Category: Ballerina Corner

[Point of order: Paula East has asked me to mention her class schedule; you can find it on our “Sponsorship and Dance Instruction” page.  Classes are now in progress for beginner/intermediate dancers (Sundays) and advanced dancers (Tuesdays) at the Wellness Center.]

Progress in ballet sometimes seems so glacially slow that I forget it’s there at all.  Will my pirouettes/turnout/pointe work/posture/ballon/flexibility ever get any better?  They do, but it takes ages, so I hardly notice.  Then I start looking for other ways of measuring progress.  A few weeks ago I was talking to my teacher about another student who has hyperextended knees–when she straightens her leg, her knee goes past perfectly straight so her kneecap sort of disappears into her leg.  Kinesiologically, hyperextension may not be a good thing, but my teacher said that some people look for it as a good quality in dancers because it creates a desirable leg line.

Other dancers, I have noticed, are not actually hyperextended but they appear to be, or nearly so, because their quads are so developed that they stand out as much as or more than their kneecaps do when the leg is straight.  So you get one nice curve on the front of the thigh from hip to kneecap and one nice curve on the back of the calf from back knee to ankle.  And then one nice curve on the top of the foot with a corresponding one under the arch when the foot is pointed.  See? Look at her standing leg.  (This one, by contrast, looks hyperextended to me…and look at Misha being all gorgeous and 25 with eyeshadow on.)

At the time, I was lamenting to Ms. M. that I’ve always had scrawny chicken legs (and am not hyperextended) and thus I never expect to have disappearing knees.  Le sigh.  Then, last week, I started noticing that the knees of all my 12-year-old classmates are starting to vanish.  It seems like they have all broken out in ballet muscles all of a sudden–and they are even scrawnier than I am, being 12 and all.  And yet I didn’t think it was happening to me–even though I can tell I’m getting stronger*–until yesterday, when I was randomly standing in 5th position** while waiting my turn to go across the floor.  Lo and behold, my quads are definitely outpacing my kneecaps.  Plus, I have actual calf muscles now for the first time in my life (see “scrawny chicken legs,” supra).  Hey, you measure your progress your way and I’ll measure mine my way.  I think prominent kneecaps are overrated.

*Last week: 72 relevés = torture with a side of calf cramps.  This week: 72 relevés = manageable with a side of fun.***

**Thinking here of Adult Beginner spotting dancers in the wild by their tendency to stand in fifth (or first, or fourth) while, e.g., waiting at the grocery store checkout.

***Why can I do piqués but can’t yet do one-foot relevés in retiré or coupé?****

****My asterisks have asterisks.  I’m stopping now.

After dancing at the Sports Hall of Fame last night and being interviewed by the Fox/ABC news team, we are waiting for the video to show up online so I can post it here.

We are waiting for construction to be done at Academy Ballroom so we can get another lesson with Eddie.  Best not to breathe paint fumes and drywall dust while learning the mambo.  Oxygen intake is key for that one, I can tell you.

I am also waiting for my pointe shoes to wear out so I can buy a new pair.  When I danced en pointe the first time around, approximately 25 years ago (holy crap!), there were not nearly as many styles of pointe shoes available as there are now.  At least, they weren’t available in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma where I lived.  Everyone wore one of approximately four styles made by Capezio.  By contrast, our local dance store here carries at least 5 brands that I know of.  And I just looked on Discount Dance Supply (don’t even click that link if you like dancewear; you’ll be there all day) and they have 57 styles of shoes from 11 different brands.  It’s a buffet of pointe shoe choice delights!

I got Bloch Serenades for my first pointes of the 21st century.  They are not a terrible fit for my foot, but I’m starting to see that they are not ideal, either.   I’ve started to notice that my feet sink down in the shoes and the front of the box puts pressure on the front of my big toe.  It absolutely kills.  I talked to my teacher about it and she said I should feel like I’m pulling up out of the shoe rather than sinking into it.  She thinks I need a shoe with a shorter, more V-shaped vamp.  So I have been looking at Russian brands since they build more shoes that way.  I’m looking at Grishko 2007; the reviews say they are good for tapered toes and the Internet seems to love them.

