Elenora Morris at the Prix de Lausanne – Day 5!
I can’t believe how fast the week has gone. Today was our last day of classes and coaching before we perform our variations tomorrow!
I had a nice warm-up class on stage this morning with my classmates, and then we had our second coaching session for our classical variations. This time we went in order of our variations. There are quite a lot of “Gamzatti“‘s and “Grand Pas Classique“‘s in Group B Girls! After over an hour of antsy waiting I finally got to go. Despite the wait, I had a good run and got some helpful feedback from our coach. I was glad to practice my variation on the stage one last time before tomorrow!
After classical coaching I had a nice long break, so I got some lunch and read for a while. I also decided to pay a visit to the physical therapist who is onsite for the candidates, because my quadriceps are extremely sore, most likely from the raked stage and all the new movements in contemporary class! The therapist gave me a wonderful massage and recommended some Theraband exercises. She was very sweet!
At 3pm all of the girls doing my contemporary variation, Saraband, had rehearsal with the choreographer, Goyo Montero. (Apparently, Saraband is very popular: 11 out of 17 girls in my class are dancing it!) Since we each had to learn the variation from a video, it was wonderful to actually work with Mr. Montero and learn the details and the intentions behind the steps. He gave us lots of insight, and thankfully he didn’t make too many changes to the choreography (Polly said that we were lucky he didn’t change more!). I only wish that we could have worked with him earlier so we could have had more time to apply his corrections! The jury watched our rehearsal as well, so I’m sure when we perform tomorrow they will note whether we listened to Mr. Montero or not!
I had another break, then each of us ran our contemporary variation onstage under the choreographer’s supervision (this time without jury). It was helpful to try it on the rake, and Mr. Montero gave each of us some final pointers.
By the end of the day, I was exhausted and ready for dinner and some good rest. Tomorrow will be exciting!
Watch Elenora in the video below (#306, white leotard) just after the 5 minute mark: