Class at Paris Opera and Cinderella at Opera Bastille

Wednesday morning I had class again with Paris Opera. As I has been there the day before, I didnt have to wait for Leila so made it to the 10am class, so I did class with Hannah :) It was a different teacher today ..not sure what his name was..I will have to ask Hannah. This class felt so much better than the previous day. The rake didn't feel so foreign and I was able to do pirouette without feeling like I was going to fall on my face. It really is quite surpirising how fast you get used to it. The only thing that they do a bit differently here is that they do barre and centre including allegro on flat and then change into pointe shoes and the girls do some pointe work and the boys do grand allegro and turns, where as usually we do barre on flat and then change into pointe shoes and do rest of class on pointe but then their classes are 1 and a half hours which is 15 minutes longer than our classes so they have the time to do the extra pointe work. This class was really good but different to the previous day. The dancers were a lot younger..apparently some were only 16 years old and already working with the company. At that age I hadn't even started at ABS! After class Hannah gave us a tour of the theater so got to see the stage which was huge and some of the other studios. And then whilst we were having a chat in the corridor we met Agnes Letestu and her dog haha. The rest of the afternoon I spent wandering around St Germain. The highlight of the afternoon was macarons from Pierre Herme! Definitely the best macarons I have had! That night I saw Paris Opera Ballet " Cinderella " at Opera Bastille which is their other theater. This theater is so different to Palais Garnier. It is a lot more modern but still impressive. This was the Rudolf Nureyev version of Cinderella which is a but different to the traditional Cinderella stroyline. I didn't realize this till after act 1 so had to read the synopsis in the interval and then it made more sense. Cinderella was danced by Aurelie Dupont, the movie star(prince) was Josua Hoffalt and the sisters were Melanie Hurel and Ludmila Pagliero. The story is set in Hollywood in the 1930's and cinderellas dream is to become an actress. Aurelie Dupont was beautiful but the stand out for me in this show were the sisters. They were hilarious and what they had to do was so hard. I thought onegin had some fast and complex footwork, well this was even faster and more complex and yet still executed beautifully. Another great show and I'm only 4 days into my trip.