Italian Fouettes... Conquered!

My pointe shoes are getting beat up... but I'm now beating up Italian fouettes!

By which I mean, two weeks later, I can pretty much do them! Last week my teacher and I worked on doing them at the barre and subsequently discovered that I'm actually a leftie for these. That's in one way unexpected because I'm a rightie for pretty much all types of turning actvities, as far as I knew (pirouettes, piques, chaines, etc...). However, I do have a weird thing where I'm a rightie for some things and a leftie for others (my left leg is stronger and more flexible, noticeably). So I guess this is my weird ambidextrous-ity bleeding through into ballet! :-P I made some weak attempts at doing them at the end of the variation, but I couldn't do them at the tempo of the music, and was super wobbly without a barre.

However, this week we tried them in the center again (to some different, more slower music), and I can do them! In fact I might actually have found them easier if they were just a bit faster, since a lot of the wobbling and hopping around might've been avoided if I didn't have to pause between everything. So yay to Italian fouettes, I'm getting closer to back to "normal" again (by which I mean, pre-hiatus). Still no double pirouettes en pointe... but maybe next week I'll be brave enough to try. We did some attitude turns this week, and after some preliminary trepidation and falling out of them, I could actually do them fairly consistently.

I think I have some sort of mental block in terms of turns and pirouettes on the left side, so I need to work on that, and then everything will probably magically fall into place once I'm not terrified of that side :-P I've found I have a tendency to not get quite all the way up on my standing leg when doing pirouettes, which then causes me to obviously buckle halfway through, think I'm going to break my ankle, and then fall off balance feeling terrified. Vicious cycle, eh?

Oh, and hops... those have always been, and still are terrifying. Part of it is a strength thing - I'm fine on hops with both feet, but my ankles still feel really weak when they have to support me individually. Part of it is coordinating my feet so that they do in fact actually ginch when they are the supporting leg... otherwise it's super-weird and awkward and ankle-twist-ey if I don't hold back my arch the right amount at the right time.

So basically, Italian fouettes re-conquered!! Next in line are double pirouettes, and one-foot hops!