Merry Christmas 2014

Christmas at the Repetto shop Paris

 

Wishing all my readers the happiest of Holidays.

May the New Year bring you joy.

The Winter Solstice and other Holidays

Stonehenge Winter Solstice 2011

My trip to see Taryn in the UK: Again things didn’t go the way I had planned. The Winter Solstice celebration at Stonehenge (on 12/22) went well with the temperature in the mid 50s F. It Was Cyndi’s first at the ancient site and in celebration we had a private ceremony for her in the undercroft of Salisbury Cathedral just a few miles down the road before we went on to Salisbury plain to the stone circles. Even though Cyndi has no Druid blood a Druid priest – as a favor to me – was willing to ‘purify’ her for the sunrise ceremony. The purification consisted primarily of her being filled with his seed after being entered from behind, and I was involved since I presented her to the priest for purification while wearing the sacred Druid Priestess’s circlet of beaten gold lent me for the occasion. The Priest placed the circlet on my head after my hair was let down and brushed out and even though the circlet weighs about 12 troy ounces it fit perfectly and was fairly comfortable. I am thankful that I don’t have to worry about security for the Druid regalia. Such parts of it that remain are cared for by the Druid Elders. Cyndi was in no danger of becoming pregnant by the priest even though she was CD7 and fertile because she has a GyneFix IUD implanted.

For those readers wondering about my being a Druid Priestess – though a relatively minor one - the position was a surprise to me. I didn’t seek it (it’s hereditary) it was thrust upon me and I only found out about it in the last few months. It seems my natural father, a Welsh miner who immigrated to the coal fields of Western Virginia and who became very rich from investing in coal bearing property, was from a community of nearly pure Druid stock that had migrated into the mountains of Wales after leaving Stonehenge. When Uncle John (as he was known to me) impregnated my mother he did not know, nor did anyone else, that she had a high percentage of Druid blood in her family as well so that I have one of the highest percentages of Druid genes of any woman alive today, or so I’ve been told by geneticists who have studied the ancient people and who helped locate me.

After the Spring Equinox I was sought out by the Druid Elders and it was explained that the old ways are dying out and my participation was required to sustain the bloodline such as it is and the Elders have been encouraging me to breed with a suitable mate, which I’m reluctant to do. Its not that I mind the act of breeding I just don’t want to have a baby. I think my Druid genes may account for some of my ability to foretell some things and make use of dead women’s Chi and perhaps may also account for my fondness for risk taking. Learning about my family genealogy in the last few months has helped me understand why I’m the way I am more than the five years of therapy I’ve had, though I think the therapist prepared me for the role I might play in preserving the Druid bloodline. I’m not entirely sure what is expected of me as a junior member of the Druid aristocracy, but the Chief Elder said I would be eased into my ceremonial role depending on the availability of other priestesses. I think they see me primarily as a breeding stock which if that’s the case may be a problem for me.

After Stonehenge: we went to Taryn's home to the north east of Cambridge Christmas and it was marvelous! One of the stonemasons working on the renovations (before she moved into the Manor) called it ‘Cunt Castle’ and the name seems to have stuck with her circle of friends, though not with the locals, or at least not to her face. While we were there Cambridge was all abuzz with Prince Phillip in residence at Papworth hospital for four days having cardiac stents placed and with HM and other Royals coming and going to visit him. We all wish HRH a full and speedy recovery and he seems to be doing well and is back at Sandringham with The Queen as this is written. Of course with her husband's illness and now the body of a 17 y/o Latvian girl being found within three miles of Sandringham House Her Majesty isn’t getting the restful winter escape at her Norfolk estate she had hoped for.

With the tube strike and shopping crowds at after-Christmas sales we stayed away from London, so Taryn, Cyndi, Anya and I went to Paris for two days and saw the Repetto ballet shop decorated for Christmas with some of the most beautiful tutus! We returned to find that my male partner Jon (one of my younger stallions with seemingly inexhaustible stamina) had a ruptured appendix and had had an emergency appendectomy so he was out as a sexual consort. Fortunately My Summer Lover Jack - John, Marquis of Marle - heard I was at Taryn’s and came calling. I thought he had escaped me, but found he had become available again as Sylvie, the aristocrat that his family had picked for him to marry, hadn’t lasted in his affection nor had her stamina to accompany him diving or in bed. So when I say we were happy to see each other again it’s something of an understatement! I was delighted that Jack accepted my request that he accompany us to my place on Virgin Gorda for a few days of sun and diving.

