My Guru....

After that last little post talking i just wanted to dedicate a 

post to two people here who have inspired me here in Cairo...

the first is my director,

when she gave me this job i was the shell of a dancer.

I had just been let go from my last company where i had been made

 to feel like i was a nobody 

and not good enough to even be on stage.

But she saw something in me and gave me a job as a soloist.

i'll admit it, f

or the first couple of months i felt like a fraud.

When they called for the soloist, or read out my name in castings,

 i was so confused that they really meant me!

And she gave me roles that i felt i didnt quite deserve

 but at the end of it i realised that i could do it and that i did have it in me.

I became what she saw in me.

 I became confident and enjoyed the opportunities that she gave to me. 

I enjoyed working in rehearsals with her.

Madam alla with her broken arm and the 'pas de troisers'

The other person i would like to mention is Madam Alla.

Madam Alla is very scary when you first meet her. 

She only speaks russian...

and i can only imagine that she is a hundred years old.... 

She only rehearses the soloists...and she rehearses them hard.... 

In my first rehearsals with her i got so worried every time 

she shouted at  me, she would get so angry. 

Then when everybody else had done their variation once or twice 

and finished rehearsals and were ready to go home 

she made me stay and do it two more times. 

I felt inadequate and wanted to work hard to please her.

When the corps de ballet have holidays or there is an extra day off, 

if you are working with Madam Alla you dont take holidays, 

you work on National Days and extras on weekends. 

During the performances she is pretty nerve-wrecking, 

she stands in the wings and you can see her disapproving looks 

when you make a mistake, 

stomping her foot hard if you get out of time, 

she finds you after your variation and either gives you the head nod or the head shake.....

yes she can be intimidating....

but....

the more i have worked with her the more i have learned

 that she pushes her dancers so hard because she wants the best from us.

madam Alla watching from the wings

After one performance of Swan Lake,

 i hadnt felt like i had done particularly well and was scared to see her the next day

 as i thought she had been watching from the audience. 

She came to me the next morning and apologised that she didnt have

 any corrections to give me, she was so sorry, 

but she had been sick and had had to go to hospital during the performance. 

She was absolutely  devastated that she hadnt been there for me....

(i told her i danced the performance good not to worry...hehe).

and it was so nice to know how much she cared about 

my performance...not for her...but for me, she wanted me to do My best.

I'm grateful for the chance that i have had to work with these two women 

who have both pushed and inspired me in different ways.

And its the inspiration and reaching of goals that they gave me that has

left me feeling content with my career

in a way i never could have not so long ago.

New Horizons....

So this is it,

my last week and a half as a professional Ballet dancer....

and how do i feel?

Well, 

actually i feel tired and fed up.

I think this reaction is more to do with being here in Cairo,

i'm so fed up with this city, it doesnt suit me at all.

the lifestyle, the way people communicate, the dirt, the political unrest

its not me, 

and its been wearing me down for the last two years

and i cant wait to leave.

And i cant seem to disconnect that feeling of really looking forward

 to leaving here for good with the feelings

 i ought to be having about my life as a dancer finishing.

I feel like i ought to be having some regrets, 

some nostalgia....

but it just isnt there...

i am fed up here 

and all i can focus on is getting out of this joint.

I was thinking today that perhaps this is a good thing, 

perhaps its all part of the big plan. 

So many dancers cant give it up, they cant let go,

and being here has worn me down to the point where i am just happy to let go.

Ballet class bores me,

its seems so tedious and repetitive,

but that is nothing to do with ballet itself,

its to do with working with the same teachers in class for the past 2 years 

who for those 2 years havent inspired me or motivated me, 

they have bored me, 

bored me to the point where i have stopped trying and i dont care anymore.

I look in the mirror and i get frustrated with the imperfections

 which i feel are getting more imperfect rather than improving....

and then i realise that i dont have to care or get frustrated about those imperfections anymore,

 so i dont.

The last few months i havent been cast in anything 

that has required me to push myself,

when i was doing Swan Lake i was pushing myself technically,

 and Danses Qu'on Croise i was pushing myself emotionally, but now i'm just drifting in the background...fading away.

I know its going to hit me later.

Hit me when i've not done class for a while and realise how good i had it.

and i'm already looking into places where i can do classes over the summer when i'm on dry land

ballet is a part of my soul,

but for now i need that break.

Onstage.....

There's been a lot of wedding talk here recently....

but here's the thing i get to be engaged and talk as much talk wedding talk

for only six months of my life,

so i'm going to make the most of it!

But incase anyone is bored of it,

here are some pictures from the last performances that we did of

Danses qu'on Croise - by the Choreographer Thierry Malandain 

that i spoke about a few weeks ago.

These are from the first stage rehearsal,

 so my hair is a mess and the pink leg warmer is not part of the costume 

but to keep my injured knee warm 

(i'd have taken it off if i'd known my friend was taking pictures)

Also, please note i am not a smoker!

in fact i am one of the few non-smokers in the company

and yet of course got cast as the role of'Smoking Girl'

I realised that i dont even know how to light a cigarette...

Thankfully i never had to learn, just waved it around a bit....

Picture Heavy.....

The last couple of posts have been pretty word heavy.

So i thought i'd put in one that was a bit picture heavy for a break.

These are pictures my friend took for me during my last performance of Swan Lake

Last ever....?.....

(click on images to see them larger)

What the audience don't see.....

