Hard first two weeks

Life in a ballet company is hard and, in my opinion, even harder when you get into the company after passing through its school or second company.

I don't like to sound like I'm complaining. Well, I might be, a little even though I am completely thankful for the position I have. But I feel like it doesn't matter how much you can improve or how much you work on something that your directors always look at you the same way as when you were a student. A new company member will get directly into the company hired from the outside world and he will probably be treated in a total different/more professional way than you do. Why is this? I seriously don't know but I feel like that is my life.

Somehow I've been portraying an image of myself that is not the image I want to portray as a dancers. I am a really funny guy, at least people think I am, which causes me being cast in funny, acting roles and mostly comedy, instead of the serious more professional and deep roles I would like to portray.

People will say -Oh! Just be a little more serious.- Easy to say, hard to do, because when I get serious then everyone things I am mad or my director thinks I have an attitude.

Sometimes I simply just wish that I could get into my director's head and really know what he thinks of me, what he really wants for me and somehow he doesn't tell me. I really just want to do good in the company and perform a lot and perform good but somehow I feel like i keep failing and disappointing.

I consider myself a really hard worker. As a matter of fact, everything I have is because I have worked really hard for it. Why? Because I love ballet. I want ballet in everything in my day. I want ballet for breakfast, I want ballet for lunch, for dinner, I want it in my sleep...

And I simply hate to feel this frustrated. This past two weeks have been really stressing and I'm trying to keep positive but somehow I feel like nobody is helping me even though I am doing a lot of things wrong. 

The curse of coming back

Why is it always so hard coming back?
My season hasn't even started yet, as a matter of fact it starts tomorrow but since the school has been open already for a week I had the opportunity to take some classes so I can slowly get back into shape, but dear Lord! it hurts. The problem is that I don't understand why. It's not that i have been sitting on my ass the whole summer without doing anything, no. I have been trying to exercise and keep an active profile during the summer without compensating having fun and still enjoying 'a summer'.

The muscles in my back are the first ones to suffer coming back to taking classes and rehearsing. Every time I try to do an arabesque it starts good. I even get a half a smile in my face as I look in the mirror. Damn! I'm feeling flexible. But is when that happens and you try to push it a little harder that i get the craziest cramp on my lower back. Why did I push? Why now?
Another interesting thing that my body does when coming back, happens during jumps. I had a good barre and an 'OK' beginning of center -Let's not talk about my pirouettes because I think my body forgot how to turn and how to spot- so my dizzy self listens to the simple petit batterie combination and gets ready in cinquieme position. I go ahead and leap toward the first sauté: first, my elevation from the floor is basically non existent, and sencond... the landing. It feels as if by magic my body has forgotten that I should easily land so I look and feel like a plane landing after a cumulus of turbulence clouds and I hit the floor if the hardest way possible. Ouch!
My feet are hurting now but because I am a dancer I keep going through the combination until I finish one side. After that I simply have to stop and I basically can't jump for the rest of the class.

Sometimes I think I am a weird person but this are some of the things that happen to me in the first, second and third classes I take after a long period of no dancing. Eventually it gets better but I always tell myself to go slow because I do have a fragile body that gets injured a lot if I don't take good care of it.

Dealing with summer time

For us ballet dancers, or at least maybe for me, summer -specially long summers- become that time of the year where you simply don't know what to do with your life.
In my case, my season -like most ballet seasons in America- is really short. We finish around April and we start back in September. This makes me have a terribly long summer vacation in which, unless I have some plans made, I feel like I'm going to lose all my technique.
How do we deal with this?

This summer, I have to admit that I have been really smart and I have planned ahead for a summer filled with dancing in lots of different parts of the world. This keeps my body active and if I'm careful, free of injury.
I know that you might be thinking that my body needs a rest, and as a matter of fact, it does. But two or three weeks would have been perfectly enough.
So from here I send a message to all ballet companies in the world that have a short season: Your dancers need more dancing. More weeks, so first of all they can keep earning money and living without thinking that they're not going to be able to pay rent next month and second of all so we don't lose our technique and we keep improving.

Call me crazy, but I love dancing with all my heart and I feel like I am losing my time when I'm not dancing.

But here is the big problem: What happens when we simply can't afford to spend money to travel, we don't have guestings, there's nowhere to take class and we are too old for summer intensives?
My humble answer, and what has been working for me is:

•  I go to yoga first thing after waking up. Yoga helps me keep my flexibility without losing strength as passive stretching does. It also helps me relax at the same time as I'm having an intense workout. 
• Gym. Even though I am not a big fan of working out, I think is necessary, specially as a male dancer. I usually just work out my upper body and maybe some stamina. 
• I would randomly do a simple barre at home just to keep my muscle memory active, but I might do this maybe once every two weeks or something like that.

Anyway, I would love a longer season but reality is reality and there is no way my words are going to change it.