The Wizard of Oz

I don't usually blog about specific life events, but last Sunday was so memorable I'd like to digest it this way.

For the last semester we worked on our Wizard of Oz ballet in the ballet school I go to, and Sunday was finally the performance day. We had a double cast (two performances) and in the first one I had a solo as Glinda, and in the second one I was the Wizard. These were both solos on pointe and this was the first time I ever got to do that, so it was really memorable and exciting for me!

Here's an early picture of me posing as Glinda, taken around February, I think.

I've never been anything remotely remarkable when it comes to ballet. I don't think I'm completely without talent: I've always been praised for my soft style and musicality for example, but the truth is I'm not a very kinesthetic person. My memory for movements and steps is not very long, I have to refresh it all the time, or I'll forget everything, and the next time I come around something that should be easy, it's going to feel like I've never done it before. I'm also not very flexible and don't have the kind of muscles that give you a lot of explosive power, so I'm not good at jumps and stuff, and also not so great with a lot of fast and tiny movements with my feet.

However, I am a very visual and artistic person, and since I also love telling stories, I think this is the combination that brought me to ballet in the first place and why I still do it. This, and finding a school that was so accepting and appreciative of everyone, regardless of objective talent, has finally, after 13 years of dancing, made me able to get to the level where I can do a solo on pointe (at least in a small school and a small city's theater's stage). I've been in my current school for four years, and in that time I have improved more than in all my previous years of dancing! Last autumn I was good enough to join the representative group of our school, and because of that, this ballet year has been more exciting (and busier) than any year before!

The "grand finale" of this year was the performance day last Sunday. And I was SO nervous before it. I can't even remember the last time I've really been nervous before a performance, dancing as a part of the group has been so normal for me for so many years, but I don't have much experience doing solos and definitely not on pointe. Before I came to this school I was not good enough to dance anything on pointe on stage. All my skills in pointe work have been developed in this school. But this year I really did develop faster than I ever had, partially because I finally found exactly the right pointe shoes for me! It was almost a miracle how fast I improved after discovering those shoes! I had been dancing with the wrong kind of shoes for 10 years, and nobody had ever even noticed...

So, by the beginning of 2019 this all had led to me being cast as Glinda, and the Wizard (plus I had a couple of the usual "corps" roles everyone in my group was doing). I was so excited! It had been my life long dream to be able to do a classical pointe solo on stage. I'm 25, almost 26, but, I finally got there! The rehearsals weren't always great of course, I still had a LOT of work to do with Glinda especially, it being undoubtedly the more difficult role, dancing-wise. At some point I really struggled, and I had some problems with nerves towards the performance day. I remember this one rehearsal where my mind went completely blank at the beginning of my solo, and of course, forgetting the first few steps, I kinda panicked after that, and the rest was a disaster.

But in the end, the actual performance went well. I felt like it went well, my teacher praised me, and I got a lot of positive feedback from other students. I'm not sure if my parents' feedback counts, because, well, they're my parents, and they tend to think I'm brilliant, no matter what I do, but they did seem even more impressed than normal. And I don't even remember the last time I'd had that kind of adrenaline rush! And how I felt afterwards. I was terrified three days before the show but it went well, and afterwards I just felt so great. I hope I'll get to do something like that again, I really hope I keep improving and get to do more difficult things, because it's just so exciting!

After Glinda, everything else felt like a piece of cake. Well, I did make a mistake in the poppy dance I was in... Before the dance started I knelt down on the stage with the wrong knee, so I had to change it because it mattered to what happened next, but, I think I was able to do it in a subtle way. I hope! I guess I'll get to see it at some point in a video.

Here I am in the poppy outfit.

After the first show was over I was definitely starting to feel tired because of the emotional and physical roller coaster Glinda had put me through, but I was also starting to really be able to just enjoy everything and not worry! Though, during the rehearsals I managed to place myself in a really uneven spot on the stage. There were a lot of weird bumps and holes, and I hit my toes in them and they got a pretty nasty ache after that... But I was able to relax my feet well enough before the real show, and all went okay!

Here's the Tornado scene, I was there lifting Dorothy up, too. Photography by Jani Tykkyläinen.

I really enjoyed dancing the Wizard, because after the technically demanding and almost "naked" Glinda it was kind of relaxing, because it was less about the technique and more about the illusion of the Wizard. It kind of felt like I was doing exactly what the Wizard does too: Hiding behind an illusion instead of actually dancing that much. But I don't mean this in a negative sense, I just thought this suited the role of the Wizard perfectly!

Here I am as the Wizard, hiding behind and doing fun stuff with the golden "wings". Photography by Jani Tykkyläinen.

After everything was over and we were all standing on the stage, our teacher giving the usual speech, I was in for one more surprise: I got the award for the most advanced student this year! I have certainly not been awarded anything in ballet before, not me as an individual dancer, and while I of course knew that I had improved a lot during this year, I wasn't even thinking I'd get this kind of reward for it, since I had the impression that only little kids got awards this year. And even if I hadn't thought that, I could've named a lot of other good candidates for the award, so, it was definitely a surprise, and really the cherry on top for already a great day and a great year!

I'll try my best to translate what my teacher had written about me:

"Eve is a persistent and hardworking dancer, who has an engaging, soft and flowing quality of movement. She has worked her way up from the adult ballet classes to being a member of the representative group Prima, which shows great perseverance and also talent and intelligence."

This is from the first show's end.

I celebrated everything at home by eating sushi and watching the cartoon She-Ra. Though I was so tired I could barely focus, I also wrote everything in my journal before going to sleep.

One more picture of me as Glinda, with my girlfriend who has also turned into a bun head with my influence, a couple of years ago! She was a citizen in the Emerald City, and one of the Wicked Witch's minions (which were not exactly flying monkeys). She has also made a lot of progress in two years, from having a few steps on stage, to two full scenes!

Just to make sure that this day was actually PERFECT, Finland won the World Championship in hockey, which is a HUGE deal here. Like, the time Finland won the championship for the first time is probably right there on the pedestal next to the day Finland became an independent country. Yeah, it's that huge. After even this third time, people have been pulling crazy stunts to celebrate and companies are already selling merch based on inside jokes sparked by the games of the tournament. So, of course I was watching that game until midnight too, though I was too tired to focus completely. But I was so happy about everything and it only added to my happiness.

Sometimes a day is just as perfect as it could possibly be, right?