Inside Ballet Technique

When I was teaching at a private dance school, there was a performance every year in May that included all the genres of dance.  At that school (Town and Village School of Dance in Paris, KY) the ballet program was a bit separate from the other classes.  For example, students in the ballet program were required to attend classes either twice, three times, or four times a week, whereas most other classes only met once weekly.  One of my favorite things about teaching there was that I was given full control over my part of the final performance of the year, which usually included about twenty minutes of stage time.

The most memorable ballets we created mini ballets from were Coppelia, The Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella.  We pulled wonderful moments from each ballet and made a story the audience could easily follow.  The classes blended together without necessarily stopping for applause between each class, and some characters came onstage for parts even outside of their participation in a class dance.  This way it flowed better, and at the end of the ballet segment we did a quick set of bows where each group or soloist came out for a bow in a finale with music, which normally only took about two minutes to insert.

Dubbing the music was really fun, as was making sure each student got ample amount of time on stage.  Looking for or making appropriate costumes, making earrings to match for all the ballroom dancers, figuring out how to velcro diamond studs on a piece of fabric to a pointe shoe so the dancer wouldn’t have to change her shoes between appearances, and dressing up two fathers to play the parts of the step-sisters were all big highlights.  But of course, doing the choreography was the most challenging and rewarding part of all.  I tried to keep some of the original, traditional movements where possible, and we had a movie night at my house for all the oldest dancers so they could watch a professional version of the full-length ballet and recognize their roles in it.

Ah, those were the days!

I’ve often wondered how common it is for a dancer to suffer from chronic back pain during and after their dancing career. I personally had a lot of issues with low back pain while I was dancing, and I attributed much of it to the repetition of particular moves in choreography and to the fact that I have a long torso (which in my mind was not conducive to dancing ballet). Now that I’m suffering the long term effects of chronic back pain and getting older, I’m realizing that there were things I should have been doing to supplement my core strength in order to counterbalance the excessive flexion that dancing demands. It never occurred to me that dancing ballet six or more hours a day was not enough.

I knew that if I did crunches and stretched out before class that I would perform extensions and hold balances better, but I didn’t focus enough on really strengthening my abdominals, my back, and stretching out my hamstrings the way I should have. Not only that, I have since learned that aerobic or cardio training could have helped my dancing as well. An article from the Harkness Center for Dance Injuries web site states, “Aerobic fitness can increase blood flow and oxygenation to all tissues, including the muscles, bones, and ligaments of the spine. Dancers should be encouraged to cross-train year round to maintain aerobic fitness.”

Sean Fyfe is a physiotherapist working with Metis Physio Centres in London, a multi-disciplinary clinic and he works with elite dancers and theatre performers. From an article at sportsinjurybulletin.com, he says, “Dancing alone doesn’t ensure abdominal strength, good activation through glut max or activation of segmental stabilisers. In that respect, dance is no different from any other sport: its performers have to put aside the time to do specific body maintenance, in conjunction with regular screening, to give themselves the best chance of remaining injury free.”

I have begun taking yoga classes and wish I’d known the value of yoga and Pilates back when I was dancing. The mindfulness (or meditation) that comes out of practicing yoga is giving me tools that allow me to be a calmer, happier person—more capable of administering to the needs of my my family or coworkers and simply being able to breathe and be in the moment. At yogamindfulness.com, they explain that meditation doesn’t have to be something you hole up alone in a quiet room to do; it can be done just by being mindful and living in the present. Visualizing breath as it enters and leaves the body, noticing the state of your body at any moment in time, using your senses fully to take in the world around you—any of these can be a form of meditation.

Dancers are focused so much on their bodies, and I personally think it would do a world of good for them to also nurture their minds and spirits in a holistic way. We used to make fun of the modern dancers and called them “granola” people for the way they utilized breath and didn’t attempt to hide the effort in their movements. Now I see that they were really onto something that ballet dancers would do well to heed, too. Not that ballet dancers will ever want to enunciate their breathing on stage, but I think it would be great if teachers taught their students to breathe in and out with the counts during class, much like they do in yoga. With age cometh wisdom, and hindsight is always 20/20, right?

Here is a great book for dancers about anatomy and kinesiology.

