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.

Daily Discipline

I’ve been thinking lately about how dancing can affect someone’s life in general, whether they continue to dance past high school and college or not. As a teacher I had many talented students who went on to study dance at the university level. Some found their way to NYC and Broadway, others are teaching dance, but many have gone into separate fields altogether. When I was younger I used to think that I had to be involved in dance or else all the hours I’d spent perfecting my craft were for naught. But is it true that what we learn in the dance studio can’t apply somehow toward our life in general? That there aren’t lessons about working hard, little by little, to see a change several weeks or months down the road that can help us no matter where we end up?

It saddens me that I’m no longer involved in dance the way I used to be. When my family moved away from Kentucky to live closer to my husband’s family in North Carolina, we left behind a thriving dance supply store (Dance Essentials, Inc.) and I left a wonderful teaching post as director of the ballet program at Town and Village School of Dance in Paris, Kentucky. My parents kept the store running for a few more years before selling it and joining us in North Carolina, and on a recent trip through Kentucky we stopped to find that the store had closed for good. It was sad to see our small legacy stamped out, so to speak. But I believe there was a higher purpose for our lives and it was time to move on.

Three years after moving to North Carolina, my father-in-law developed an aggressive, malignant brain tumor. We lived a short drive away—we could even walk if we had to—and it was a blessing to be available if he fell down and needed help. We were at his side when he passed from this world, and though we miss him terribly, we feel blessed that we were given those few years to spend with him. We witnessed a most impressive and dignified journey toward the end of life as he knew it, and saw his faith in God and the world-to-come gently bud and flower.

When we came here it was necessary for me to find a “real” job immediately, since my husband had not found work yet. I landed a job with First Union Bank (which became Wachovia, then became Wells Fargo) doing support work and developing simple reports in Excel and PowerPoint. From there I learned how to manipulate some simple Access database back ends, and started building a few new databases to make the reporting I was doing more automated.My father-in-law was not surprised by my interest and ability to jump right into software development. He was a project manager working on IT-related projects at Bank of America and elsewhere, and he encouraged me to move into the IT field full force. He saw that software development had a creative side and dancing had a technical side, so the two fields in his mind were a perfect fit, and the transition wasn’t as difficult for me as you might think.

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