attention from the teacher(!) - in case you want to be seen ;)
30 minutes before the end of the class, the teacher decided to do some repertoire with us. He taught us the famous pas de quatre from swan lake. Everything was fine while we were learning the choreography. We didn't go too far over our pointe shoes, we were quick on our feet and looked clean. The teacher wanted us to stay in our groups of four from earlier. We decided that the girl that hadn't managed to fall yet would go in the front, to 'lead' the rest of us. And this is where it all went wrong... (it's kind of funny thinking about it know XD). Somehow, non of us know how she did it, she managed to start 2 counts early. Now this doesn't sound terrible, but just wait and see... The my best friend was the second girl in the line, and wasn't as grounded as she should have been. As the first girl took off, she fell and her foot hit the back of my knee, which made me fall, which in turn brought down the last girl as well...
It was really funny, although we were all really embarrassed... Our studio director even came in and asked us if we had eaten anything before class and if we needed a break! It's safe to say that we made sure never to be the first group to go in a masterclass again. To this day, we try to be second or third. But quick tip: the first and last group always get the most attention from the teacher(!) - in case you want to be seen ;)
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