Dear Sanna - Direction at last!!

The ballet master I spoke of finally returned!!! I was anxiously awaiting this, but I was also nervous about the reaction to how we have improved (or not) over the last few months. Also with our current ballet, I was almost embarrassed to show it to this ballet master, having worked on it only with much less strict teachers.

But the second the ballet master returned I was immediately happier. Finally, the rehearsals for the part that stresses me out most now have meaning. We stop when something is bad or not together and actually work out why it's bad and how to fix it, rather than the rehearsal director just screaming while we dance and try to think and miss half of the corrections. And we also work on stamina, because we stop and start and work, but also repeat and redo and go again from the beginning, which is much more useful in order to improve, and ends up building even more stamina than just a straight run.

Not that everything is puppies and rainbows. Today after rehearsal there was a really long discussion between the director and all the ballet masters in the front of the studio while us dancers stood around like nervous auditioners. Nobody had any idea what they were talking about, and then one of the ballet masters started speaking to my opposite in a language I don't understand. She sounded annoyed with a "so-what?" answer and then told me she thinks we're done rehearsing and left. The rest of us were completely bewildered.

Later I heard a rumor that my opposite possibly will dance another part (it's actually better), so if she does then somebody else will have to replace her and dance with me. What I don't understand is why second cast won't go in while my partner does the other part, and we will dance together as planned. The whole thing sounds fishy to me, and I am worried that I will suffer in the end, since I now do the part the way my opposite does, which has many small but important differences to second cast. I am not getting worked up about it just yet, but I hope they will tell us what's going on soon.

Janie