Wednesday begins with a challenging class and a run of Allegro Brillante.  Five hundred practice pirouettes and a bucket of sweat later, the hour is up and it’s time to move on to Niris, the polarized pas de deux conceptualized by Yury Yanowsky.  Its intricate score, originally intended for the Steve Jobs film, instructs our bodies in its profoundly bipolar energy.  The first half is electric and sexy, until the music combusts and fizzles into a slow, bleeding romance.  My breath expands with the swell of the cello as B sweeps me across the floor and through the air.  I exhale into Viktor Plotnikov’s grounded Swan.  My feet quiver below an inverted spine and hyperextended elbows.  I am the unsettled soul of a dying bird.  Its an unseasonable 80 degrees outside and we’ve opened the the doors, but I can hear a familiar Tchaikovsky waltz from the next studio and suddenly I’m cold.  Snowflakes in October.  The steps, while second nature now, feel refreshing to revisit, much in the way of the holiday season itself.  The hanging of decade-old stockings above the fireplace always feels more cathartic to me than repetitive.  I shed the shell of satin from my feet and stumble, knobby-kneed, into to the woods of an evil witch.  In my practice skirt I resemble a giant napkin but oddly it sort of just feels like Gretel.  In the blink of an eye the score has run straight through and we’ve danced every bit of it. My napkin is traded for a heavy circle skirt and it’s off to the orchestra.  Another Plotnikov piece to end the evening, but this time my body is loud and awkward, moving like a mandolin, chest of drawers, human violin, clumsy monkey.  It’s 8:30 pm at this point, and I am delirious.  Ready for a shower, a sleep, and a new day to do it all again.