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  • the audience is this way.

  • So this needs to be here and this My shoulder needs to be tucked on this way.

  • My armpit means we rotated this way like there's a 1,000,000 things going through my head in this position.

  • I am scout for, say, professional ballerina with American Ballet Theater.

  • I've been dancing for 12 years and professionally now for six, and I danced on some of the most famous and incredible stage is that the world has to offer, including France and Russia.

  • Today I'm going to attempt to recreate the hardest parts of variation.

  • I'm not too familiar with the Sugar Plum Fairy variation from The Nutcracker.

  • Two good work out into this.

  • I'm gonna be going over the choreography today.

  • I'm going to be learning hair and makeup, and I'm gonna wear the tutu for the actual variation.

  • In order to nail the variation, I'm gonna need to work on B plus position.

  • Bori steps, point work Arabesque, Piquet manage and Coop agent jumps hardest part of pointe work is rolling through the feet and making sure I'm using every single muscle in my foot.

  • The hardest part about Arabesque is making sure that you're on your leg and keeping your back up without going too far forward or too far back.

  • So the Sugarplum variation comes from the final scene, when the Prince Cavalier and his sugarplum fairy dance together.

  • This is her variation to show how beautiful in regal she is and where she is in the land of sweets, and it ends beautifully and I get dizzy, and that's how the variation goes.

  • I'm gonna go mark through the sugarplum variation.

  • So the first section iss her coming out, starting on the corner, and she's in B plus and in this moment, really thinking of where I'm angled towards the audience.

  • The audience is this way.

  • So this needs to be here and this my shoulder needs to be tucked on this way.

  • My armpit means we rotated this way like there's a a 1,000,000 things going through my head in this position, and you go into the first step and this is a little bore, a step.

  • So she's little.

  • Did it?

  • Did it too?

  • Quite work is when you go past your flat foot on the ground so you're flat foot goes up onto your toes, your dancing completely and 100% on your toes, and the reason that point shoes were invented was so the ballerina looked like she was floating.

  • And in this motion of pot of beret with legs up in high Posse, the Potter berry has to be like a little.

  • There can't be any slow movements to our heavy, where it's like, Oh, I just want to get it done like there has to be a lightness and airiness about it.

  • Sometimes what happens is I feel like dancers go in dance, and there's this loss of connection between the fingers and the head, which is such a vital thing for a ballerina, too.

  • Have every little motion.

  • You kind of follow the fingers and then look out into the audience to go through things and then stepping into the arabesque, you have to have weight going forward to go up.

  • It's a hard one.

  • What makes it so hard is that I have to remember that in order to get on the balance, you have to have the hinging at the hips here, and if you don't fully and go for it, it's not gonna happen if you're back here on your leg trying to make it work.

  • It's not gonna happen.

  • You fully have to go for it in orderto work.

  • So the next section is the P came in EJ turn ticket turns of themselves.

  • It's a very simple movement.

  • You're just doing that turning around.

  • But what makes it exciting is the head, the upper body, the shoulders, the quickness to speed these attack of this particular dance.

  • You start from the back in, your leg goes out forward and you step on a straight leg.

  • Going into that turns to the peak.

  • A part is difficult because you have to know where body weight is going into it, and when you go into it, you have this turning motion and it's a constant turning.

  • The dancer goes around the whole stage in a big circle formation.

  • Technically, we think of it as a box because it's easier to cover every single corner.

  • If you think going in a box, it turns in testicle.

  • And so Piquet manage.

  • Is those Piquet turns constantly going in that big circles of starting from one area and going all the way around the stage and finishing on the other side at the end of the peaky turns those air for me, stamina wise, where I get the most frustrated and low on energy, the peak image some of the major points I'm thinking about, Ah, lot of them is upper body, having the upper body held but not pushing down so your ribs can't move when you're doing the peek a turn because the turn comes from the upper body and the ability to move the rib cage around your spinal cord.

  • And then out of the p k turns comes the coop.

  • Jeff Tae Woo jet means to dart out, and that's one of the major movements.

  • It's a quick, fast Cooper Jett jump your leg split up in the air, but you're not going up.

  • You are moving continuously in this jump, starting over something.

  • It's that's the only way to do it and complete it well, so going through that and then we do the P K speaking, speaking, and then we end it from the corner coming to the end, and this is the final part of the dance, and it's like the last moment of this dance were like I just got a push and go through it and then the pose, like that last pose of shut and having that final moment of the breath going on.

  • Then you walk off stage, and that's the end of it.

  • And then you run off stage and you're like, Where's the water?

  • This is soil again.

  • And she's gonna be coaching me through the Sugar plum variation today from The Nutcracker.

  • Janikowski.

  • He wanted the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy to be like drops of water from the fountain, the quickness of it.

  • It's like puddles of water.

  • Like, let's just go from the beginning.

  • And so you come out from the wings and can we do a bit of a plea and say, Here I am very nice.

  • And now do that with a Brit and turn your hands too.

  • And two and excellent.

  • They bought it.

  • Excellent.

  • Yeah, I felt better.

  • Okay, Now we're gonna do the peak.

  • I'm finished.

  • Good.