I remember well the dreaded parent observation week at the studios where I used to teach.  Depending on the age of the students, having parents observing class could either be a help or a hindrance.  Usually the youngest children find it a distraction and the oldest ones tend to pull their acts together.  I never changed my method of teaching for the sake of the parents who were sitting along the sidelines, but it’s interesting to note the various types of parents with kids who dance.

The best parents are those that have done their homework prior to enrolling their children: they know the teachers are qualified and believe their manner of teaching is credible.  They don’t question the rules, the dress code, or the reason their child mostly stands in the back line during the performance at the end of the year.  They are concerned with progress and do their utmost to ensure their child comes to class prepared to work hard and focus on improving.  These are the best parents.

Then there are the “stage” parents.  These parents wonder aloud why their child is not yet dancing en pointe, why he or she doesn’t have a solo, and why his or her class is not working on more complicated steps yet.  Somehow these parents are more visible, and definitely more annoying, to the teacher of dance.  My advice if you have a child who is taking ballet is to make sure the teachers have some kind of background in dance.  You’d be surprised—just about anyone can open a dance studio.  Many people have a degree in dance from a university, and many have professional credits to their name which is just as important.  A dance school brochure should really be up front about their teachers’ credentials (unless they don’t have any worth mentioning, and then beware!).

When a cast list goes up and your child didn’t get the lead, don’t assume that means he or she doesn’t have talent.  And if you’re a dancer, understand that being cast in a corps de ballet or solo role can be just as wonderful a learning experience as being cast as the principal dancer.  One of my favorite roles to ever dance was the White Cat in Sleeping Beauty.  I loved that role and got to dance it while I was a student at Indiana University.  The steps were not so difficult, but it gave me a chance to work on characterization and not being me on stage.  It really was a liberating experience.  Learning to leave yourself behind and become your character can take a lot of stress out of dancing.

Sometimes the “lead” role is not even the leading role, so don’t be misled!  In an art form like dance where there is such a hierarchy going on (corps de ballet, soloists, principal dancers), it’s easy to forget that there are no small parts, only small actors (not sure where that quote originates, but I tend to agree with it).  And sometimes just because a role isn’t the “lead” doesn’t mean it isn’t the hardest role to dance.

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?

We’ve all seen performances that have moved us…ones where the dancers transported us until we truly believed their plight or believed in their love. I performed in my very first pas de deux in a piece of student choreography at Indiana University. The piece was set to music by Rachmaninoff, and I felt transported, personally. The movements felt wonderfully full of abandon and we looked into each other’s eyes—everyone said it was great.

Well, we had a cast party after the performance where we watched the video. None of what I felt inside translated into what the audience saw. It was embarrassing because everyone was watching me to see my reaction, and all I could do was burst into tears and run from the room. I’m sure my partner wasn’t happy about that, because he felt pretty good about it himself, but for me it was all wrong. It wasn’t anything like I imagined it to be. I looked like a clumsy first year pointe student trying to do something way beyond her means. Of course, my facial expressions couldn’t be seen, and what I was feeling inside was hidden away from everyone but myself—although even I couldn’t see that when viewed from the audience’s perspective!

I’ve had teachers who said we need to dance with our souls. But how, exactly, do we do that? My father taught speech in high school and I was fortunate enough to take his class one year. He said that when you’re nervous, you tend to do certain things that give away the fact that you’re nervous. Some people might play with their hair, or move their hands a certain way, or swallow loudly. He taught us that it’s perfectly okay to be nervous, as long as we don’t let anyone know that we are nervous. So, we practiced keeping our hands behind the lecturn if our bad habit was something we did with our hands while we gave a speech.

I think that can translate into our performing as well, in that we can keep from doing something that gives away our nerves and still be nervous without anyone guessing. When I was in graduate school I was doing the Black Swan pas de deux with my partner, and every night of tech week I had a friend videotape our performance. I’d go home and watch the tape and critically pull it apart frame by frame until I was happy with what I was seeing. There were many subtle things that I was surprised to see: my hands were not sharp enough where I felt that they were sharper, or the place where I walked backwards away from my partner, leading him on seductively and maliciously didn’t look malicious in the least. I found over the course of the week and watching the video every night after rehearsal that if I lowered my chin in that spot the demeanor came across much more effectively than when I just used my eyes. Everything we do on stage must be magnified in order to come across to the audience. This is, of course, why we wear heavier makeup, wear false eyelashes and extend our eyeliner to make our eyes appear larger.

