Ballet Class Recap: Food Allergies and Pas de Deux

Finally over this next weekend I’ll be able to get back into the swing of things and resume my five day a week posting schedule (I miss it!). I’ve just been a little bit under the weather, not to mention busy.

Starting last Thursday, I was feeling pretty crappy, thinking I had some sort of stomach bug. I wasn’t sure of the cause, but it was definitely bad enough to affect my work and my plans to go to ballet class Thursday night. Luckily, I felt well enough to go to class Friday night.

HQ tagged along to Friday’s class–something that always makes me happy–and for a little while we thought we were going to be the only ones in class. My ballet instructor said that if we were the only ones, she would show us some partnering steps (an idea that slightly terrified me). Some more people showed up, so we didn’t get a chance to try it out. However, my ballet teacher said the next time the other male dancer who takes the class comes, we’d “play” around with some partnering stuff after class.

The rest of my weekend didn’t go quite as planned–I made it to Content Camp and learned some cool things but we ended up leaving early. I felt pretty much downright terrible from Saturday evening into Monday mid-afternoon, when I started to feel better. I think I might have a slight avocado allergy, since I ate a lot of them around the times I felt sick. I also started feeling better once I stopped eating them, and I’ve had other slight issues when I eaten a lot of avocados before. (My sister thinks she might have a slight banana allergy–and both are related to the rubber tree).

Luckily, I still managed to feel alright to go to Monday’s class, which went well. I’m looking forward to hopefully making it to at least two classes this weekend as well as sneaking a run or two in as well since I’ve been feeling better.

Have you ever done partnering steps in your ballet class, or even taken a pas de deux class?

Another (Almost) Wordless Wednesday

ballet de chat

I shared these yesterday on social media, but wanted to share it again. This is my favorite Ballet de Chat photo, but make sure you go check them all out at Pointe Til You Drop!

Why I love Compression Gear: Zensah Socks and Sleeves

I love my compression socks, sleeves (and leggings too!). I have about six different pairs of compression socks and three different pairs of compression sleeves.  By far, the best pair of socks I have are the Zensah compression socks that I won in a #runchat tweet chat a few months ago. I recently bought a pair of Zensah sleeves that I love, too.

Why does compression gear work? Zensah’s got a great blog post on it, but here are some main points:

  •  Compression improves circulation and oxygenated blood flow to improve performance and enhance recovery.
  • Improved circulation reduces the buildup of lactic acid
  • Enhance athlete’s warm-up by increasing the temperature of the skin and the muscle
  • Provide an extra support to stabilize the muscle tissue, reducing inflammation and micro trauma

I mostly wear socks for recovery, but I’ll use my Zensah sleeves during ballet and sometimes while running.

zensah_socks

Chilling in my Zensah socks in my messy room

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Ballet Class Recap and General Updates

Since I haven’t posted since last week, I fee like I kind of fell off the face of the earth with this blog–even if it really hasn’t been that long.

I spent most of my weekend (starting on Wednesday, since I worked three days in a row last week) with my family and struggled to get even my homework done for the Coursera Python course HQ and I are taking. I also got in a few runs while at home since there is a nice running trail there. My legs seem to be doing super well, and I’m currently looking for a cheap-ish 5k in May/June to run.

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Beginner Ballerina Profile: Maria Lucia Violo

MLV

This week’s profile Maria Lucia Violo, a 31 year old from Rome, Italy, who started ballet back in 2010.

When did you start doing ballet as an adult?

I started in 2010, when I was 28 years old.

Did you ever take lessons as a kid?

Yes, I’ve loved dance and ballet since my very first childhood (I used to improvise dances at home, to watch avidly every TV show about dance and even to dress up my dolls as ballerinas and made them “dance” as a play!), so I actually ended up taking lessons, which I did approximately since age 9 to 12; it was never a serious thing, however. I was living in a small town then, and we didn’t even have a proper classical training, it was more of a casual mix of modern dance and ballet. I didn’t like the classes very much, plus I didn’t enjoy them really (sadly, I felt very insecure of myself in those days). Even my family wasn’t very encouraging (sadly they believed the old doctors’ tale that “dance can do harm to the body”). So, the mix of all those causes made me eventually quit.

Why did you decide to take ballet as an adult?

It had to do with the beginning of kind of a “new life” for me. It happened when I had recently past my mid-twenties and I was reconsidering a few things about my life, making new choices and especially allowing myself to let my desires free without succumb to others’ opinions and decisions, like I had frequently done in the past. So it was kind of natural for me, I guess, to come back to my old love too (as I said before, I was very fond of dancing as a form of expression since my very first childhood). But it wasn’t easy: I knew I wanted to dance, but I didn’t know even where to start from. Italian society can be very conservative sometimes and adult ballet is not so popular here still, so I had to research quite a lot till I could finally find the right place to study and to feel myself at home.

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