Roland Petit’s Telegraph Obit

Roland Petit and Cyd Charisse in Black Tights 1960

This obit provides a more European perspective on RP’s life.

The Telegraph
Wednesday 13 July, 2011
Theatre Obituaries

Roland Petit

Roland Petit, the choreographer who died on July 10 aged 87, was France's major creative figure in post-war ballet, responsible for defining a new French chic and erotic frankness in dance, typified above all by his wife, the glamorous star Zizi Jeanmaire. He was also probably the favorite choreographer of the world's greatest ballerinas.

An outstanding classical dancer as a youth, Roland Petit swiftly decided on a career as a rebel against the traditionalism of the Paris Opera Ballet, and before the age of 25 had created two of his most iconic ballets, Le Jeune Homme et la mort and Carmen, with the sultry young Jeanmaire as the lethal female destroying a hapless male in both.

These ballets caused a sensation worldwide and Petit and Jeanmaire swiftly became the most exciting names in French dance, closely associating with Jean Cocteau, Edith Piaf, Yves Montand and the new intellectuals of Left Bank Paris.

However Petit was also wooing Margot Fonteyn, prima ballerina of Sadler's Wells Ballet, with whom he was having an affair. Fonteyn had cosmetic surgery to shorten her nose at his suggestion (though the operation was redone in London). When still in her twenties, she seriously considered leaving London to join him in Paris, which prompted his other mistress, Jeanmaire, to issue him with an ultimatum.

To reassure Jeanmaire, Petit created Carmen, an encapsulation of Bizet's opera in ballet, which premiered in 1949 at the Prince's Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, and became an instant world hit. Jeanmaire bobbed her hair short and wore a scant black corset, which, coupled with the candid seductiveness of her pas de deux with Petit, caused both shock and delight among the crowds who rushed to see it. One observer commented that he could see men's trouser buttons popping during the performance.

But the leading English choreographer, Frederick Ashton, then developing into a classical dancemaker of genius at Covent Garden, mourned that he would be seen as out of date.

Fonteyn herself soon decided that a Parisian ballet life with Petit would be more about style and short-term effects than about durably challenging choreography, and she resumed her career with the Sadler's Wells Ballet.

Petit and Renée Jeanmaire married in 1954, and the choreographer reinvented her as "Zizi", one of the immortal icons of Parisian nightlife.

Roland Petit was born on January 13 1924 in Villemomble, a Paris suburb, the elder son of a French café owner and an Italian shoemaker. His mother, Rose Repetto, would leave to set up the Repetto dance shoe business, now an international concern. His father,

Edmond Petit, encouraged his young son in dance lessons and at just 16 he was accepted by the Paris Opera Ballet, then suffering the first straits of the Second World War.

Fast-tracked as a soloist by the director Serge Lifar (Diaghilev's last protégé) the teenager was much influenced by the cosmopolitan artistic intellectualism erupting in wartime Paris, and was taken under the wing of two leading Diaghilev associates, Jean Cocteau and Boris Kochno.

At the end of the war, aged 21 and with backing from his father, Petit founded the anti-establishment Les Ballets des Champs-Elysées, taking two unorthodox but brilliant young dancers with him, Jean Babilée and Renée Jeanmaire, who would become icons of the new French dance.

Petit reinvented the suffering, virginal ballerina as a provocative, irresistible femme fatale of the modern day. His post-war works remain some of his most enduring, Les Forains, Le Jeune Homme et la mort (for Babilée), Les demoiselles de la nuit (for Fonteyn in Paris), Carmen, Le Loup, Cyrano de Bergerac and Notre-Dame de Paris, boldly theatrical in design, all recently performed by Paris Opera Ballet and the Bolshoi Ballet among other companies.

When Petit and Jeanmaire toured the Ballets de Paris to Hollywood in 1955 his charm conquered Elizabeth Taylor and Rita Hayworth, among others. Showered with Hollywood invitations, to Jeanmaire's chagrin he chose a younger lookalike, Leslie Caron, to be the lead in his 1955 Fred Astaire musical Daddy Long Legs. He also choreographed the films Hans Christian Andersen with Danny Kaye and Zizi Jeanmaire, The Glass Slipper, again for Caron, and Folies-Bergère, with Jeanmaire and Eddie Constantine.

