Frustrations -- IAN

[REGAN CREVALD]

Regan wasn't supposed to be doing the amount of exercises and practice she had been doing as of late. Her back was still considered injured so she wouldn't be returning to the professional ballet stage anytime soon, but it wasn't stopping her. When someone gets used to doing something every single day of their life and suddenly told not to, it's difficult to just up and quit. Especially when it was something you absolutely loved to do. Sometimes it hurt, other times it didn't, and then other times it was just a dull ache after the workout that annoyed her to no end until she went to the chiropractor. Of course she lied to the doctors, claimed that she wasn't working out every single day and putting more strain on herself.

But when you're taught to push yourself to extreme measures everyday, it becomes less of a habit and more of your personality. So, Regan flipped the lights on in the studio and set her bag in the corner so it was out of the way. Her fingers worked her hair into the tight ballet bun most dancers wore in their hair, except she didn't use the tube sock that they did. She had found these little foam pieces she could form her hair around and it made it easier to make the tight bun stay, especially with the millions of bobby pins and eight cans of hair spray needed to plaster it to her head. Regan let out a soft sigh as she stared at herself in the mirror a moment, thoughts of actually not doing exercises crossing her mind. Hah. Yeah right.

Shaking her head at herself, she sat her butt down on the floor to pull on her favorite pair of Gayner Minden pointe shoes that she had practically worn until they were ready to break, and that had only been a few times. Eventually she would have to get herself a new pair, considering these were older and her shanks were about ready to break. Then again, she had chosen the Extra Flex shank, which wasn't a great choice but she had so much flexion in her feet that she needed the shock absorption. Then again, that could spell danger for her since she could break her feet, but so far she hadn't.

Finally she was ready to finish stretching and start her center practice. She held onto the barre as she worked through her simple practices, allowing her muscles to warm up and stretch as she went along. Most people thought ballet was full of fouettes and all of the jeté steps, when really it was all basics. There was so much she had to do before she could even step up into pointe because she could do some serious damage to herself. Slowly she worked through each practice and finally stepped up into pointe to stretch her feet and ankles. Taking her heel, she pushed it into the arch of her foot so she could stretch her feet so they would arch properly and she wouldn't break her foot.

As soon as she was ready to move onto the harder practice, she stepped away from the bar into the middle of the floor and began her fouettes. Her head spun quickly to keep her eyes on a single target to prevent getting dizzy, her leg helping spin as she pointed it out and then curled it back in as she spun around completely. As she rounded into her tenth fouette, she felt her back seize and dropped down from pointe to hold onto her back with a rather rattled-sounding sigh. "Shit..." she breathed, closing her eyes and hoped that she was still alone in the studio. Regan most certainly didn't need someone seeing her in pain, she didn't need to be told to stop dancing by someone else.

[ian langley]

Ian’s day had been spent doing his normal classes for the day, two classic ballroom classes and a salsa class, but he’d fit in other classes around those scheduled ones getting people ready for weddings and consulting on a flash-mob via skype. He’d gotten a laugh out of the mob idea that was going down for a guy’s wedding, he was getting all the guests involved and putting a lot of effort into it because his to be wife loved watching the video’s of them and thought they were impressive. He was arranging with dance instructors around in the areas where the family members were and Ian was pulled in for a few guests that were local to myrtle beach so he could teach them. They’d been working out the details of the dance, and in a week he was going to meet up with the guys in new jersey to bring it all together and make sure they all had the same dance down before they began teaching to the people who’d be going. He’d have to go again around the time of the wedding for the big rehearsal to help them get it all set up and things but he was optimistic about it working out. He was asked to form the second half since they already had the first worked out and he’d agreed to do it and figure it out for them then send a video to the main guy in charge of the mob so he could add it in or tweak it and they could hammer out the little details.

It was a fun bit of something different to do, Ian had only worked with a flash-mob set up before twice and had just been learning the dance to it to help teach others not arranging it. Looking over the pictures of the location for it to happen he started getting ideas and before he realized it he was setting things up and putting tape down on the floor in the studio that was normally just for staff to make use of because it wasn’t really the best space in the building and needed to be fixed up if they wanted to use it as a main classroom. He liked using the space because it wasn’t normally overpopulated and he could set things and come back to them still in place rather than having to set up every time. A few of his co-workers joked that it was “Ian’s space” and he was fine with that because it was easier that way if he wanted to work with a friend rather than a student or if he had something to work on where he needed to get a sense of order that others would call chaos. Setting up now he put things in places to mark the areas that he needed to add in a work around mentally since having four hundred people in one space doing the same dance could be tricky with tables and chairs added into the equation. Once things were set up he turned on the music and ran through the first half of the dance he’d learned from the video earlier in the day, then began adding his own moves for them to flow into for the second half, imagining other people joining in around him trying to picture it out and pausing now and then to tweak and go back to run through again.

About an hour later he’d heard someone else come in one of the times he’d been resetting and hadn’t thought much of it as he kept working hammering out details. He would set up a camera once he had it all down and record it so he could send it for “review” but for now he was enjoying the chance to work it out, moving around the room to different areas to test it all out and make sure he wasn’t causing problems with some moves, he was keeping it fairly simple remembering that the people involved weren’t trained dancers and wouldn’t have forever to learn either so it needed to be something everyone could get down and do. Pausing he considered a moment wondering if anyone in the building would help him out by giving it a try and getting a bottle of water he headed out to find out if he was actually alone now or if there was still someone there. He stopped at the door to one of the other rooms watching as a woman spun with good form until she showed signs of pain coming to a stop. Considering bowing out for a moment to avoid embarrassing her he decided she seemed the die-hard sort who should be used to others being around and cleared his throat lightly before speaking, ”Looks like you could use a short break…mind helping a guy out?” he said thinking pain was normally a sign it was time to pause for a bit and let your body sort itself out.

[REGAN CREVALD]

To say that she was bullheaded was being rather polite, considering she was told not to dance at all for a few weeks. Yet here she was, going through her practice in a studio as if nothing were wrong. Of course, it hadn't been a fouette that had messed her back up, it had been a poorly done lift and toss that had landed her wrong. Plus with all of that bending and flexing, she was bound to hurt her back eventually. Thankfully she hadn't had any bad ankle injuries and her feet still looked relatively normal, outside of the busted nail and red rubbing sores. Oh the sores. After all of these years, you would think she would be used to them, but no. They were still annoying.

As she snapped her head around to allow her body to follow around, kicking her leg out every turn to bring some more force to the spin. It was the turning of her head that would hurt her back occasionally, followed by having to kick her leg out. She could feel the dull ache begin around the third fouette and then finally on the fifth, her body said no. If she hadn't been taught to stay quiet when dancing, she would have gasped and cursed away but her teacher had scolded her into submission in that habit. Little did she know there was someone watching her dance since she had gotten so engrossed in her exercises. Just as she stepped down from pointe to hold her back, she heard him speak.

That gave her a start. Regan jumped a little at the sudden voice from behind her and turned quickly, staring at the random handsome man who had been asking her help. "Uhm...sure?" she agreed and reached down to untie her pointe shoes. "Let me just take these off." It only took a minute for her to take the shoes off and set them with her bag and pull on a pair of regular dance shoes. When Regan was in a studio, she refused to wear sneakers just because of the dirt that could screw someone up. At least her jazz shoes were easy to dance in. "I'm Regan, by the way." She smiled up at him as she walked over to him, hand resting against her sore side lightly. "What can I help you with?"