It’s always nice to come back from a break, even though it sometimes feels really awful. Having those two weeks off was rather nice, but by the end I was desperate to get back to dance.

However, I had made the brilliant (read: stupid) decision to spend most of my break in a sedentary position, which meant that my friends and family have had the joy of listening to me complain about my sore muscles all week long. To be honest, though, I’ve missed being sore, so it’s all worth it.

Something else that makes it worth it is that we’ve already started on our spring show. We’re doing a double bill, meaning there are two shows in one performance. We’re doing Aurora’s Wedding (“All the good parts of Sleeping Beauty and none of the boring bits,” as our director says,) as well as Firebird, which our director is coming up with completely new choreography for. This is what we started on last night and it was a blast. All of the older girls are monsters, which is a creepy and fun part that isn’t on pointe, much to my surprise. We got to work on a lot of really contemporary things, which were cool and unusual but also left me really sore. However, I am now even more excited to really get started on these shows.