He made the film Black Tights (1960) to show Zizi Jeanmaire's magnetic balletic gifts alongside Cyd Charisse and Moira Shearer, but he now set about reinventing the Paris revue around his wife, exploring new levels of luxury and sophistication for her many talents. Not only did Jeanmaire dance like an angel in any style, dressed flamboyantly (and sometimes minimally) by costumiers such as Erté, but she possessed an alluring singing voice and a worldly verbal wit that sold countless records.

They became the power couple of Sixties Parisian cultural life, wearing Yves Saint Laurent and collaborating with Andy Warhol.

Petit briefly returned to his alma mater, the Paris Opera Ballet, as director in 1970, but quit after a few months to buy the Casino de Paris specifically to feature Zizi in a supercharged new kind of music-hall, which flourished for five years.

In 1972 he took up leadership of the Ballet de Marseille, to which for the next 25 years the world's major ballerinas beat a trail, Maya Plisetskaya, Natalia Makarova, Alessandra Ferri and Altynai Asylmuratova among them, seeking to dance his flagrantly attractive female roles.

Meanwhile his early ballets proved a magnet for the great male ballet stars of the 1970s. Rudolf Nureyev and Mikhail Baryshnikov filmed Le Jeune Homme and Carmen, each partnering the evergreen Jeanmaire. Later Petit would choreograph for Baryshnikov's 1985 feature film White Nights.

In Britain, however, Roland Petit remained derided as a showman, compared unfavorably with the Royal Ballet's choreographers Frederick Ashton and Kenneth MacMillan. Petit created three ballets for Covent Garden, the slight Ballabile (1950), and two late Fonteyn-Nureyev vehicles, a pop-art Paradise Lost (which Mick Jagger loved) and a Pelléas et Mélisande, both of which were given discouraging critical receptions.

English National Ballet offers a rare British viewing of his more durable works, Carmen, Le Jeune Homme et la mort and L'Arlèsienne, at the London Coliseum next week, which Petit was overseeing when he died at home in Geneva.

Among his unusual ventures were the only ballet Orson Wells ever devised, The Lady in the Ice (1953, London), a 1972 Pink Floyd ballet and a Swan Lake with male swans (1998).

Among his many honours, Roland Petit was a Commander of the Légion d'honneur and a Commander of the French Order of Merit. His wife, now 87, and their daughter, Valentine Petit, survive him.

Roland Petit, Choreographer, Dies at 87

Zizi Jeanmaire and Roland Petit in Carmen

The New York Times
July 10, 2011

Roland Petit, Choreographer, Dies at 87; Conquered Ballet Taboos and Hollywood

By ANNA KISSELGOFF
Roland Petit, France’s leading choreographer after World War II, who swept away time-honored ballet taboos and whose mix of entertainment and art also made his work popular in Hollywood, died Sunday in Geneva. He was 87 and had lived in Switzerland for more than a decade.

His death was reported by his wife, the ballerina Zizi Jeanmaire, the Paris Opera Ballet said.

Although Mr. Petit choreographed cheerful films like “Hans Christian Andersen” with Danny Kaye, sex and suffering were the themes of the two early ballets that became his international signature pieces: “Carmen” and “Le Jeune Homme et la Mort.”

Mr. Petit stunned dance and theater audiences in London in New York in 1949 with a frank new eroticism in his ballet version of “Carmen.” Renée (later Zizi) Jeanmaire was the femme fatale in a short tunic and a gamine hairdo who seduced Mr. Petit, as Don José, in an acrobatic duet on the floor. The headline of the positive review by The New York Herald Tribune’s dance critic, Walter Terry, read “Sex and More Sex.”

John Martin, the critic for The New York Times, was less impressed. “Passion and the classical pas de deux are poles apart,” he wrote.

“Carmen” might have been directly accessible in its stylized realism. But Mr. Petit, a dancer as well as a choreographer, displayed a deeper side in his 1946 masterpiece, “Le Jeune Homme et la Mort” (“The Young Man and Death”). Here, he showed the resonant poetic dimension seen in the pieces in which he collaborated with some of France’s major writers, poets, composers and visual artists.

For “Le Jeune Homme,” Jean Cocteau devised a scenario about a bohemian painter in his garret, ostensibly waiting for his sweetheart but eventually embroiled in an existential battle for survival. Jean Babilée, that ballet’s unforgettable star (who also contributed some of the choreography), smoked a real cigarette onstage on a real bed, looked at his real watch and kicked real furniture around before engaging in a violent confrontation with his girlfriend.