I also (eventually) want to try a pair of Gaynor Minden just to see what all the fuss is about.  Gaynors are, as crazy as this sounds, very controversial pointe shoes.  Instead of having boxes (the hard, flat part of the shoe that enables the dancer to stand en pointe) built out of layers of glue-stiffened paper or similar (called “paste”), they are made of some kind of space-age polymers.  They are supposed to require no breaking in and little or no padding worn inside the shoe, and they are supposed to last longer while preventing injury.  That all sounds good, right?  Well, in the tradition-driven ballet world, they have been greeted with tremendous interest and tremendous suspicion.  Some studios apparently require them for dancers beginning en pointe while others forbid them.  Read the reviews on Discount Dance and you’ll see some people singing their praises and some people calling them “cheating shoes” that let you go en pointe without requiring as much foot strength and proper technique as a paste shoe.

Dare I admit that at this stage of life, I am not against a little cheating?  No, that’s not quite true.  I want my feet to be as strong as possible and my technique as correct as possible, but I also want to be as comfortable as possible. If I am miserable, I can’t work as hard.  We are pushing ahead in my class with more pointe work and I want to be able to do every repetition of every exercise without feeling like my toes are on fire.  So stay tuned while I work on wearing out my Blochs so I can justify buying my next pair.  I told my teacher on Wednesday that even though my feet are hurting right now, I can’t quit.  My legs have never been so toned in all my life!

(I never check my Google search strings–don’t even know how–but I bet that post title will bring out the kinksters and porn seekers.)

Some of you know that I’ve been taking ballet–again, for about the 12th time in my life–for a year or so.  In October, I cautiously re-started dancing en pointe after 20 years.  I’ve been wondering if I should post here about ballet or keep it all about ballroom.  What do you think?

From what I’ve seen online, the prevailing question about ballroom dancers doing ballet is “Will ballet help or hurt my ballroom dancing?”  In my experience, it might do both, but I think it helps more than it hurts.  My perspective may differ because I did ballet pretty seriously as a child and have done it on and off since.  As a result, I’m sure I would not be nearly the ballroom dancer that I am if I had no ballet background.  Ballet works flexibility, foot articulation, leg strength, core strength, knee bend (good for smooth/standard), turnout (good for rhythm/latin), extension, arm position, and probably some other stuff that I’m forgetting. But the number one benefit of ballet is that it absolutely drills you on correct, upright posture.  If you need a lot of practice keeping all your blocks aligned (as Valentina explained it in a workshop I attended last year), ballet is the way to go.

A close second behind improving posture is ballet’s ability to develop a kinesthetic sense in its practitioners.  See, ballet is old-fashioned and traditional: it’s based on a lot of repetitions of a lot of basic exercises, day after day, year after year.  You learn steps and positions and body lines and you do them over and over until you can make them look good without ever having to check yourself in a mirror.  You imitate your teacher as he or she shows combinations and you get more and more accustomed to picking up choreography.

Maybe because I started out as a ballet dancer, I tend to see ballet as the foundation for all other dance forms.  Not in the sense that they evolved from ballet in any direct line, but that studying ballet prepares a dancer to succeed in other genres of dance.  A lot of dance schools require a minimum of ballet study before or while a dancer starts in other styles.  The relative availability of ballet versus ballroom can be an advantage too.  We’re lucky to get 2 ballroom lessons a month but I can easily take 2 ballet classes a week.  Of course, I have to be willing to dance with kids a third my age!

That’s one of the few disadvantages of ballet (if you want to call it a disadvantage; I don’t mind): not every studio offers adult classes or welcomes adults into their classes.  My studio offers a Teen/Adult class aimed at older beginners; I started in that class and am now in the “Pearls” level which is a transition-to-pointe class.  That brings me to disadvantage #2: I sometimes worry about getting injured in ballet and not being able to do ballroom as a result.  My teacher (whom I love, by the way) put us through a wicked “Approaching Pointe” barre yesterday; we did not so much approach pointe as rush up and tackle it, and my feet were on fire by the end.  But obviously nobody made me start dancing en pointe again, and I can quit if it gets too difficult.  A random injury (slippery floor, careless move, pushing it too hard, whatever) could just as soon happen in a ballroom lesson as a ballet class.

Ballet will teach you to move differently than ballroom does, and that could be a disadvantage.  I have a hard time doing cha-cha locks and rumba walks correctly because keeping my hips still & level is so second-nature to me.  Occasionally a move perplexes because my muscle memory wants to do it the ballet way, and the ballroom way is something different.  Someday I’ll have to tackle my tendency to dance Smooth with a bit of turnout.  I know it’s not technically right but it is both habitual and (to this ballerina’s mind) better-looking.

So I’ll ask again: should I write about ballet on DLDancers.com?  I can tag the posts “Ballerina Corner” or something,