Improve Your Balance

In ballet, balance is a key factor. There’s more to balancing than simply holding a pose, too. Every aspect of an adagio exercise requires tremendous balance and control, whether you are holding a pose for several counts or simply moving from one pose to the next. A pirouette is a balance while turning. The interesting part about balancing, to me, is not so much the physical strength it involves, but the discipline of the mind. Both pieces are important.

Yes, you must be strong. In order to hold a balance you have to be in command of the pose and have the necessary strength to maintain it. We know that balancing at retiré is a good preparation for pirouettes. If you want to do a triple pirouette with the foot at the knee, you must be able to at least balance in that position without turning for as long as it would take to rotate three times.

When we practice balancing at the barre it is helpful to remember that the position we’re balancing in is never static. We aren’t statues; we’re living, breathing beings. There must be life and breath involved. I once had a teacher who would say that from a single balanced position, the audience must never know whether we will run off the stage, move into yet another position, or even begin to turn. This is where it’s imperative that we can adapt to those minuscule changes in order to maintain our equilibrium. Even if we feel ourselves drifting off to the right, we are able to make adjustments that put us back on our center axis without completely losing the balance.

Turns at the barre was always one of my favorite things. It’s tricky at first because you have to learn how to avoid hitting the barre with your knee, but we would do half turns, full turns, fouetté turns, both en dehors and en dedans. It was a bit like working with a partner!

I had another teacher who would come and stand next to us while we were balancing and make ridiculous movements like a chicken. Anything to make us lose our concentration and laugh. This part is what fascinates me more than the physical part. Being able to focus our thoughts on staying lifted out of the hips, breathing in and out, noticing change in the environment but sustaining our position within it—this takes a lot of practice and discipline. It’s important to stay with yourself and not worry about the person in front of you who may be doing a better or worse job of it than you.

Another point I’d like to make about balance is focusing the eyes. Just as we’re not trying to look like a stiff statue, we may find it easier at first to maintain our balance if we keep our eyes focused on an object, but it’s really good to practice moving your focus too. When I was teaching I would try to start out class with balances on two feet, then on one foot, then moving from one position to another (for example, from retiré to arabesque or attitude), or taking the arms from fifth en haut to an open V and turning the gaze away from the barre.

Key Points for Balancing:

  1. Lift out of the supporting hip. Let there be a circular energy: as your weight pushes down into the floor, lift the muscles above the kneecaps and through the thighs upward. Don’t “settle” into a balance.
  2. Keep the back wide and don’t let the shoulder blades creep towards each other.
  3. Think of lifting up and over, like your ribcage is resting on a little shelf.
  4. Focus at or above your line of sight so your chin doesn’t drop.
  5. Keep breathing and moving, adapting to minuscule changes in your body and the atmosphere.
  6. Strengthen and engage your core, the abdominal muscles.

Image file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. Author Danivalcarce

Ballet Class Etiquette

Ballet class etiquette is usually communicated clearly, and most dancers who begin as young children are taught the appropriate way to behave while in the classroom. Not only are rules—or etiquette—for class a sign of respect towards the teacher and the other students, they are necessary in order to progress through all the combinations that make up a full class. There is simply not time for a teacher to be reprimanding students or calling them back to attention every few minutes. However, you may begin taking lessons at a new studio or academy where the etiquette may differ from your former school, and it might be up to you to find out what the standard expectations are for students.

Dress Code

Many schools have a dress code. Quite a few require pink tights. This sounds easy enough, but there can be many variations: students are clever at turning a rule on its head by changing it enough to say they are following the rules, when actually they are not. You need to know if pink tights means footed, or if transitional tights, stirrup tights, or footless tights are acceptable. Sometimes a student will have on transitional tights—which, when worn over the toes are considered footed—and have them rolled up to mid-calf. When it comes to class, pink can probably encompass ballet pink, classical pink, light pink, or European pink. (Or, as it was in my case as a kid, white tights dyed into a pink that came from red food coloring!) For performances, most teachers will be painfully specific about what color pink they want and if they want the tights to be mesh, seamed, or seamless; supplex, cotton, nylon, or a combination of fabrics; Capezio, Bloch, or Danskin. To make it a lot easier, some teachers will tell you a style number to be sure you get exactly the right thing. The Danskin mesh seamed tight in style 32 is very popular, for example.

Along with tights, some schools will require that you wear a specific color leotard or a specific style: camisole, tank, short sleeve, or long sleeve. A lot of schools will not be too picky about style as long as you wear the correct color, or a solid color. Make sure you are wearing shoes that are acceptable as well. Usually this is left to the discretion of the dancer, but some teachers don’t particularly care for canvas over leather, for instance. Some want you to have a full sole rather than a split sole. Just be certain you know if there’s a preference, and make sure your shoes have the elastics sewn securely. Elastics that are tied behind the ankle or kept on with paper clips or safety pins are irritating to most teachers. You’ve been warned.

