Last Friday, as on every Friday, our schedule for the following week was posted after our daily company ballet class. If there is one thing I have learned in my short one year with The National Ballet of Canada, it’s that despite the detailed outline we’re given of what it is to be rehearsed - when, where and with which of the rehearsal staff, it’s still impossible to predict what may happen.

My week is mainly devoted to rehearsals of Giselle in preparation for our upcoming western tour. This is my first time performing in this ballet, and I’m learning two roles, that of a peasant girl in the first act, and a Willie (a bride left at the altar) in the second act. The fact that this is my first time performing in this ballet means that I am absorbing high levels of information during each of the rehearsals. Not only must I learn new choreography, but we are constantly being given ideas as to how we can improve our movement technically as well as artistically.

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Today I got my new company travel tag for the company’s upcoming tour out west. I got married in July, to Corps de Ballet member Tamara Jones, and this will be our first tour as husband and wife. She loves going out west, as she grew up in Alberta, in a small town called High River. That’s where we held our wedding, on her family’s farm.

The company is dancing Giselle and Polyphonia on the tour. As long as I stay healthy, I get to dance the pas de quatre in Giselle on the very last show of the tour, in Vancouver. I tore my Achilles tendon last March, during my performance at The Erik Bruhn Competition and have been recovering all summer. It was hard at first, as I had to have an operation and my leg was in a big cast from the knee down, but I was determined to be walking at our wedding so I did a lot of strengthening exercises and physio to keep the rest of my body in shape.

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So, here goes my first week of full-fledged dancing since the cortisone injection I had after our first week back. The pain in my foot was becoming unbearable, so the doctors decided to bring out the big guns. Cortisone is pretty much your last pain relief resort.

The day of my MRI was quite a strange event, actually. My appointment was made at the last minute, so I ended up being slotted in at 4:30 AM the morning after (or night of) the Mad Hot Ballet Gala, back in June. Needless to say, the appointment would be painful. My friends helped the situation by staying awake with me through until my appointment, where I staggered into the hospital at 4 am in my full black tie regalia. I certainly received more than a few bewildered stares from the hospital staff.

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