an t-údar ag damhsa

Technically, this is my dance blog. I regularly forget it exists, although since I'm planning to use it more for interaction to help make Finn Longman more part of the Tumblr community, that might change. You're welcome to follow me here if you're into ballet, Irish dance, or related topics, but if you're looking for medieval literature, fiction writing updates, and more general posts, you'll find them at @finnlongman and should probably follow that account instead.

serious ballet photos only

Barre carefully positioned to hide the fact that my brand new leggings ripped at the crotch doing grands jetés at class the other day, which is honestly just incredibly rude of them.

This was my first full class back in... a while; I had to take it easy throughout the autumn because I was recovering from COVID and was avoiding cardio. The Coppélia auditions I did that I posted about a few weeks ago were the only time I did a full class without skipping allegro, and being an audition, it was a bit slower, with more waiting around learning things. Otherwise, I was only doing partial classes and pas de deux the whole time, so this was my first full 1.5-hour class, allegro included. My heartrate was in the peak range throughout, because apparently my cardio fitness is BAD these days. Hoping to work on that over the next couple of months.

Overall -

I have barely been dancing for the past 2.5 years, which is the main reason this blog has been defunct. A combination of lockdowns, my hip injury from 2019, the ankles I've sprained over the last two years, living in a very tiny flat in Cork, and then a knee injury in 2021 -- plus top surgery early in 2022 -- have conspired to ensure my body was in no state to be dancing. I've also moved house five times in a year, and I had a rough bout of COVID, so it has just... not been a great patch for the dancing. I've done a few practice sessions at home, some of which I've filmed, so I might post some of those pics/videos over the next few weeks, but on the whole, my lack of posts has been because there's nothing to post.

Ballet -

I moved back to Cambridge for work, so I'm dancing with the Cambridge University Ballet Club again. I've only just gone back to full classes, as I had COVID two months ago and I've been suffering from fatigue and a recurring cough since then; I'm not able to do allegro yet, but I hope I'll be able to soon. I'm also doing pas de deux with them, dancing the men's part. Next week I'll be auditioning for their annual show, though I don't foresee getting a large part. I have to balance rehearsals with my day job, anyway, so I need to be careful not to over-commit myself.

Irish dance -

There isn't an Irish dance school in Cambridge, which really limits my options here. The Irish Dance Society that I used to run still exists, but they've been seriously struggling to book rooms due to lack of availability, so they haven't run any classes so far this academic year. My sad lungs haven't really been up to high intensity cardio as required by Irish dance, anyway, but I'm hoping as I continue to recover that I can at least get to the point of dancing at home. For the moment, though, I'm focusing a lot more on ballet, since the opportunity to do that at a high level is available to me here.

Gender wise -

I still identify as nonbinary, but I'm definitely leaning a lot more towards the masculine end of the spectrum these days. Ironically, top surgery makes it a lot easier for me to wear women's ballet clothes these days, since ballet dancers tend to be a lot smaller in the chest than I was before! But my knees and ankles do not want me to go back to pointe, and in any case I'm happy dancing the men's roles. I remain small, weak, and utterly unable to do lifts, but I'm working on it. If I returned to competitive Irish dance and was in a position to compete in gendered categories, I would probably prefer to compete in the men's categories, but that's unlikely to happen any time soon (on account of not belonging to an Irish dance school...)