Hair and Jewelry

Hair and jewelry are biggies in ballet class. To be safe, I would say to put your hair in a bun with a hair net and plenty of hair pins and hairspray, and don’t wear any jewelry at all. Here again, there will be variations of what is acceptable at your particular school. You may be allowed to wear your hair clipped with a great big barrette so it doesn’t flop at all when turning, and it might be fine to wear earrings as long as they don’t dangle. Sometimes earrings that slip through without a catch at the back can fly out during grand allegro or turns across the floor, so use good judgment here. Click here to see a great video by dancers at the Anaheim Ballet on how to make hair buns. And a fun place to find ballet needs is at bunheads.com.

Behavior

Finally, we come to the behavior that is expected in class.

  1. No talking unless you have a question for the teacher (and questions are normally very welcome, especially in beginning to intermediate levels). This includes any kind of communication with others in class, so no miming or eye-rolling either!
  2. Do not chew gum, eat, or drink during class.Sometimes you may be permitted to get a drink between barre and center, but it’s typically best not to leave the room to do so.
  3. Do not arrive late. If you arrive during the plié combination you can usually catch up. Otherwise you need to check with the teacher to see if it’s okay for you to join or if they prefer that you just observe class.
  4. Do not yawn.
  5. Do not get impatient with yourself—this can be misinterpreted by the teacher who thinks you don’t care for their class or combination.
  6. If you have an injury prior to class, let the teacher know that you may not do everything full out.
  7. If you get injured during class or pull a muscle, let the teacher know. Get ice, if possible, and watch the rest of class from the sidelines.
  8. Do not always stand in front. Take turns.
  9. Do not always go first across the floor unless the teacher asks you to.
  10. Do your best and have a positive attitude.

Other things to note

I encourage readers to add to the list if you can think of others I omitted. Of course, cells phones and ipods are also not good to bring into class. A few pet peeves of mine when I was teaching included students who had to go to the bathroom (although there might be exceptions, just don’t do this every single class), students who wanted to teach the class or recommend steps, and students who wore sweats over their tights once class began. Again, if you have an injury and you need to wear extra clothing for warmth, get permission from the teacher prior to class.

The nicest thing about class is the end. I always thought it very appropriate when I was dancing that we would let the teacher know we appreciated class by applauding at the end. Some teachers will tell young dancers that they should “give themselves a hand” so they get into the habit of clapping after class, but I believe that this part of ballet etiquette is more a show of respect for the authority and guidance of the teacher.

Degagé with Plié Barre exercise in 2/4 or 6/8

5th position at the barre
1-2        Brush to 45° devant, plié in 4th – arm 5th en avant
3           Straighten knees and carry working foot to 2nd at 45° á la seconde, arm to 2nd position
4           Plié in 2nd
5-6       Carry working foot to 45° devant, close 5th position front – arm 5th en haut
&7&8   Degagé devant 2x closing 5th front both times
1-2       Degagé side, plié in 2nd position – arm 5th en avant
3           Carry working foot to back 45° and straighten knee – arm 2nd
4           Demi plié in 4th position – arm en avant
5-6       Carry working foot to 45° side, close 5th back – arm 2nd
&7&8   Degagé side 2x closing 5th front, 5th back
1-16      Repeat all from back with arm in arabesque instead of 5th en haut

Passion for Dancing

Why do dancers dance? Ballet class is rigorous, not to mention expensive, yet thousands of people send their children to ballet. As a dancer, I know that what keeps bringing us back to the barre, day in and day out, is passion. And I know as a parent (whose children lacked such passion) that it was easier to save my money and pull them out of ballet than to hear them whining and complaining that “ballet is boring”.

When I was ten years old, the girl next door showed me her tap and ballet shoes and introduced me to a few steps. For me, that was it. I practiced those steps everyday on my front porch and pretended my black patent leather shoes had taps on them. For reasons I couldn’t understand, I had to wait until school was starting the following year to begin lessons at the local studio with Debbie Wilkerson. It felt like an eternity! My mom said that she knew from my fervent activity in the womb that I was destined to either be a dancer or a football player. When my lessons finally started, I was hooked and couldn’t get enough.

The studio was three short blocks from my house, so I was allowed to walk there by myself. It was downtown in the upstairs of an old building. There was one huge studio and one smaller one, plus an office, waiting area, and a long room full of costumes that you had to walk through to get to the restroom. My teacher, Debbie, had lovely leotards and wore her long hair in beautiful braided buns. There was a raised area in the corner of the large studio where she had her record player, and I always dreamed of one day being the teacher so I could stand there, too. My dad helped me put up a barre and some mirrors in our attic and I had my own little studio up there, where I spent hours upon hours dancing and making up my own choreography.

