Kevin Bacon Can't Dive Nor Run For Shit
You know guitar face? I am pretty sure that when I am in my "ballet workout" class I am making a really king-hell ballet face while I'm trying to stumble through the combinations without embarrassin myself. I have never actually seen my own ballet face -- which from the feel of it involves knitted brow, pursed lips or tight-jawed grimace (depending), and visible attempts to keep count of the steps -- because I am concentrating on coordinating my feet, ankles, knees, turnout, arms, core, 39-year-old buttocks and assorted clicking, cracking body parts to achieve something like what the adorable 21-year-old teacher demonstrated. If someone YouTubed it, I'd be Internet famous in like five hours. But I do not care, because that class is awesome.
It's funny; it took a lot of work to get myself to start going to this class (which is held at my daughter's dance school at an hour when moms can attend after the kids are in bed), mostly sorting through and discarding rancid bits of old mental garbage from my actual ballet years (ages 3-13, more or less) -- the body image stuff, the perfection hurdles, the voices of ballet teachers from the Third Reich correcting my every move with cold and somehow threatening disappointment. And what was left after I threw out all that stuff, hopefully for good, was: a really absorbing, interesting, challenging and joyous hourlong workout.
The vocabulary -- which is all in French -- came back like I'd never forgotten it in the first place. The barre work I love so much, I swear I could do it all day long. I'm thrilled by how grand my battements are, and humbled by how sloppy my fifth position is; proud of the height and precision of my points during changement, yet kind of appalled by how sketchy my balance gets in the one-legged moves. My entire attention is required -- it may be the one hour a week in which my brain isn't hamsterwheeling, so it feels like I've been on vacation or something when I'm done. I'm sore in weird places, I'm conscious of the tiny muscles in my feet, I'm irked by the fact that I have to wear a very serious athletic bra (Christ those things bind!), it is kind of a drag to get motivated to go at the very end of a long day during what would normally be my Scotch-pouring time, and still I love it.
I don't, like, have a real point here, or an ending. No, wait -- here's one: Kevin Bacon Can't Dive Nor Run For Shit. Nine seconds that you will re-watch one hundred times until your eyes are so swollen from laugh-weeping that you can't see it anymore and then you'll re-watch a hundred more times just to hear it and laugh until you die!
It's funny; it took a lot of work to get myself to start going to this class (which is held at my daughter's dance school at an hour when moms can attend after the kids are in bed), mostly sorting through and discarding rancid bits of old mental garbage from my actual ballet years (ages 3-13, more or less) -- the body image stuff, the perfection hurdles, the voices of ballet teachers from the Third Reich correcting my every move with cold and somehow threatening disappointment. And what was left after I threw out all that stuff, hopefully for good, was: a really absorbing, interesting, challenging and joyous hourlong workout.
The vocabulary -- which is all in French -- came back like I'd never forgotten it in the first place. The barre work I love so much, I swear I could do it all day long. I'm thrilled by how grand my battements are, and humbled by how sloppy my fifth position is; proud of the height and precision of my points during changement, yet kind of appalled by how sketchy my balance gets in the one-legged moves. My entire attention is required -- it may be the one hour a week in which my brain isn't hamsterwheeling, so it feels like I've been on vacation or something when I'm done. I'm sore in weird places, I'm conscious of the tiny muscles in my feet, I'm irked by the fact that I have to wear a very serious athletic bra (Christ those things bind!), it is kind of a drag to get motivated to go at the very end of a long day during what would normally be my Scotch-pouring time, and still I love it.
I don't, like, have a real point here, or an ending. No, wait -- here's one: Kevin Bacon Can't Dive Nor Run For Shit. Nine seconds that you will re-watch one hundred times until your eyes are so swollen from laugh-weeping that you can't see it anymore and then you'll re-watch a hundred more times just to hear it and laugh until you die!
Labels: booze makes things better, deep thoughts, fuckyeahbeingagrownup, life is beautiful, surprises in the attic, way too old for this kind of shit anymore, yes Sensei
posted by Gleemonex at 11:37 AM
2 Comments:
A.) LOVE the Bacon bit. Could the man be any stiffer?
B.) I do an in-home extreme barre DVD that kills me so hard I haven't yet made it all the way through. It's my dream to do it enough and quit eating tacos and have the body I had when I was 20 years younger. But I'd be more motivated if I actually went to a physical location with other bodies around.
C.) I KNOW my ballet face is bad because my husband has walked in and seen it and told me so.
A) Why no move the arms, Kev?
B) What is it? I need it.
C) That's not really sporting of Mr. Francine, you know. Not sporting at all old chap.
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