Archive for CATHY
February 9, 2008 at 11:53 pm · Filed under dance, studio, student, CATHY, brazil, life, school
This year is, without a doubt, a transition of all sorts in my life. Many changes have already happened - big changes, in reality - and there are even more to come.
I had already mentioned the fact that school has ended (and I still didn’t make it to university) and that this year will be mostly devoted to study in order to sit for the university’s exams.
As of dance life, I have left my studio in which I had spent most of my life training. I’d go there every single day, rehearse and take classes for endless hours. We were definitely a family (still are) and I have learned so much from these years. So, I have only to thank all my teachers there because they offered me such amazing opportunities - that I’m sure that if I’d be somewhere else, none of them would have happened! - and for supporting me so much. In fact, I have been approved in my last Royal Academy of Dance examination!
I decided to leave because I realized I couldn’t grow there anymore. I wanted to change, meet new teachers, a new vision of ballet, and find better quality training also. Here in Brazil things are difficult and I’ve been looking for a good school for a while.
Until this amazing place opened a few blocks from my home, a few months ago. I have mentioned it here a few times already - and now it’s concrete: my dream studio is where now I dance!
It’s amazing. I’m completely in love! The rooms are spacious, everything is new and beautiful. (picture above)
Besides, there’s something else that caught my attention and also made me fall in love: the view!! As it’s in a quite high place, there’s this privileged view from the city. And every room has huge windows so that you can appreciate it during your class.
In terms of ballet itself - it’s Vaganova method, to which I’m trying to adapt. I must confess it has been a challenge. It’s considerably different from RAD. And I have already improved so much! The teacher is a Russian, who barely speaks any Portuguese (that definitely makes the classes even more interesting!)
Another big big change is that I have been hired in my former language school (where I learned English). They called me and offered a position as a sub teacher, twice a week. It was very unexpected, I never ever saw it coming (especially considering the fact that I completed my language studies there two years ago). I have accepted and I’m hoping this is going to be a good experience!
And what’s curious is that I was almost 100% decided that I was going to spend the next couple months in Canada, but that has been postponed for now!
I’ve also taken a nice trip to the south of Brazil - a city called Florianopolis. It’s a paradise: beaches surrounded by nature, excellent parties, nice people.. If you ever have the opportunity to go there, don’t miss it!! Unfortunately I caught bad weather there (that explains the lack of pictures.) - it rained most of the time, but still I managed to enjoy the time!
see you all!
Cathy
Recent Posts by cathy godeghesi
January 9, 2008 at 12:53 am · Filed under dance, student, CATHY, brazil, education, sao paulo, performance, university
Carol doing her pas de deux with our teacher .
After a sort of long hiatus, I’m here once again!
I hope you all have had amazing holidays and am wishing you a wonderful 2008! 
Life’s a little bit crazy and many things happened the past weeks.
A not so nice thing happened: I didn’t enter the university I wanted to, because I hadn’t studied enough (therefore I was kind of aware that it would happen), so I’m spending this year studying by myself in order to enter it. I got close though, out of 90 points in the exam, I needed 62 - but I got 60.
So some dedication over the next months will most likely help me to enter. A year won’t make a difference, right? Good thing is that I have endless chances to try!
So bottom line is, school is over, and I have here a year with more time to dance. I don’t know exactly how my dance life will be, I am almost sure I am going to go to the other studio to train with Russian teachers that will provide me really good training, I hope. I still have to take some classes to see if I like it or not, but as soon as it happens I’ll be here again telling you how it went.
As promised in my previous post, some pictures from 2007’s performance in my other studio! It’s just a glance, because there are thousands of pictures and it was quite tough to pick up some
Us dancing a choreography with music by Piazolla - i’m in the front row, on the right.
Yolanda, her turn doing the same pas de deux, and her beautiful arabesque.
Dancing Help (by the Beatles), i’m the one with the hair down.
Myself, in a solo representing japan. it was a contemporary piece, I loved the experience!
Abraços and see you next time!
Cathy
Recent Posts by cathy godeghesi
December 7, 2007 at 5:38 pm · Filed under dance, rehearsal, student, CATHY, brazil, university, school, sao paolo, wings
Here in Brazil, we are watching the very beginning of summer - which means heat + rain almost every day.
My life is a little bit less chaotic now as I’m fully on vacation. Right now the only excitement is that I am anxiously waiting for the results from the universities.
I haven’t had enough time to update you all about my recent performances, rehearsals and all that complex preparation that, deep inside, we all love so much.
The performance actually already happened - nevertheless, I barely saw time passing. All of sudden, I was on stage again.
For a month I was able to rehearse only once a week, which is completely absurd to me. As a matter of fact, this semester as a whole was kind of confusing to me due to injuries also.
So, I took the week before the actual performance to rehearse intesively.
But anyway, here are some pictures from the dress rehearsal: (that out of three, I managed to attend only one)
Kids in tutus
Joana, Carol, Yolanda, amazing dancers!
Carol stretching before her entrance
The classical view from the wings!
I am very soon to be back with pictures from the performance itself!
Abraços!
Cathy
Recent Posts by cathy godeghesi
November 4, 2007 at 7:04 pm · Filed under dance, friends, student, CATHY, brazil, sao paulo, life, university, school, carnival
Today was my last day at school, forever.
As I’m typing this, I’m getting very emotional once again…I’ve been like this the whole day 
I’ve been to that place everyday of my life since I was 7.
There were moments in which I would get tired and hate it, of course. But deep inside I’ve ALWAYS loved it.
It was where I grew up, where I met my closest and best friends, where I had teachers that I’ll remember for life.
I am what I am because of this school. It’s amazing how empty I feel right now! I never knew I’d feel like this once it ended. Afterall, it’s school.
