Johanna Speaks

There is a new girl in my class. Her name is Emma. She used to do ballet when she was four years old. I don't know why she had stopped. She might be now nine or eight years old like me. She quickly understood the dance instructions. There are two teachers: one of the teacher's name is Emma too. The new girl, even kind of looks like the Emma teacher, except the girl is not a redhead. We call the teacher "Miss Emma" and the new girl, just "Emma."

We practiced part of the dance performance by grabbing different size balls, one for each dancer, and running across the room by gradually lifting the ball slowly up over our heads while the music plays. We run on our tippie-toes very lightly, so we don't make any sound with our feet. We are pretending that the balls are planets. The dance is about creation and what God created. 

The difficult part is in the timing of the exercises in general, going too fast or too slow. The music goes slower or faster, and we follow the teacher's dance moves as she is standing on the side of the room. We can see her in the big wall mirror, no matter which way we are standing. Sometimes the teacher uses the mirror to write the French ballet words. She can erase it easily from the mirror.

Yesterday, Mrs Zoanne gave me the same ballet training form, but with some new exercises. These are the new exercises:

• Balance exercises 
• Piano playing 
• Rises with Theraband 
• Single leg rises in parallel 
• Turnout exercises in Retiré
• Piriformis stretch
• Side lifts

I go to Selah Dance Academy in Red Bluff, California. They teach all types of dances. They teach tap, hip hop, jazz, pointe and ballet. I have three friends that are in my class. I have two other friends that are taking hip hop and tap. I am taking ballet II. 

Miss Mary and Miss Zoann were teaching us how to land in fifth, which is foot position. It was easy for me. 

There are different ways to land. You can accidentally land in fourth position because it’s close to fifth. We have not learned fourth yet. 

When we spin, we put our arms in front of us like we are holding a big ball. While we are spinning we move our arms from in front of us to up above us. It’s not hard to do.

I like to do the calf stretch at the beginning of the lesson.

We are sitting in a circle on the ground waiting for Miss ZoAnne to give us a paper that has exercises that she will help us out with. She was helping some of the girls fill out their birthdays and other information. 

We did all the exercises on the other side of that personal information paper. The teacher marks on your paper how flexible you are or how good you are at each exercise. 

The most difficult exercise for me was the big toe exercise. You keep the four other toes down (with your hand if you need to) and you raise up your big toe using your toe muscle. Then you switch by holding your big toe down while raising your four smaller toes up. You switch back and forth. Raising the small four toes was the difficult part for me.