Your Life Starts Now

In 3 hours, I will walk out of this job forever.

No more reception-ing for me!

I have a few weeks of freedom ahead of me, and then my real life begins in BrisVegas.

2007 is so pretty!

And Now For Another January

Happy New Year!

'Twas a fabulous night indeed - my feet still hurt.

We started out on the living room floor of a friend at Broadway, drinking goon and playing dress-ups until we realised that if we didn't pour ourselves into a cab in the next 5 minutes, we were going to miss Sneaky. But turns out, our timing was perfect - we arrived at Coogee at the exact moment that a black, window-tinted car pulled up and Sneaky jumped out and made their entrance.

The queue to get in was insane, about a 2 hour wait apparently. So snaps for the nicest doorbitch ever, who let us jump to the front thanks to our lack of IDs (go figure...I thought that was the kind of thing they don't let you in for?)

And, in keeping with my recent free-drink frenzy (see SDC, Concert) we discovered that the mysterious 'drinks package' that came with our tickets was not a token passion pop at midnight, as we thought, but free drinks all night. And they made you order 2 at a time, so that I spent all night with a drink in each hand, and probably soaked up 5 times that many with all the times someone knocked one over my head on the dancefloor.

Sneaky came on at 9.30 ish - which was kind of disappointing because the best part of the night climaxed well before midnight - but were fantastic. The floor was packed and hotter than a sauna. I don't think I've ever sweated so much in my life, or had to subsist on such a strong BO to oxygen ratio. But it was fun, and being short, we managed to get ourselves up to the very front by the middle of Sneaky's set, so that we could enjoy the drama of their on-stage antics. They're very campy and showy, in the same vein as Scissor Sisters (although no one tops them and if I could have flown to Berlin to spend NYE with them, I would have).

I don't really know what happened to the 6 hours after Sneaky finished, other than that I danced, got kicked out by the scariest, most power hungry security lady I've ever come across (for no apparent reason other than she was bored), got back in straight away through the same door, walked a long way home, and crawled into 'bed' (read floor with couch cushion) just in time to see the sky turn pink as the sun started to rise.

Really, an ideal way to ring in 07.

Oh, and some good news - I finally got my ballet exam results. Distinction! I'm still recovering from the shock...who'da thunk it?

Greener Pastures

This time last year, I was here:

And here:

And here:

Sigh.

I miss travelling. Now that the frantic pace of the year has come to such a sudden standstill, I don't know what to do with myself. Things are still busy enough, but I have time enough to stop and think, and my god, I wish I was backpacking again. Europe was so magical and twinkly, and that time of my life was what inspired the whole 'screw law, I want to be a dancer' thing in the first place. I can't believe it's been a whole year. Last Christmas Eve I was in a hostel in Paris, and it was so cold that we stored our champagne, smoked salmon and brie on the windowsill and it was perfectly chilled on Christmas day. We spent Christmas day on a 24 hour train to Spain, and celebrated the New Year in Barcelona.

This year, I'm spending Christmas camped out on the living room floor because my room is the official pitstop for non-Sydney rellies.

At least NYE should be fun (Sneaky Sound System at Coogee).

It's nice to be with the family of course - there was a tinge of sadness to having just me and Miss M all on our lonesome on Christmas morning. There's nothing quite like the huge extended family chaos of Christmas. But I do feel like this year, challenging as it's been, has also been kind of a waste. When I think of how many hours I have spent sitting in this freaking chair at work, staring at a computer screen, chained to my desk, it does make me cynical about the fact that I have spent an entire year of my life doing something I have no respect for, no interest in, and motivations purely financial for.

Anyway. I guess it's a learning curve, and the tradeoff has been that I've been able to work on what I want and I'm going somewhere now. I should really stop complaining about being so lucky.

Merry Christmas!

There's no motivation like humiliation...

I got sent a scary letter from QUT this week.

First they psyched me out about the challenge to my "mind, body and spirit" I was about to undertake.

Then, they recommended a minimum of a month's preparation walking, cycling or swimming 5km per day, and regular aerobic activity.

And they thoughtfully included a timetable for O-week. My last O-week consisted of getting drunk and dressing up in various versions of drag for a week, with the odd recovery barbeque and (alcohol-fuelled) karaoke and trivia night thrown in for good measure. This one is a mini boot camp of fitness testing, aerobics, dance classes, essay-writing and "how to be a successful uni student" lectures. For the record, I hate these kinds of talks. They're full of useless information I already know, about staying on top of your workload and not leaving your readings until the last minute, which is very good advice I know perfectly well will be discarded by most of us all year.