The painter hanged himself in despair and his lover revealed herself as an allegorical figure of death before leading the antihero across a surreal rooftop panorama of Paris. Cocteau’s typical touch of the mythic made commonplace fused wonderfully with Petit’s naturalism (as opposed to realism) and use of ballet bravura.

A metaphor for postwar disillusion, the ballet struck a nerve in Europe but also impressed in New York when Ballet Theater presented it in 1951, with Mr. Babilée and Nathalie Philippart.

But it was also an experimental, conceptual work. After the cast had rehearsed it only to jazz, Cocteau suddenly substituted Bach’s Passacaglia for the performances.

Working within two extremes, as represented by the show-business-flavored "Carmen" and the poetic “Jeune Homme,” Mr. Petit remained a subject for debate throughout more than a half-century, in which he choreographed some 150 ballets.

American critics often called him chic. Even French critics began to find him superficial. Yet after he turned to creating ballets based on opera and literature, he could surprise.

In New York in 1980, the National Ballet of Marseille (headed by Mr. Petit since 1972), presented Mr. Petit’s eloquent commentary on Marcel Proust and his work in “Marcel Proust Remembered.” Ms. Jeanmaire carried his ballet version of “Fledermaus” in “The Bat.” His updated view of “Coppélia” had a witty if kinky approach: as Coppélius, he waltzed with a female dummy (the doll Coppélia) strapped to his body.

Karen Kain, now artistic director of the National Ballet of Canada, was a guest artist in this “Coppélia.” Among the many ballet stars for whom he choreographed were Margot Fonteyn, Rudolf Nureyev, Maya Plisetskaya, Mikhail Baryshnikov and Natalia Makarova. Both Mr. Baryshnikov and Mr. Nureyev danced in “Jeune Homme” shortly after they left the Soviet Union for the West.

Mr. Petit also developed the talents of two future stars. When he co-founded Les Ballets des Champs-Élysées, he engaged two teenage dancers, Leslie Caron and Violette Verdy.

Roland Petit was born on Jan. 13, 1924, in Villemomble, near Paris. His father, Edmond Petit, had a restaurant in the Halles district; his mother founded the dancewear company Repetto. Fond of dancing to a player piano in the restaurant, the young Roland was enrolled in the Paris Opera Ballet School at 9 and joined the company’s corps at 16.

Chafing at the company’s restrictions, he left to choreograph in a series organized by the critic Irene Lidova. These performances led Mr. Petit and Lidova to found Les Ballets des Champs-Élysées with Boris Kochno, Serge Diaghilev’s collaborator and secretary.

Mr. Petit left in 1947 to form his own company, Les Ballets de Paris de Roland Petit. Wooed by Hollywood, he choreographed “Hans Christian Andersen” in 1951 before marrying Ms. Jeanmaire, who survives him, as does their daughter, Valentine Petit. Among the other films he choreographed were “Daddy Long Legs” (1955) “The Glass Slipper” (1955) and “Anything Goes” (1956).

Mr. Petit returned to Paris to choreograph for ballets and music hall revues (some starring his wife). He briefly served as director of the Paris Opera Ballet but resigned after a dispute and later moved to Marseille, where he was director until he left in 1998, reportedly in a disagreement with the management.

Like Maurice Béjart, Mr. Petit sought to reach a wide audience. Yet he had a more solid choreographic foundation, and his early ballets work on an artistic level still valid today.

Ms. Lidova once admitted that Mr. Petit could fall into a “Champagne style.” But she also noted, rightly, that he was an artist of contrasts, “who can be both frivolous and serious, passionate and cruel.”

Personal comment: I first remember seeing Roland Petit in a video of the 1960 film Black Tights with Moira Shearer, Zizi Jeanmaire and Cyd Charisse. Black Tights as well as The Red Shoes were the two films that reinforced my desire to be a ballet dancer.

A rape fantasy insemination Pt II

A Lorelei guest on a dive outing to Lake Mead

The Photo: The Lorelei’s insemination guest encased in a Hunter Gates Pro-AM 1050 Drysuit on a dive outing to Lake Mead. The suit and Interspiro FFM were borrowed from the selection at The Lorelei since she didn’t bring a drysuit and didn’t want to have to clean her FFM after diving the lake.