The same is true for emotion. It isn’t enough to feel the emotion inside. We have to learn to project emotion, which can actually be accomplished without actually feeling the emotion! It is possible, I think, to make the audience believe you are a distraught Juliet by the way you move your body alone. I’m interested in hearing from other dancers and performers, too. How do you express emotion on stage?

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CztUJvmQX0&hl=en&fs=1&]

SWAN LAKE, ACT II

Four Little Swans

Enter Upstage Left Cross Hands in front, B+ R foot front

Hold counts 1-3, cou de pied R foot devant on count 4

Enter Upstage Left Cross Hands in front, B+ R foot front

Hold counts 1-3, cou de pied R foot devant on count 4

1. Traveling R change coupé back and front, step R (cou de pied L bk), L(cou de pied R bk), continue for counts 1-8, 1-2 (head to R)

Small grand jeté onto R ouvert (3)-head lowers to look down at R leg),

Pas de bourrée LRL to 5^th (4&5)

Relevé passé L to front of knee (6)-head changes to look L

Roll thru on R, lowering L to cou de pied front (7) hold (8)

2. Repeat step 1 to L, R, L (1-16, 1-16, 1-16)

Except last time relevé passé R leg, close R front 5^th position plié (7) hold (8)

3. Entrechat quatre relevé passé R leg closing 5^th back (head L on passé)(1-2)

Entrechat quatre relevé passé L leg closing 5^th back (head R on passé)(3-4)

Four echappé to 2^nd closing 5^th, head moves L, down, R in half circle) Step travels upstage (5-8)

4. Repeat step 3 three times more (4 times altogether)

5. Chassé relevé 1^st arabesque R (1&) Fondu L at cou de pied back (2) small temps levé R

Repeat L (3&4) Repeat 6 times more (8 arabesques altogether)

After last arabesque L, tombé onto R leg croisé devant

6. Traveling back on diagonal upstage Left, small coupé changes like in step 1

Step L cou de pied R front (1) step R cou de pied L back (2) Repeat (34)

Jeté á la seconde L onto diagonal and cou de pied R front (56)

Relevé R leg écarté devant 45˚ (7) Tombé R across (8)

7. Repeat step 6 three times more (4 times altogether)

After last écarté devant, roll thru on left foot and cou de pied R back (no tombé) (8)

8. Pas de chat downstage R on diagonal 15 times (head downstage R) (1-15)

Attitude croisé devant L, in fondu on supporting leg (16)

9. Embôité attitude devant RLRL 45˚ (head front en face)(1-4)

Embôité attitude derrière RLRL 45˚ (head down en bas)(5-8)

10. Repeat step 9 three times more (4 times altogether)

11. Pique L, retiré R to front of knee (traveling stage L)-head tilts L

Tombé R across (head tilts L), Tombé R across (head tilts R) 7 piques in all (1-7)

Attitude devant R leg (8)

12. 15 embôités devant traveling downstage, step L on count 16 or pique to 1st arabesque letting go of hands, step onto L and lower to R knee.

I just learned that Merce Cunningham died last night at the age of 90. He danced until the very end of his life. This, in itself, is incredible. His legacy is monumental. So now I’m feeling a bit low, and wondering how he managed to stick with it into very old age. I’m thinking that Merce Cunningham created a way of moving that was specific to his body type, as he was known for a particular style all his own. Then there are people like me, who try to contort our bodies into shapes that were not meant for our body types at all—leading us to middle-aged back pain and chronic tendinitis.

What do you think? Even if you’re only seventeen, how do you see yourself in the future? Do you think dancing will be more an aid or a hindrance to your physical well-being when you’re forty years old? I had a chiropractor who talked to me when I was twenty-four. He said he was worried that I wouldn’t be able to walk when I was forty. I laughed. But now I’m forty-one, and I’m realizing he had a point.

I wouldn’t trade my years spent dancing or teaching for anything in the world. It’s the love of my life. But I can see how realistic the teachers are in Russia when they determine whether or not a child should begin studying dance by first looking at his or her proportions and physical tendencies. If someone is not blessed with a dancer’s body, they are not expected to dance. However, I’m thankful here in America we are all able to pursue our dreams, regardless of our potential.

