Think Happy...38/52...

I'd say this week has been awesome, to be honest. A few minor arguments with someone special and a few lessons have been learnt, but it's nothing major.

1. This week I completed a dress I was making in school. It's made out of pillowcases, and we're going to send them off to a school in Zambia. I'm so happy with mine, it's only really the second thing I've ever sewn!

2. I had a great time when I went to see Macbeth the other evening with around 60 people in my year at school. We had a picnic, my friend had brought the most delicious sandwiches (she's Romanian, so she knows all about great food!) and one of the others brought toffee popcorn for us all.

Left to right - me, Katie, Jasmine and Ioana

3. Ballet has made me super motivated now, and I just read this post which has boosted my mood even more!! And Hannah and I started rehearsing for our YouTube channel!

4. In street dance on Monday, Hannah and I were asked to perform at her old school's fete on Friday 4th July, so that should be great - there will only be four of us dancing!


5. In contemporary on Tuesday, Tan had changed the ending of the dance (I couldn't get the hang of it at all last week), and I could actually do it this week, so I love the new version! Also, Joel Tolhurst (a famous dancer who occasionally teaches street dance at our school) stopped in our lesson and joined in, which was absolutely incredible!


6. Yesterday I also performed at a local primary school with the London crew, which was pretty cool, it even stopped raining for ten minutes for us to perform!

I'm on the back right, with my arm in the air. I'm standing next to my friends Katie (sticking out on the right) and George.


Well I think that's all for now. I hope your week has been good, see you soon!

Oversplits and Sneak Peak Video...

I guess my mood has changed right around since this time last week! It's funny how one day can change everything, really. Today really has been great, well, except the weather, which was downright dreadful, but we can gloss right over that.

I've really been enjoying my normal ballet class at the minute, because we've been working on stretching and strengthening, and these are things I really enjoy. I love that I can continue to improve my body, and although it is slow-going, you can really glow and feel such accomplishment when you can finally do a trick or something after a lot of hard work.

Today, we did very basic splits stretches (butterfly, pigeon, straddle with a partner, centre splits on a wall) and then went into splits. I can say that I didn't get very far in those proceedings. I then got a baby chair for both Hannah and myself, and we did oversplits with our front leg on a chair. I was able to push into flat splits from here, and this is something I do in contemporary class on a Tuesday too.

Hannah abandoned this effort pretty soon to work on her leg holds. I borrowed her chair and did oversplits with a leg on each chair.I haven't tried this for a long time and it gave me such a great stretch. I did this firstly by touching the ground with my hands, to get my bearings. Then I let go and sat in it, which made my legs shake. I was putting my entire (very heavy!) weight on it and I got just over 180° in my left leg splits! I didn't have time to do my right leg this way, since I wanted to try splits on the ground straight away, which I got flat! It's amazing, the difference you can get by just oversplitting.

This is the result of my stretching, Hannah had this awesome idea for a photo. I'd brought my camera, so I put it on a timer and took this.

After this class, Hannah and I used a spare studio to learn some new choreography, for a dance that we'll be uploading to our YouTube channel! The quality isn't the greatest and we have a lot to clean up on it, but here you go!

I hope you enjoy this sneak peak! Apart from Facebook, if you have me on that, this is the only place you'll see it, so enjoy, my exclusive audience!

But in other news, we had a dance performance at a local school this afternoon, from our London dance crew, and luckily the weather held up for us. I went wrong in the second dance, but I guess I deserve it for not thinking about it for a fortnight!

Thanks for reading this lengthy post, I hope you enjoyed it :D

The Scottish Play...

As I'm sitting here typing this, I am sneezing and scrubbing my eyes like mad, and drinking plenty to combat a sore throat and headache. I'm cursing hayfever a lot today; I've had too many lessons in silence with my head bent over my work, and also a PE lesson on the running track, which all increased my snotty-nose-iness.