My motivation factor went through the roof in the face of all this, mostly due to fear. Which is a good thing, I guess. I promptly jumped on the exercise bike and rode until I felt like throwing up my lunch, then did some hardcore stretching and even shoved my feet under the couch to try to coax my arches into submission. And I found an RAD syllabus CD floating around in my room, so I ran through all the barre exercises using my windowsill as a makeshift barre (not ideal, but there are some muscles the bike just can't get to).

And then I ate a mini Christmas pudding. It's going to be a long Christmas.

Dear Weekend: I Love You. Love, Mistress Mess.

Best weekend in a long time.

It kicked off on Friday night with the SDC performance, which was great fun and had the most wildly enthusiastic audience I've danced in front of for a long time. The nice lady on the door even let a few of us sneak in to watch the second show, even though we didn't have tickets (and I was so impressed by some of the dancing - there were some standout hip-hop dancers who were nothing short of incredible).

And then, just to ensure that I never utter a bad word about SDC studios again, they plied us with unlimited free champage. That, combined with no food all afternoon or night, the buzz of performing, and a hyperactive bunch of dancers, led to one very happy Mistress Mess. I'm really not that hard to please.

And then on Saturday, when I would normally be slugging it out in class for a good part of the day, I actually got out of Sydney. It's been so long that I can't actually remember the last time I did that. There's something incredibly rejuvinating about going away for the weekend - even if it is just to sit on a friend's loungeroom floor with embarassingly cheap alcohol and talk about everything of no importance.

And that's it - dance is over for the year. Time to get to a treadmill before I turn into a pumpkin.

So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Adieu-eu...

Isn't it strange when you want something for such a long time that when you finally get it, you realise you don't really want it?

Last night I had my final ever class at the ballet school. All year I've been setting my sights on this endpoint, to when I could move on from doing classes with 12 year olds, when I would never have to dress up as another fairytale character again, or be frustrated by the fact that half the class are there to socialise and can't really be bothered doing class.

It was a bit of an anti-climax, since the concert was last week so only a fraction of the school even came to class this week. And there's always that end-of-year vibe which means everything's a bit lackadaisical (how often do you get to use that word? How often?!)

But when I walked out of the studio last night, I was kind of shocked to realise that my overriding emotion was not relief, or excitement, or triumph - I was sad! As challenging as it's been, you can't help but develop a friendship and a sort of loyalty to the people you dance with. Regardless of whether you have anything in common, or whether you even like them, when you dance you're exposing so much of yourself that you do form an odd bond with the people who do it alongside you. You spend so much time working so hard in a little room together, and learning to work together for the same things. You see each other at your most vulnerable, putting yourself on the line physically, pushing your boundaries, so by the end of it you feel like you know each other.

And I'm going to miss that studio too - that space. Even though it's just four walls with a roof on top, I've spent so many hours in there that I've developed a strange affection for it, despite the slippery spots in the corners (I know which floorboards to avoid), the wobbly barres (I have a favourite position), and the horrible mirrors (never look in the downstairs mirror because it adds 10 kilos).

It's really taken me by surprise, because the whole year just seemed like an enormous obstacle back in February, when I decided to do this. And suddenly I've found that although it was hard and often incredibly frustrating, I'm going to miss those girls, and those classes.

Driving home after class I had a rising sense of panic as I realised that I'm on my own now. Ballet's over, and after tonight's SDC performance it will close for a few weeks too. So now I rely on my own motivation (unreliable at the best of times) to keep me stretching, doing barre at home, and going to the gym. Scary thought.

Winging It

One down, one to go.

We had our end of year ballet production on the weekend. I had forgotten how much I love that atmosphere - the view from the wings, the smell of makeup, the panicky chaos backstage and then the vacuum of being onstage. The heat of all the lights. They're little trademarks that have been part of my life since I was four, and they work like a trigger for every performance memory I have.

It went almost without a glitch - performing our contemporary piece was possibly the happiest experience I've had all year. Our costumes were red and there was just a moment when the whole stage was bathed in hot, red lighting and it was like being underwater - strange, but blissful. It was a fantastic piece to dance and I think it even ranks as my favourite thing I've ever performed.

Ballet was less intense, although it was fun. We had one disasterous moment where our entrances got confused and half of us ended up entering from the wrong wing, which threw out our groupings for that whole piece and messed up the lines. But it wasn't major, and I think we rescued it. What's a performance without a screw up anyway?

Thankfully I still have the SDC concert to wean me off performing for a while - I'm already suffering minor comedown blues. I won't quite know what to do with myself after next week. I spent literally ALL day Saturday in the studio, and then all day Sunday at the theatre, and I still have rehearsals and classes all week.

Also, this was my last ever ballet performance. From next year, I'll only be performing contemporary and modern stuff - mostly I'm happy about that, since it's what I love and I'm so much happier in bare feet than en pointe. But it marks the end of an era, so I did find myself feeling a little wistful at times.

I never thought I'd be sad about saying goodbye to fairytale ballets!