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.

Probably the hardest part for me was just learning all the steps…period. When I started dancing at Butler University as a high school student, I encountered so many steps I’d never seen before. Learning the basic mechanics of faille, temps le cuisse, ballonné, flic-flacs, brisé, entrechat trois (to name a few) took some time. It’s all part of the learning process, and until you are familiar with how to do each of the steps then you can’t be too impatient with yourself.

Once you’ve mastered the basics and you at least know how to do all the steps in a given combination, then you can begin putting things together. I found the single most valuable way to learn how teachers put combinations together is to begin recording them in a notebook. Now, when you first start doing this you will not be able to recall every combination from class; begin slowly and jot down one or two barre combinations that you remember and one or two center combinations.

As a prospective teacher yourself, you can always refer back to these one day and reuse them in your own classes. To make the most out of this exercise, here are the pieces you should note.

Type of combination

Teacher’s name and date

Time signature and beginning position

Counts and Steps

An example would be as follows:

Pointe Center Petit Allegro

Melissa Lowe 3-25-1987

2/4 Begin R foot front 5^th croisé

1-2 Echappé to 2^nd position en pointe, close L foot front 5^th croisé

3-4 Detourné toward back foot, tombé front onto R

5 Step coupé back onto L

6 Pas de chat R to end L foot front 5^th

7-8 Sous-sus L foot front, plié croisé devant

1-8 Repeat all to other side

Over time you will begin to notice how a particular teacher structures his or her classes, and how they structure the individual combinations or exercises. I tried to always stand behind someone at the barre that I could count on to know the steps, and in the center I did my best to be in the second group of dancers so I’d have time to watch the first group and review the steps. For petit allegro, sometimes just marking things with my hands was helpful, or making up a cadence to say in my mind that would help me know what came next. For the combination above, I might have made something up that went in time with the musicality or counts: out, in, turn, step front, coupé, pas de chat and up and down.

Learning to switch feet quickly, where to place your weight, which foot closes front or back, how to reverse a combination—all of this takes time to accomplish. Besides writing down the combinations, it can also be helpful to go over them in your mind while your body is actually at rest. Much of this is a mental task anyway, so wearing yourself out and tripping over your feet might not be the most efficient way to learn how to pick up steps faster.

Knowing that you are going to need to recall a certain combination after class in order to jot it down in your notebook will help your long term memory. You’ll be amazed at how many steps are commonly linked together in the same pattern. Also, if you memorize the sequence of steps, you’ll be able to do them at a much faster rate in your head than you could do with your body. When I was learning lines for a play, for example, I would always try to say them as fast as I could just so I knew that I had them down; I never intended to perform them aloud at the same pace, but it boosted my confidence if I could say them quickly. The same thing applies with combinations: you can fast forward the time signature and watch it in your head at a very quick rate, so when it comes time to do a similar combination in class you’ll be more prepared to tackle it at the right tempo.

Do any other dancers out there have tips for how to pick up combinations? A lot of it is just perseverance and not giving up. Each day your brain is putting two and two together and before you know it things will begin falling in place.

Every now and then I get the itch to go back in time. I put on an old VHS tape from my ballet dancing days–mostly what I have on tape are from performances at the University of Arizona when I was working on my MFA degree–and I can’t believe the courage I had back then. It was common to work with other graduate students, performing their choreography so they’d reciprocate the favor, and I often worked with a guy named David Woods. We were usually paired up for partnering anyway because of our heights (suffice it to say he was not a real tall guy and I was always one of the shortest dancers around). But some of the stuff that David came up with was really nuts! I remember him describing what he wanted to try, and I’d just shake my head and say, “Impossible!” He would let loose his funny little laugh, then get all straight-faced and start explaining the mechanics of the move in question.

And we’d do it.

Maybe partly it was a trust thing; I worked with him everyday and we rehearsed so much it practically became second nature by the time we performed his crazy little notions in front of an audience. We were also in incredible shape back then. I have to remind myself that at one point in my life I really had some major control of my body. And with a partner giving me the edge I needed, there was no limit to the number of finger turns or pirouettes I could pull out, or the length of time I could hold a pose. My strength and flexibility were taken for granted back when they came so easily–you should see me sweating like the overweight, over-the-hill, mother-of-three that I am today during just the first five minutes of yoga class. On second thought, no, you shouldn’t.