Baby sitting: I’ve ended up showing Jacques’ Lichtenstein insemination princess around the area while she isn’t busy with Jacques. It’s ironic how I’m trying my best to keep from becoming preggers by that beautiful man from him planting his seed in me and she is here trying to conceive by the same man! Go figure! I’ve sort of rationalized him fucking her by telling myself it’s his job. He is good at it and has fun making a living that way so I’m happy for him, and I do have him to myself most of the time. For purposes of writing about her I’ll call her “Semeni.”

Semeni’s rape: I watched from the voyeur viewing room (behind the mirrored glass wall in the ballet studio) the other day when they had their first rape encounter. She was in a black latex Rubber 55 catsuit, gloves, hood and black satin Repetto La Carlotta toe-shoes. She looked lovely and as though she just might be able to defend herself. Jacques looked so virile wearing his oiled Lash Leathers and rubber soled steel toed boots as he watched her warm up at the barre. The scenario was that he was a drifter who had found his way inside The Lorelei (it’s impossible for a stranger to get through three levels of security) and has a thing for lithe dancers so when he opened the studio door and found her at the barre he immediately came on to her. She watched him approach and went up onto her toes so she would appear taller. She is 6’2” en pointe so with Jacques at 6’4” she could almost look him in the eye.

He tried to touch her hand and she pulled it away, but didn’t back up and he moved further into her space. Her feet were in second position and she saw his eyes drop to her exposed crotch so she tried to close her feet into sous-sus - fifth position sur les pointes - but he was quicker and she found his hand between her legs as her thighs came together pushing his thumb deeper into the soft flesh of her vulva. She gasped and slapped him which rocked his head, but didn’t move him back an inch. She opened her legs again to try to pull his hand out of her crotch and tried to knee him but he turned and deflected her knee which bounced off his thigh. By then she was tilted at an angle against the barre and grabbed the barre to steady herself while trying to pound his chest with a balled up fist or slapping him with an open palm. At that point she had been struggling for about four minutes when he hit her in the solar plexus with his fist knocking the wind out of her and she collapsed back against the barre.

Forced entry: While she was winded he pulled down her crotch zipper inserted his fingers and ripped the crotch of her catsuit. By the time she could breathe again he had spun her around and opened her back zipper pulling it down mid way then pulled the rubber catsuit off her shoulders and down around her upper arms pinning her arms to her sides. He was very fast and except for her legs she was immobilized in seconds. She was so rubber legged that she couldn’t stand much less use her legs to defend her self so he just draped her over the barre and checked her for lube – I could see her FCM glistening on his fingers and her labia so I knew she was ready to be penetrated. I watched fascinated as he unzipped the crotch of his Lash Leathers folded back the protective tongue and eased himself out of his cup. He was already massively erect and dripping pre-cum as he spread her labia and positioned his tip at the entrance to her vagina and pushed. I could tell from the angle at which he entered her that with a single powerful stroke he had under-thrust her diaphragm and penetrated her fully as her eyes went wide in amazement and she moaned. Then she gasped and screamed when his glans rammed the soft open tissue of her ripe cervix. She squirmed trying to adjust her hips and pull herself off the barre, but Jacques kept pushing her back down. By that time her feet were in second again and her chest was resting on the folds of her rubber suit that were between the barre and her breasts.

Semeni’s orgasms: Jacques was holding on to her rubber sheathed hips and driving his shaft into her lifting her off her platforms at the maximum depth of his thrusts and I could hear the thud as the flesh of their pelvises smacked together and she screamed every time he rammed her cervix. I was waiting for it and just like I told her both shanks of her Repetto pointes shattered. They broke the third time he dropped her onto he toes as he withdrew and she sank even further into her shoes decreasing whatever little control she had over how her hips were positioned. I was sitting just on the other side of the mirror and her latex hooded head was within a foot of the mirror so I got to watch her facial expression and the saliva and snot drain from her mouth and nose to pool on the Marley beneath her as Jacques had his way with her.

About the time her shanks broke Jacques hit his stride, found her G-spot and took her to a shuddering, moaning, screaming orgasm. But that wasn’t the end of their encounter. He kept pounding her cervix and her screams became louder and more plaintive and then suddenly the tenor of her screams changed and I knew she had passed her pain thresholds and was about to have a cervical orgasm. I had never seen another woman be taken to a cervical orgasm before and her face was dripping sweat snot was bubbling from her nostrils and her body wasn’t just quivering she was shaking violently and then she began a long high pitched scream as he tipped her over the edge into a cervical orgasm. He finished inside her just before she fainted. Jacques told me later that Semeni has very strong muscle contractions when she orgasms, though, he was quick to point out that they were not nearly as strong as mine.

