Dear Sanna - It's all for YOU

We have 5 ballet masters and an artistic director. That is 12 eyes, 6 different opinions, 6 voices, and 4 languages scrutinizing me all at once. Sometimes I feel like my brain is about to explode! It is hard enough to rehearse, thinking about the choreography, music, spacing, feet, legs, body, arms, and head all in the correct place, without the teachers screaming on top of one another, often different things, that I am expected to fix immediately, right then.

I can feel myself tense up, trying to apply all the corrections, and I start to loose my cool. I forget where I am in the choreography. If I'm told to turn out more, I loose my balance. My shoulders go up and I forget to breathe, and I can feel the tears about to come.

At least that's how it was, or how it is on really bad days, but I am learning to just breathe, smile and apply as many corrections as possible. I have seen my fellow dancers react in such a negative way to corrections, and it's really almost embarrassing. Today a teacher was correcting this girl, who was being so stubborn she refused to take the simplest advice, playing dumb and doing ridiculous things. For what? To prove the teacher wrong? To show she couldn't do it correctly?

In a way I understand how I might be tempted to do such childish things sometimes, but it is really better for everyone to just take the correction. As the teachers say again and again, the corrections are for us. They just want us to be better dancers, and that's what we want, too, right? So I should be happy they are giving me the opportunity to improve. If I never get corrections how will I get better? The teachers appreciate when I apply the corrections, too. The scary teacher I often talk about was giving a correction today and began to name names, and when she got to me she actually said I was okay, which is about the biggest compliment anyone could hope for from this teacher!

Anyway I still need to work on listening to 6 people at once, and figuring out which of the conflicting directions I should take, while continuing to dance on the music, but at least I am controlling my temper...

Janie