This morning as soon as I woke up, I just knew that today wouldn't be my day. I woke up thoroughly exhausted from a trip I went on last night with school, and took three quarters of an hour getting ready in my room, leaving only fifteen to pack my bag, eat and do everything else I needed to do. And I was already sneezing my head off. So that went very well. And to top it all off, we had to do long-distance running and sprints in PE, my idea of Hell on Earth!

What trip did I go on last night, you may ask? It was a school trip to see a performance of Macbeth (see here for my favourite comedy sketch) in a beautiful park not too far away, and it was amazing!

I'm on the far left

Here's a photo of me and some of my school friends!

Thanks for reading!

Tunesday...

So this is a bit of an old song, but I only found it the other day. Well, my friend Charlie sent me the link whilst we were skyping, and I love it, even though I never knew this movie existed!

Think Happy...37/52...

Aside from endless revision, I'd say that this week has turned out fairly well. You may know that I haven't got to sit my GCSEs until this time next year, thankfully. But on Friday I did have a German Speaking Exam, which could possibly count towards my GCSE grade, if it's good enough. But now that that's over and done with, I can just sit and feel all summery!

1. I had ballet! Eh, if you saw yesterday's post, you might already know that it didn't go to plan at all. But I did get to see my little girls for (mostly) the first time in a fortnight, and Hannah!

Hannah's a size 3 and I'm a 6! The box doesn't help either, I have tall boxes too!

2. I had a peach for the first time in ages!

3. I found out a load more performance dates for dancing, I'm going to be such a busy little bee!

4. I've been on Skype with Charlie and Ezra a lot these past couple of nights, I think it's been three in a row, and that was such a lot of fun!

5. Planning a YouTuber cinema visit soon! Eek!!

I think that's all for now, so I hope your week was better than mine!

Feeling Discouraged...

So time for a reflection post today, I think. At pointe class today, we were working through feet exercises and basically just working in our shoes. It got me thinking of how I really need to break my shoes in, as soon as possible.

I was really struggling today as a result of the inflexibility of the shanks, especially in my left shoe. This has always been my weaker foot, but at least in my old shoes I had managed to get an arch into the shoe and could get over en pointe easily. Now, I could barely do the exercises, much less correctly. I couldn't get fully onto pointe. I mean, I almost did, but I was cursing my near-rigid shank the entire class. I was going over with bent knees and pushing into my arches hard, for goodness sake!

I know it will all come with time and wearing in my shoes. I've been told a million times. But the thing that annoys me the most is that I used to be able to do all of these things in my sleep, and I know how it feels to do them, but I physically can't now! My old shoes were broken in just right, so when I danced in them they felt like a part of me. But my new shoes feel like they're big, clunky and getting in the way when I dance. I can't move freely in them, and it's all down to not being broken in.

Here's a video of me pirouetting in my new pointes. It really shows how uncomfortable I am doing them in these shoes. You can see my shoulders ride up tall and lack of spotting (not that I ever spot for pirouettes anway, just for chainées).

So please, if any of you have any ways of breaking in my shoes faster (or any tips for pirouettes!), I would very much appreciate it! I felt like crying in frustration all through class and afterwards, I really hate this!

Tunesday...

This song is so pretty, as well as short, but is very simple and beautiful!

Think Happy...36/52...

Hi guys, I have had quite a good week, and it's gone so quickly! I wish time could pass more slowly at times like these, when I'm having good days and looking forward to things it almost feels like I'm wishing my life away. But then again, we all just want to have the good things and reject the bad, so I guess it's only natural.

1. I've made some friendship bracelets, both for myself and some friends. I made the green one for Jack, and the rainbow one for a little girl I teach called Amber. Mine are not pictured.

2. My brother made a yummy 'trifle cheescake' at school this week, with fresh strawberries, custard, cream and biscuit. It tasted so good!

3. On Friday I got the opportunity to dance at a large cricket stadium 40 minutes away from where I live. I danced with my dance school, and it was such an amazing experience! We're dancing there again on 23rd July. There were videos taken, but they were so blurry it's unreal, as the pitch was huge! I'm going to get someone to record our next one on my big camera for better quality footage.