He stayed inside her for a few minutes as she regained consciousness and they both tried to catch their breaths. Then he withdrew, he was still erect (I love his ability to do that) and inserted his fingers in her vagina to ensure the rim of her diaphragm was back against the anterior wall to make sure it would fit in her pubic notch when her vagina returned to its unaroused state. He helped her to strip out of her ruined catsuit and she helped him out of his Lash leathers, then he took her immediately to bed for a post coitial nap while his little swimmers made their way into her tubes. He said later that he was pleased she didn’t try to claw him with her nails and she had actually become affectionate. When I saw her in a bikini as we were dressing in our thermal undies and drysuits during our dive trip to Lake Mead the next morning there were no bruises on her body even from the blow to her solar plexus that subdued her so I was pleased to see that Jacques can defeat a woman w/o seriously harming or marking her.

Rivals: Semeni told me during our dive trip that she really enjoyed being overpowered by Jacques. And she is looking forward to fighting him again. She really is in very good physical condition and was just a bit sore from their encounter. She doesn’t know he is my primary lover and I think I hid my emotions well. She was asking what it was like to be taken by Jacques underwater. I was trying to be objective and let her know how much fun Jacques is w/o coming off as possessive though from the looks she gave me I think she might suspect he is more than a work associate to me. This was the first time she had been with a man as well endowed as he is or experienced a cervical orgasm and she is hoping for more though as everyone says about cervical orgasms getting past the initial pain is a real test.

In all honesty I did think how easy it would be to drown her in an unfortunate diving accident, while the two of us were diving by ourselves. It would have been easy to put something to cause nausea in her sports drink that we use to stay well hydrated while diving then take her out into deep water and go down to 60 or 80 feet where the pressure starts to disorient some divers on regular gas and when she vomits in her FFM she could easily panic especially after I crimp the hose to her suit inflation valve. Then she would only be able to release air from her suit not increase buoyancy to reach the surface and drown before I could help her get to the surface. My psychiatrist thinks my mood swings will stabilize as soon as Semeni returns to Europe.

Backstage at ballet school

The grimy platforms of a student’s shoes

The bonding of pointes: I imagine men have something similar, perhaps military training that combines hard work, pain and the satisfaction of overcoming difficulty to do something well. For women, from the age of 10 or 12 when a girl gets her first pair of pointes until she hangs up her last pair of toe-shoes she is part of several hundred years of tradition of suffering for her career in the art of classical ballet. Her training starts much earlier of course with the strengthening of her feet, ankles legs and really her entire young body to provide the proper support and line when her bones harden enough to support her weight en pointe. A year or so before a girl is officially allowed to wear toe-shoes she is fitted with demi-pointes. Demi-pointes have blocked toe boxes but are shankless. The purpose of demi-pointe shoes is to accustom the student to the restrictive feel of the blocked toe box and to sewing and tying the ribbons on her shoes w/o giving her the support to stand en pointe that would have the potential to damage young bones. Of course in ballet boarding schools the girls are wearing a friend’s dead pointes around the dorm long before they are officially allowed en pointe in school approved and correctly fitted toe-shoes.

Over the years of a girls schooling and career in ballet hours and hours are spent sitting in groups on studio floors, stages and in dressing rooms sewing ribbons and elastics and darning platforms and gossiping about faculty, administrators, guest teachers and male partners as well as celebrity dancers who are guest artists. If it isn’t school or company politics its sex, who are making or breaking up with whom. A circle of dancers working on their pointes is an amazing source of gossip and rumor some of which may even be correct, but it spices up the boredom of waiting to dance and the time until we can be alone with men.

Platform traction: There are a number of ways to increase the grip of pointe shoe platforms on the surface to be performed on. One is to trim the satin off the platforms to allow the weave of the under-fabric to grip the floor. Another way to increase the grip on most floors is to moisten the platform. When doing that water from any source can be used; a fountain, the dancer’s personal hydrator (her water bottle) or saliva or even sweat. One of the ways to retain a boyfriend’s interest in a student’s pointes during her training is to give him a hand-job and then smear the semen on the platforms of her shoes. That can be a great bonding experience if she uses a dance partner’s ejaculate, but they do have to be practicing in private. A guy having his ejaculate used that way is a sign the girl thinks he’s wicked hot! And, there is the traditional method of stepping into a rosin box filled with powdered rosin, but that can be messy if wearing pointes around the house or while out partying.

