To be or not to be (an all-rounder dancer)

As probably evident from the content of this blog (and the title) I'm primarily a ballet dancer. I do contemporary as well and at school I take dance as a subject and I'm in the performance company. But at school every now and then I find myself having to attempt some other styles of dance. The other morning during rehearsal we were learning "All that Jazz" from Chicago with the original Bob Fosse choreography for a performance in a few weeks. Anyone who is familiar with his choreography knows it's bent knees, on the balls of the feet, hips parallel with lots of movement of the hips and it's very sensual. My part of the piece had main focus on the hip rolls and because I've never done this style of jazz before it was quite alien to my body. My teacher was going through them with us but then even though I was getting the hang of it she singled me out and was all "I'm putting you in another part of the dance I don't have time" and the girl that replaced me did them no better than I did. Ugh. Even though the part I'm in now is actually slightly better I was annoyed that I was singled out and made to feel inadequate. This is not the first time this has happened in this class either. I wonder if  the roles were reversed and we were learning a difficult Balanchine piece and all the jazz girls didn't know their plies from their pirouettes would the teacher treat them the same way? Most definitely not. Because ballet is rarely performed in schools and the like because of the specific difficulty of the art form.  And also I feel there is often a bit more hierarchy in that class then I really care for, and I seem to cop the brunt of it, no matter how hard I work.

But the reason I've brought this up is because it has made me wonder maybe I should stop using ballet as an excuse for being crap and broaden my horizons from just ballet and contemporary. To me, dance is dance and I actually really enjoy all aspects of it, and it's great to be able to do this, it's boring if you only focus on one style!  So maybe some jazz classes might be taken sometime in the future! I've also actually never taken a tap class in my life so that's also on my bucket list!

So dance at school has been hard on me these past few days, I'm not going to lie! I hope you're on the other hand are going well!