Now I won’t see those teachers that I admired so much everyday. Me and my best friends won’t be going to the same universities.
Everything changes from a minute to another!
Ok, emo part done now 
Let me tell how we celebrated this moment this week:
We did parties during our breaks - The first day we wore our typical yellow t-shirt, it’s a symbol of the school.
Then, the following days we wore costumes and celebrated in a very brazilian style: CARNIVAL! the way it should be done! Everybody from the senior year gathered, dancing and hugging each other, while the people from the other years watched us. We’d sing and scream…we all had a lot of fun!
Our graduation will be in a few weeks, then we will have our party, and later, our trip!
In fact, many things changed since I last wrote here.
The most important and that is obviously affecting me most is that I had to cut many ballet classes (I had to reduce from almost full time dancing to twice a week) because I’m taking an intensive preparatory course to university.
I’m still going to dance with my studio by the end of this year.
It was pretty much a sudden decision, because it was tough studying by myself so I decided to do this little sacrifice to dance less for a single month.
The course ends in a couple weeks, so gladly I am soon to be back to a normal routine! I might start dancing soon in the new school I told you about previously, full time.
I don’t really know where life is gonna take me, but this is definitely a curious stage of life!
Hugs,
Cathy
Recent Posts by cathy godeghesi
September 25, 2007 at 6:02 pm · Filed under dance, friends, student, CATHY, brazil, roayl academy of dance, exam
Hey!
I have just had my RAD exam that I had previously told you all about.
The examiner was a Chinese lady and I took it with three other girls: one of them was my friend Joana, the one in the picture (it was taken a couple of minutes before entering the room), and two other girls that I had just met.
I must confess that I was nervous at the beginning… These major examinations are mostly technique and don’t give much space to dance, but still I attempted my most to feel the music and dance my best.
They evaluate everything, and to me, the hardest part is the music. In the barre, they test you by doing one of the sides with the usual music from the syllabus and the other, with a song that we never heard before. I was the first in the barre, thus that made me shake a little bit. However, thankfully, it went all right.
My only problem was during the center. My double pirouettes en dedans didn’t come out as expected and I had some not very nice landings.
My allegros turned out be pretty good.
The examiner gives us a free enchainement, that she makes up during the exam. It was a good thing that she gave us enough chances to do it and improve, because my first attempts were quite poor :S
Then we had our variation, and then pointe.
I honestly don’t have the slightest idea whether I have passed or not. I know that I could have done much better - but now all I can do is to wait for the results!
Keep your fingers crossed!
And by the way, I’m now a contemporary student also! Took my first class in that school I told in my previous post and it was awesome. I’ll keep you guys updated with that and the recitals that are coming on the way.
Cathy
Recent Posts by cathy godeghesi
September 18, 2007 at 2:09 am · Filed under dance, student, CATHY, brazil, sao paulo, university, school, diplomat
Wingers, wingers, if you knew how much I have to tell you… First let me apologize once again for my complete lack of posts for the past months. Life has been quite crazy lately and I’m about to explain it all. (Oh, and I am working on the 8 things. next post, probably!)
Well, to begin with, school. It’s almost over - forever! In less than two months it’s over! I’m happy but scared at the same time. That also means (besides the fact that I become a grown person in a matter of days - I turn 18 pretty soon!) that preparations for University are taking up a lot of time (besides ballet, of course). Here the system works differently to enter universities. The institutions apply an exam by the end of the year with EVERYTHING we have seen since our first year of high school. All the subjects, from physics to history (here we can’t really choose either what subjects we take in high school.). So, can you imagine the amount of stuff I have to see? I’m trying out for law in a public university (not to become a lawyer, but to become a diplomat), my first option, and International Relations as second.
Now, ballet: My RAD (royal academy of dance) exam is in two weeks, it’s a pre-professional level so it’s basically a lot of technique. I’m already starting to feel a little bit nervous, we’ve been getting prepared since january!
However, I had quite an issue a little over a month ago: I sprained my ankle badly, had to stop dancing for over 20 days (that also explains my lack of posts) and only this week I started jumping again (because once my foot healed a little bit I did some adagios, etc). But gladly I’m picking up stuff quickly, rehearsing hours and hours, even at home to hopefully pass on the exam. Thus that means ballet has been pretty tiring lately also.
Besides that, we’re working on new choreographies, that are totally new to me in the sense that they’re very modern pieces. We’re doing Help, by Beatles, Libertango by Piazolla and just today I started working on a modern solo also with japanese music (we’re doing countries, so beatles would be england, piazolla argentina, etc..). Ballet routine has been absolutely crazy, as we need time to rehearse and finish the choreographies plus exam!
Carol takes a break from the rehearsals and shows her happiness with a chocolate! Luckily, pas de deux teacher didn’t catch her eating it…
Hmm now there is something that I was preparing to tell in this post, however as what I had planned didn’t happen, I will just introduce the subject. I was really confused as for example where I’d be taking dance classes and such, I was a bit lost because São Paulo is not the best city for dancers so I was saving some money to try to study ballet somewhere abroad for a few months.
To my surprise, when I least expected, this HUGE dance school opened a few blocks from my house. It’s something quite big and brought a totally new perspective to me. International teachers, strong pre professional programs.. the building is BEAUTIFUL… so i’m very very excited. Anyway, it turns out that I was going to take some classes to see how it feels last week but due to unexpected stuff and messy schedule I couldn’t. But once I can make it, I’ll be sure to tell you guys everything!
And by the way, a warm welcome to all the new wingers!
On that, I leave, and promise to be back here soon!
Bye!
Cathy
Recent Posts by cathy godeghesi
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