There was more to it than that, though. We were just as likely to miss as we were to hit some of the stunts we did in rehearsal, but in front of an audience we almost never missed. There was the arrival of an extra power within that always showed up just in time to lasso the butterflies from overdrive into automatic pilot. My body knew what to do; every minute on stage had been rehearsed hours on end for weeks leading up to that minute. But looking back, I remember there were steps I took to ensure that would be the case before each and every performance.

1. Don’t take yourself too seriously. I mean, really, what’s the worst thing that could happen? And if you know of things that could go wrong, make pretty darn sure they don’t. (Double fold the ribbon before sewing it to your pointe shoes, stitch the ribbons after you’ve tied them so they can’t come unraveled on stage, put the extra pins in your bun and use a hair net to firmly secure it, etc.) My dad taught theater at the high school level and even though he tended to worry about every last detail, when it came down to performance night he always had a saying that I repeated to myself before stepping on the stage: It’s just a show. With emphasis on the word ‘just’.

2. Warm up thoroughly. Take class with the cast before the show. Not only does this make you part of a team, it shows you have respect for whoever is teaching. By all means, if the teacher asks for something you know will pull a muscle before you’re sufficiently warm, modify it until you’re warm enough. Most teachers won’t do this as part of a performance warm-up, but if they do then you are fine to lower the extension from 90 degrees to 45 if you aren’t ready. By the same token, after warming up with the cast go over the choreography that tends to trip you up. Practice that big lift with your partner just to make sure you’re both feeling it right. Whatever. Just make sure that before you step onstage in full make-up and costume that you are really warmed up.

3. Make a list and check it twice. This is before you even set foot in the theater. There’s nothing worse than finding out you have only one pair of tights and there’s a big run in them. Have plenty of extra pins, all your make-up, all the pieces to your costume, extra tights, shoes, and whatever else you may need so you don’t go into panic mode thirty minutes to curtain.

4. Give yourself plenty of time to get into make-up and costume. If you have a quick change, do everything in your power to make it as fast and painless as possible. Usually there are people around backstage who will assist in such a case, so you don’t have to spend time and energy trucking back and forth to the dressing room. Make sure to practice with them at dress rehearsal so they know the drill.

5. Spend a few moments alone.

6. Meditate or pray. Clear your mind. When you do this is totally up to you. I usually made sure I had some time to just do my own thing or hear my own thoughts for a while before making my way to the stage door. If not, then I would simply close my eyes in the wings and take a few deep breaths to put everything in perspective.

7. Put your trust in something greater than yourself. My dad always said the audience was the magic ingredient, and I tend to agree. They want you to succeed; nobody goes to the ballet to hold onto their theater seats wondering if you’ll come out of that lift alive or not. They know you will, and you’ll do it gracefully! Just deliver what they expect and you’ll be fine.

8. Don’t second guess yourself. If you’re doing a part that you think someone else was more qualified to perform, well, you weren’t the casting director, were you? No artistic director will put you in a role that they don’t believe you can pull off.

9. Be in the moment. I remember one night when David and I were dancing the Black Swan pas de deux from Swan Lake (and dang if it wasn’t a dress rehearsal that no one got on tape!) and we were so in sync with the music and with each other…we were so ON it was almost scary. It was the closest to perfection I’ve ever come in my life, and I’ll treasure those few minutes always. I was in the moment, enjoying the fruition of all the hours of labor leading up to that point in time.

10. Never let a mistake show on your face. Unless you’re in the corps, supposedly doing the same thing as the other ten or eleven people on stage, if you mess up no one will even notice…if you don’t show it in your face. Stay in character always, and immediately forgive yourself for any mistakes you make. There’s nothing more capable of ruining a performance than berating yourself mentally over a small mistake that probably no one even noticed. Remember that what is past can’t be changed; it can affect the future only if you let it.

Even though I haven’t been dancing professionally for the last several years, I’m sure many of these are time resistant and would still apply. And not only would many of these steps be helpful to a dancer preparing to take the stage, they could also help anyone who has to suffer the effects of butterflies: someone preparing to step into an interview, or walk down the aisle at their wedding, or call an agent about a book they’re hoping to publish.

Any other dancers out there who have more tips to banishing the butterflies? Please leave a comment!