This me backstage lying in the floor between my variation (of Big Swans) and the coda in the last performance of Swan lake.

I'm not kidding in the 2minutes that it took Odette to do her variation 

i think i was so tired i managed to even have a little nap.

EXHAUSTED!

deep inside.....

i'd like to see this documentary made about English National ballet.

I love what Daria Klimentova says at the end,

'i'm quite insecure dancer but here deep inside myself i'm ambitious'

i can relate to that,

at times i hear what other people say about me,

'how did she get that role?'

'she's not good enough'

even this week my partner complained to the director that he didnt like dancing with me.

i wonder how that makes me feel,

we are constantly crushed not only by our teachers but by our fellow peers.

i wonder at the times i have complained about my partners,

and how did that make them feel?

the times i have felt like someone shouldnt be dancing a role...

but at the end of the day if that person puts their heart and soul into it,

what does it matter.

and i get insecure,

and then i have to go on stage and pretend that i'm not.

pretend that i'm not frightened to death of my pirouettes,

pretend that even the smallest of mistakes will not make

me toss and turn all night long with the inability to sleep,

because i know i could have done it better.

this week a photographer took some pictures of the performances,

and i was so disappointed to see the pictures of myself,

to see all my flaws.

wishing that my hands looked nicer,

my shoulder were down,

my elbows were not over extended,

that my feet looked nicer on pointe.

but at the end of the day,

i have the ambition....

and that feeling of getting it right is amazing

even if its only fleeting....

(on a side note I want to point out that my very first ballet performance was with Daria Klimentova, she was dancing Sugar Plum with the Scottish Ballet and i was a mouse whose head she placed a ribbon on...all those years ago)

the wrong shoes....

so i had a rehearsal today for pas de trois,

and as i pulled my shoes out of my locker in preparation for rehearsal,

i noticed something....

these were The Wrong Shoes...

let me explain,

during the performance of Swan Lake

i will change my shoes multiple times for example -

Act 1 -

pas de trois, -

for this i will wear a firm but broken in pair of shoes,

i need this because there are lots of pirouettes and some pas de deux

and i need to keep a good balance

Act 2 -

Big Swans

for this i wear a slightly softer but still quite firm pair of shoes,

there are still some balances, but no pirouettes, and some jumps

(must be softer for jumping)

Act 3-

Mazurka-

For this i wear my softest pointe shoes, there is very little actual

pointe working and lots of small petite allegro (small fast jumps)

Act 4-

the majority of act four is spent running, bourreeing, or posing,

so i wear a very hard pair of pointe shoes,

anything soft and your feet and legs are dead in a matter of seconds.

so today when i went to rehearsal i realised that for the performance in which i

messed up my pirouettes i had been wearing an old pair of pointe shoes

that should have been long thrown in the bin,

the bottoms are all lumpy and nearly full of holes,

balancing on that is way hard!

In my rush before the performance i hadnt noticed...

Does that mean that now The Culprit Pair of Pointe Shoes

have duly been banished from the locker so the same mistake cannot happen again that my pirouttes were miraculously back in working order again today...

Indeed it did not...

but i was definitely one step closer

(i'm the dancer on the left of the picture)

Backstage At The ballet

Another year over,

Another Nutcracker finished.

The Nutcracker is not one of my favourite ballets to perform,

and this year it seemed more hectic than ever.

I was dancing in the roles of,

Parents,

Soloist Snowflake,

Corps De Ballet Snowflake

Spanish

Arabian

Soloist Waltz of the Flowers

Okay, okay not all at the same time....

but having to juggle so many rehearsals and keep my stamina

(and sanity) was pretty hard work.

Especially seeing this is the time of the year when people get sick,

and if a dancer gets sick or injured,

all your thinking about is

Dang! what am i going to have to re-learn

in order to compensate for one missing person in the performance tonight!

Before one particular performance a girl came into work and quit her job.

Enough was enough.

And so we juggled around the cast,

and it was stressful,

because at the moment we dont have a lot of spare dancers....

and i went on stage dancing a role that i hadn't expected to.

Feeling exhausted and run down.

But,

as i sat on the Metro heading home that evening a girl came up to me

and asked if i had just been in the ballet.

She had her programme and wanted me to sign it.

She told me how much she had loved the ballet.

It was the first time that she had seen one in real life, and not just on tv.

How she thought it was so magical....

She was blown away.

And it made me realise that even though backstage

half the dancers are wanting to kill each other,

and are bodies are falling apart out of exhaustion.

The audience cant see that (thank goodness)

And although at times the magic gets a bit stale for me,

there are others out there who can still see it.

It's also nice to be on stage too.

Dancers spend a majority of our time in the studio

but when i'm on stage and it goes well....

Nothing Beats That.....

w

Backstage at the Ballet...

I'm currently camera-less as my charger

was one of the many items that i keep discovering went missing when i lost my bag.

But here a few pictures from our last performance

by my lovely fellow dancer Vicente....

Backstage at the Ballet...

Premiere of Swan Lake last night.

I danced my first official solo....

which was exciting and even though there is definite room for improvement

i enjoyed every minute of it.

I love dancing with an orchestra,

it gives you that little bit more va va voom!

So one down, 7 to go....

i'm not sure that i'll survive.

And i have to go out shopping this morning to

buy new stage make up as i turned up at work yesterday

to find mine had been pinched.....great.

All photos by my lovely friend Vicente Perez,

cause i've been way too busy to get my camera out,

besides he's way better at it than me!