4. Yesterday we did another performance, this time at a fundraiser in a nearby town, and I have better videos of that. I've put them on YouTube for you to see, but as unlisted. We danced them back-to-back, so ten minutes of solid dancing.

The links are HERE and HERE!


5. I'm going blonde again! Yay for summer!

So anyhow, that's my week, I hope you enjoyed the videos and photos!

Tunesday...

I think today's song is ever so pretty, one day I'd love to choreograph a dance to it! Hope you like it!

Think Happy...35/52...

This week hasn't been too bad, I must admit. Sure, there have been down parts, such as a ton of revision and currently having an incredibly swollen lip, but so many good things have happened. Let's get started.

1. I'm totally loving my new blog design! What do you guys think about it; do you love it, hate it, or have any improvements you'd like to see? Let me know in the comments!

2. I had four dance classes yesterday, which was amazing. Very sweaty, and the hardest work I've done in class for a long time, but it felt so good! In ballet we were working our backs and abs (and my friend joined!), in baby ballet we were working on jumps and polkas (the jumps near killed me, I tell you!) and in pointe we were breaking in our shoes, which was good since I had my new ones on.

Afterwards I had more rehearsals for the dances we did at Sadler's Wells Theatre in London. I can tell you that we're going to be performing at so many events over the summer! The first is on Friday 13th June at Northants Cricket Grounds, where around 6,500 people could be watching! I'm so excited! We'll be performing there again on 23rd July, and our dance teacher told us that Sky Sports will be there too! Wow!! :D

3. I had a photoshoot with Hannah yesterday, and I really love how the photos turned out! We borrowed the studio after dance classes, where we took the photos Hannah needed for her art GCSE. Want to see some photos? Of course you do!

Now for when Hannah took the camera!

4. A famous dancer called Joel Tolhurst came to the studio and taught the dance squads on Tuesday night, before my contemporary class, so I got to see him! Tan (our teacher) managed to talk Joel into coming along to join in with our contemporary classes, and I think he will be in July - and he's seriously amazing! Maybe, when Tan goes to uni, he could teach the class!

Rightio, I think that's all for today. I'm heading off to bed now, see you soon!

Tunesday...

This week I'd like to share with you a song that Jack introduced me to on Saturday. I love it so much!

Think Happy...34/52...

This week has been pretty good, especially since it's been half-term! Although, I must admit, I just took the opportunity to sit around the house and do absolutely nothing, for the most part! The most productive I've been is doing some of my homework today (eek, I really shouldn't leave it to last minute every time!), and recording a YouTube video - more on that later;)

Revision (why do I look so happy about it?!)

1. Anyway, the first thing that springs to mind when someone says 'happy' is Skype. Again. Why do I always end up engrossed in the virtual world? But seriously, yesterday I spent almost four hours on Skype with Jack again. We spent the first hour or two talking rubbish while we gamed (him on Fifa, myself on Ace of Spades), with the occasional appearance of his cousins and sister. The last two hours I spent talking to him, his sister and two cousins (they were having a sleepover, get it now?) and we even played Disney trivia! I've decided now - we need to have a Disney movie marathon!

2. I've been trying my hair out in a bun all week, and I must say, it makes me look quite grown up! What do you think of it?

3. Oh, remember we talked about a YouTube video earlier? Well here's the link: Ace Of Spades - Girl's Night with Hannah and Carys! Please check it out, like and subscribe if you wish to see more videos like this! I've had so many of my friends comment on how funny they think this video is, and Jack can't shut up making jokes about how I 'get stuck in a crouch'! (P.s. Watch the video to see what I mean!)

4. The only active thing I did for the whole week was a ten minute ab workout I found on YouTube. I actually really enjoyed it, so I went onto my favourite workout site Blogilates and I'm now starting the daily workouts (or at least one exercise from each day!). Wish me luck!

That's all I can think of right now, so thanks for reading, I'll see you on Tuesday for a new song I was introduced to yesterday.