If most dancers are like me, then they dance because they must. They can’t stand the thought of life without dance. Sure, they take the occasional break and vacation, but dance is always there on the horizon waiting for them to pick up again. Debbie was a special teacher, because she recognized my passion for ballet and encouraged my parents to send me to the Jordan Academy of Dance in Indianapolis where I could get more intensive training than she offered at her studio. I went there on Saturdays and dreaded it every single week. Looking back, I’m grateful for my parents’ diligence in making me go, because from my contacts there I was able to apply to Butler University’s early enrollment program as a high school student.

At Jordan Academy all the girls knew each other and took class several times a week together. I came in only on Saturdays and was too shy to make friends with anyone. They did a lot of steps that I’d never seen before, too, so I was confused a lot. And I simply hated grand allegro, when we had to dance across the floor two at a time and I almost always had no idea what to do. Still, I loved dancing at Debbie’s studio, and when I was accepted as a student at Butler my sophomore year in high school, I loved that as well. My teacher at Jordan Academy, Peggy Dorsey, warned my father that it could be tough at the university (where she also taught) and that there was a lot of competition among the girls. However, since I went there everyday I was able to make friends with many of the girls in my classes, and my dancing improved by leaps and bounds (pardon the pun!).

When I became the mother of two young girls, they enrolled in dance at the studio where I taught in Paris, Kentucky.They had a cute class for two year olds called Jack Be Nimble, and my girls both loved that.Then we moved to North Carolina and I stopped teaching so I could work at a job that would give our family benefits and enough pay to live on until my husband found work.We enrolled them in creative movement and they enjoyed it, for the most part, but to be honest they would rather be at home playing in mud or riding their bikes.They took a break from dance, since they were still rather young, I thought, to be expected to have a spark of passion for it yet.When they came back to it a few years later it was drudgery getting them to class.I could see that they were the ones who were left out of the cliques made up of girls who were there several days a week, and they just didn’t love it as I’d hoped they would.

I didn’t have dreams of them becoming professional dancers. I just wanted them to have something they could love doing, as I had when I was their age. But it wasn’t meant to be. And I realize that the kids who show up and are eager to learn new steps and tricky combinations are the ones who are passionate about dancing. They are the ones who can’t imagine life without dance. As a side note, my girls are now teenagers who play soccer, piano, guitar, and violin. They are also whizzes on the computer. I’m not sure either of them has found their passion in life, but I still hold out hope that they will. There’s nothing quite like it, is there?

Music for Ballet Class

Recommended Music for Ballet Class

MUSIC FOR YOUR BALLET CLASS – Finis Jhung, Bill Brown, Basic Ballet 8 and 9

MUSIC FOR INTERMEDIATE BALLET CLASS – Finis Jhung, Scott Killian, Basic Ballet 5

BALLET MUSIC FOR 24 CENTER EXERCISES – Finis Jhung and Webster Smith, Basic Ballet 6 and Basic Ballet 7

NEW BALLET MUSIC 1 – Finis Jhung and Anna Korab, 27 Barre and Center Exercises

LISA HARRIS APRES LE PLIÉ Music for Ballet Class

LISA HARRIS VARIATIONS, Music for Ballet Class

BALLET MUSIC FOR CLASS, AT HARKNESS HOUSE Raymond Wilson, Pianist/Supv. by Sandra Balestracci Item 5031

BALLET MUSIC FOR CLASS, AT HARKNESS HOUSE Raymond Wilson, Pianist/Supv. by Mikhail Korogodsky Item 5032

BALLET MUSIC FOR CLASS Sophie Velberg, Pianist/Supv. by Sandra Balestracci Item 5054

BALLET MUSIC FOR CLASS Sophie Velberg, Pianist/Supv. by Mme. Halina Item 5050

BALLET MUSIC FOR CLASS Douglas Corbin, Pianist/Supv. by David Howard Item 6002

BALLET MUSIC FOR CLASS Douglas Corbin, Pianist/Supv. by David Howard Item 6003

25th ANNIVERSARY – David Howard,Douglas Corbin

BALLET MUSIC FOR BARRE AND CENTER FLOOR, Sophie Velberg, Pianist/Supv. by Mme. Halina Item 5049

BALLET MUSIC FOR BARRE AND CENTER FLOOR, Karl St. Charles, Pianist/Supv. by Mme. Halina Item 5044

How to Pick Up Combinations Quickly

I was reading someone’s blog the other day, and one of the comments was from a young dancer who was having trouble remembering combinations in ballet class.  I thought this would make a great blog post because I, too, was one of those dancers who stood in the back and tried to blend in. Eventually I became one of the quickest to pick up combinations and was no longer afraid to stand in the first spot at the barre or go with the first group in the center. Here are some of my ideas about how you can pick up combinations quickly. Continue reading “How to Pick Up Combinations Quickly”