Dear Sanna - Review of 5 Days and Inner Mentor

I thought a lot about the exercises I did last week, and I decided that there are a few alterations I would like to make, at least for myself. First of all, I think pretending I am a certain professional dancer is a great way to make a class more interesting and improve my dancing by adding a new outlook and twist, however I don't think imitating somebody else ALL the time is necessarily what I should do to develop my own style. Maybe sometimes I will pretend that I am Janie (myself), the professional dancer, rather than that ballet teacher or other dancer I admire. I also think it is valuable to still be a student sometimes. Obviously, I am still a student, and I still have a lot to learn and need to be more precise and academic about certain things in order to refine my technique. So I guess my conclusion is that pretending to be someone else is a good exercise every once in a while, and I think I can decide from now on when to dance like professional Janie (company class or variations, for example), and when I need to dance like student Janie (school class, technical corps work, etc).

I loved the article "Self Talk" and the suggestion to speak to myself as a friend or mentor. That makes so much sense, and I definitely can be very negative in my head. I will make an effort to be more sensitive to my own self-esteem.

Speaking of... thought you all might like to know I am very excited about the parts I am learning for our winter program. I am the only one in my level learning one role, although there is no guarantee I will actually perform it. Just learning it is enough though :) Sometimes just thinking about that makes me smile and helps get me through tough classes or rehearsals. It is definitely encouraging to see that all my hard work is perhaps being noticed!

Until next time,

--Janie, real ballet dancer with an anonymous name