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Ballet Text Completed

A former ballet dancer explains that ballet training is a rigorous but rewarding process that involves daily classes and expert teaching, rather than constant pain or hardship. The dancer emphasizes that proper conditioning allows the body to adapt to the demands of ballet, enabling flexibility and strength without injury. Ultimately, the document aims to clarify misconceptions about the physical and emotional experiences of ballet dancers.

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30 views2 pages

Ballet Text Completed

A former ballet dancer explains that ballet training is a rigorous but rewarding process that involves daily classes and expert teaching, rather than constant pain or hardship. The dancer emphasizes that proper conditioning allows the body to adapt to the demands of ballet, enabling flexibility and strength without injury. Ultimately, the document aims to clarify misconceptions about the physical and emotional experiences of ballet dancers.

Uploaded by

pepepeludopamplina
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as TXT, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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A former classical ballet dancer explains what ballet training actually involves.

What we ballet dancers do is instinctive, but


instinct leamt through a decade of training. A
dancer’ life is hard to understand, and easy to
misinterpret. Many a poet and novelist has tried
to do so, but even they have chosen to interpret
all the hard work and physical discipline as
‘obsessive. And so the idea persists that dancers
spend every waking hour in pain, bodies at
breaking point, their smiles a pretence.

‘As a former dancer in the Royal Ballet Company


here in Britain, | would beg to question this.

Ed ‘With expert teaching and daily


practice, its various demands are easily within
the capacity of the healthy human body. Contrary
to popular belief, there is no need to break bones
or tear muscles to achieve ballet positions. It is
simply a question of sufficient conditioning of the
muscular system.

Over the course of my dancing life | worked my


way through at least 10,000 ballet classes. | took
my first at a school of dance at the age of seven
and my last 36 years later at the Royal Opera

House in London. In the years between, ballet

class was the first thing | did every day. It starts,


at an early age, this daily ritual, because it has to.
Ey But for a ballet dancer in particular,
this lengthy period has to come before the effects
of adolescence set in, while maximum flexibility
can still be achieved.

‘Those first classes I took were remarkably similar


to the last. In fact, taking into account the
occasional new idea, ballet classes have
changed litle since 1820, when the details of
ballet technique were first written down, and are
easily recognised in any country. Starting with
the left hand on the barre, the routine unrolls over
some 75 minutes. [39) Even the leading
dancers have to do it.

‘These classes serve two distinct purposes: they


ate the way we warm our bodies and the
mechanism by which we improve basic
technique. In class after class, we prove the old
saying that ‘practice makes perfect’. [/40)

And it is also this daily repetition which enables


us to strengthen the muscles required in jumping,
spinning or lifting our lags to angles impossible to
the average person.

The human body is designed to adapt to the


demands we make of it, provided we make them
carefully and over time. [44 In the same
way, all those years of classes add up to a fit-for-
purpose dancing machine. This level of physical
fluency doesn't hurt; it feels good.

ZZ] But they should not be misled: there is


a difference between hard work and hardship.
Dancers have an everyday familiarity with the
first. Hardship it isn’t

not, in itself, dangerous,

"
‘A Through endless tries at the usual exercises — E The principle is identical in
the gym ~ pushing
and frequent failures, ballet dancers. develop yourself to the limit, but not
beyond, will
the neural pathways in the brain necessary to eventually bring the desired result
control accurate, fast and smooth movement.

B_ The ballet shoe offers some support, but the F No one avoids this: it is
ballet's great
real strength is in the muscles, built up through democratiser, the well
established members of
training. the company working alongside the newest

recruits.

© As technology takes away activity from the G_It takes at least a decade of high-
quality,
lives of many, perhaps the ballet dancer's regular practice to become in expert in
eny
physicality is ever more difficult for most people physical discipline.
to imagine.

D Ballet technique is certainly extreme but it is

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