  • Nice.

  • Very nice.

  • Well, this solo looks deceptively easy, but it's not really in order to keep the speed and to keep up with the music, you have to move your head and your eyes.

  • Your eyes are moving your head.

  • Next.

  • I'm gonna put on the costume and do my hair and makeup for the Sugar Plum variation.

  • We are going to do her makeup for stage.

  • When you're on the stage, the light just washes you out and you become very flat.

  • So we rebuild your face to be dimensional.

  • We can also use contouring to distort your face.

  • So I'm going to start with just a very soft highlight powder and we put it right on your cheek bones and you can find your cheek bones.

  • If you open your jaw, you can feel where your job pops and really close it right where that separation is.

  • That's where your chief ones are.

  • And that's where the contract goes specifically on.

  • Ballerinas.

  • I like to bring the blush up and around their hair line up here and contour with the blush versus a contour color.

  • We're gonna move on to the eyes for Sugar Plum Fairy.

  • We're gonna do some nice soft pinks.

  • I like to do shadow and liner, and I'm going to extend your wing if you will past your eye on the outside to make your eyes look bigger so you'll see.

  • I'll leave a tiny bit of space open on the stage.

  • We tend to exaggerate eyebrows a bit and make them a little bit longer.

  • It's just to exaggerate every feature the same way you exaggerate your arms and your legs to make it so grand and fluid.

  • It also follows the same lines as your facial structure.

  • So your jaw line goes up, your cheekbones go up s so then it's all parallel.

  • So I like to use a lip liner.

  • And for Sugar Plum Fairy, we're going to do a nice, neutral pink.

  • So good.

  • All right, is a sugar plum fairy Look.

  • Ready for stage?

  • Ready for camera.

  • You're gonna move up here?

  • We're gonna do a classic high bun.

  • I like to section the hair into three parts.

  • We're gonna use a center part and I come down and make a T shaped down to one year and onto the other.

  • This is gonna help her get some better definition and detail in her hair and also make it more secure for when she's dancing.

  • We're gonna put most of it in a ponytail and the rest is gonna be pinned up.

  • We like to put her ponytail nice and high, and then on each side.

  • We're gonna give her a little bit of volume, so she doesn't look bald on stage.

  • We want it to be full enough that your hair is in line with your ear.

  • Oh, that way your ears don't stick out if that's something you don't like, and it also creates more depth of your home.

  • So I'm gonna trade this up over the ponytail and we're gonna pin this up.

  • I like tea.

  • Either braid it or twisted, and this is gonna be the top of your butt.

  • Lived that out.

  • I'm gonna make sure that it's right where you want the bun when you look from the front and then we take the leftover hair from the sides and this is gonna be the bottom of your button ballerinas.

  • Contrary to popular belief, they don't actually like doughnut buns because it looks like an extra head on their head.

  • So they actually like a very tapered, heart shaped fine.

  • Now we can perfect everything.

  • Put a hair net on.

  • Very important for dancers.

  • Once the hair net is on, then you can really perfect your shape.

  • So the profile is super important for ballet.

  • You want this line to be one continuous shape with this, but her sides come swooping up.

  • They follow her cheekbone lines.

  • So for her happy's, we're gonna make sure it's Mason Center.

  • He was gonna fit it right around her bun.

  • You also have to be aware of their balance because their balance and their center of gravity is so important.

  • We also have to then pin it that way so it doesn't feel heavy on one side, more than the other, right?

  • And I think she is ready for costume thistles.

  • Tomoka, what a dumb bar.

  • And she is the wardrobe supervisor at American Ballet Theatre.

  • Were talking earlier that whenever you bring our store to to you store upside down because when it's the other way, the gravity is pulling down on it.

  • Most of the classic June June made a ways which is the wire.

  • Yeah, here.

  • And that helps in, yes, helps keep up, but without it, it just keeps dripping down.

  • Yeah, and this is like giving an arrest, cause there's no pressure on you to do it.

  • Has space?

  • Yeah.

  • So this is how you store a classical tutu.

  • So this is the Sugarplum Fairy to two I will be wearing today all of this decoration and stuff.

  • How does this happen?

  • Because you could make two twos as well.

  • You make the two to bottom and then does the decoration go on top oranges?

  • And this is a separate thing.

  • Separate things like off everything's.

  • And then this woman is like died like own lazos that from like dark pink into white.

  • Some of them it's completely white.

  • Yeah, all right.

  • And now Tomoka is gonna help me get this on, and it'll be Showtime.

  • Wait, I just had such a wonderful experience today.

  • I really enjoyed working hard, struggling a little bit, but also taking the steps to further this sugar plum fairy variation within my own repertoire.

  • I know for me, like the beginning section is always a little bit more of a struggle for me and kind when we get some more momentum going, that's where I really feel like I was able to enjoy and kind of have that moment of, like, I'm just gonna let go and do this because I can.

  • I can trust myself in this moment and then at the end, the last big manage that was so fun.

  • It was so great to have the power and the adrenaline kind of behind what I was doing.

  • I would love to do this again.

  • It was such a great experience.

  • We'll see what happens next time.

the audience is this way.

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