Thankful for the Process
Just as it is when leaves transform themselves to prepare for the winter, dancers, too, used September to settle in for the season. All sorts of seasonal transitions can take some adjusting to, but we are incredibly thankful for this process.
And it is a process that we trust.
It often feels as though the first month of a new dance season is a blur of confirming schedules, meeting new teachers, trying new dance styles, making new friends, and discovering how much dancers have grown in a short two months. Part of this process, however, is also easing dancers back into their movements.
Coming out of the relaxed summer schedule, dancers may not have realized how much their regular training contributed to their new and impressive skills acquired throughout the last season. Prestige teachers, however, spend much of the first month reviewing the basics of technique and injury prevention to lay the foundation for the coming season’s skills.
Sometimes, when we are primed and feel ready to pick up where we left off last season, we may feel like rushing the process instead of trusting it, but we must remember that even the highest paid prima ballerinas still practice their basic plié [pronounced plee-eh] exercises. Even the simplest moves help us fortify our knowledge and our strength and prepare us for all the new things that are to come through the season.
If we are to think about the simple plié, it is not actually all that simple. The plié requires us to bend our knees over our toes, while supporting our arches through a strong ankle, supporting our knees from a properly rotated hip, keeping our pelvis in a neutral position with the help of our glutes and abs, opening through our chest and pushing down through our shoulders, lifting through our necks as we angle our heads . . . and making it all look effortless while every muscle in our body works to make it look simply as though we’re bending our knees. That “simple” plié adds levels to our choreography; coils our muscles like a spring for jumps, relévés, and pirouettes; and absorbs the impact of our landings. Without a proper plié, you would be unable to learn most of the dance elements that you may be excited to leap into. Our foundations are foundations for a reason, and if we rush through them, we miss out on their amazing strengthening and preparatory benefits. If we discount something in our training as “easy,” we may slow our progress for more complex dance elements.
If we give energy to the exercises that feel basic, you have the opportunity to grow beyond what you’d expect.
Sometimes it’s hard to trust the process of new beginnings, but now is the time where the benefits of this process begin to truly shine. Dancers have settled into their groove, benefitted from the sharp eyes of their new teachers, reviewed their foundations, and their skills are blossoming.
And this is only the beginning of the season.
As October reminds us of all that we have to be thankful for, we thank you, the Prestige Dance Academy community, for journeying through the process of new beginnings as we fall into the routine of another incredible dance season in Calgary.