Other methods of increasing traction if dancing on polished surfaces are: coating the platforms and soles with rubber cement or using poured rubber sole and toe caps which are sometimes called cabaret plates. On wooden studio floors and stages the surface is sprinkled with water before class, rehearsal or performance. To hold the backs of pointes on the heel, in addition to elastics, wetting the backs and tights with water or applying a bit of Elmer’s glue between a tights covered heel and the back will help keep the heel from slipping out.

The right and left of pointe shoes: Once they start breaking in new pointes most dancers mark a pair of pointes with an L and R to designate the left and right shoes since most pointe shoes do not come footed from the maker, so initially can be worn on either foot assuming the dancer’s feet are the same size, which is not always the case. The only asymmetrical pointe shoe (left & right) that I’ve worn is the Repetto Willis # 505 that has a full carbon fiber shank. It’s a personal preference as to whether to mark the shoes on the outer or inner sole and usually if the marking is on the outer sole it’s done unobtrusively with a blue or black ballpoint pen. Then there are young students who get carried away with a red felt-tip marker. Sigh! If a girl in my class is marking her shoes that way (it shows a gap in her training) I soon set her straight, but I rarely teach girls that young unless I’m teaching a special class at St Lucy’s and she is a transfer student in the class. Marking pointe shoes is covered in the classes on preparation and maintenance (taught when a girl gets her first pair of pointes) including sewing ribbons, platform preparation - which includes darning and crocheting - breaking in the shanks and boxes w/o destroying the shoes and with the new technology shoes (Bloch and Gaynor’s and Gamba among others) adjusting the arch of the shanks with a hair dryer and refrigerator.

Pointe shoes as weapons: I also teach basic self defense in pointe shoes as a last resort. The first thing is to try think ahead so you don’t get caught in a dangerous situation. If a girl finds herself in trouble she should try and get away w/o becoming physically involved. However, if the girl is wearing pointes shoes her running speed will be limited and when running in pointes it is easy to slip and fall so she will almost certainly be caught. So what I recommend is for girls taking pointe to practice kicking hitting with the platforms of their pointes. A well placed kick can disable an attacker, but accuracy is crucial because after the first kick the element of surprise is lost. So it’s important that a girl practice kicking to put he platform exactly where she wants it. Ballet training increases accurate placement of the feet so if she isn’t too shaken the chances of hitting what she aims for is pretty good. As a last resort it’s certainly worth a try.

Graduation pregnancies: It’s that time of year. In some high schools there are girls with low self-esteem, who think it’s cool to get pregnant by someone, usually, but not always, a steady BF. They think when preggers they can sweat the guy, scandalize their parents and get attention for themselves all with a single medical condition. The girl’s intention is almost always to terminate within 8 weeks so they can take Mifeprex, but young minds change and a very few carry to term and give the baby up for adoption. That way they can start college after a gap year and get on with their lives.

I’m pleased to say that while sexually active none of the students at St Lucy’s are interested in becoming preggers before completing their education, establishing a career and finding a life partner, not necessarily a husband, although, husbands come with a lot of important legal protections for wives who relinquish their careers to raise a family. Giving up a career in ballet (not just taking a year off to give birth) for 15 years to raise children effectively ends any chance of having a meaningful career as a dancer.

The male pill: In feminist publications there is a lot of angst about the lack of a male pill. I don’t understand what all the wailing and gnashing of teeth is about! Even if a male contraceptive pill was available today I wouldn’t trust men to take it. It might be ok in marriage or in a monogamous relationship, but any woman who is into multiple partners for recreational sex would be fooling herself if she trusted guys to take it correctly or at all. “Yeah sweetie, I’m on the pill. I’m shootn’ blanks hon!” Oh yeah! Right! You know that overall the pills that women take are only 92% effective, right? That’s because so many of us don’t take them correctly. And we are the ones who get pregnant! Go figure! For a guy who can just walk away from a birth control accident while his partner looses her bikini bod as his ‘gift’ grows in her belly there isn’t much motivation to use a hormonal contraceptive correctly, unless he’s really into her as much emotionally as he is physically and that’s a very stressful way for a girl to find out.