So a Ballerina Walks into a Barre......

Does anyone else feel like ballerinas are TERRIBLY clumsy outside the studio? Like when you walk into a door when all of your friends are watching and then unknowingly yell out "DOOR!". Yeah. Happens to the best of us.

BUT that is not what this article is about.

I am writing on the importance of barre class. If you feel tired or weighed down in the middle of class, it may be because you underestimate the importance of barre. Barre isn't just a portion of class to warm you up....it's like a class itself! Treat it like a peice you are learning; try to do your best. Make your plies deep, your frappes sharp, and your turnout steady and strong. This will improve your jumps, petite allegro, adagio, pointe, and stamina. Some of this also may be able to help with drowsiness.

Barre is also a good thing to do at home in between ballet classes. It improves your memory, muscles, and stamina. You come to ballet class with a clean slate and your muscles have automatic memory to barre, which allows you to concentrate more on correcting mistakes. This saves time in class instead of scrambling to remember barre.

30 minutes to an hour per day is all your body asks. Take this time to barre, stretch, anything else your body needs. It improves the sleek shape of the dancer and makes you over-all more healthy. Once I was asked, "So how long does it take to be good at ballet?" At first I thought they meant how long it takes to get to a professional level, but instead I answered, "Well, you never do. Dance is always about striving to be longer, healthier, more precise, better." And it's true.

The Pointe Is...

Since I am very new on pointe (September 29, 2011 oh yes i still remember the date), I am still figuring out this freak of nature. I am convinced that humans were not meant to fly or stand on their toes, but it looks pretty so what the heck.

I use Russian Pointe Grandes, and this was my first pair. I recently purchased my second pair to wear for the concert next week. These are considerable harder than I remember, but they are supposedly EXACTLY the same. I have experimented with different padding, switching shoes, different warm-up techniques, everything! I didn't remember Pair 1 hurting this much; the only reason I got new ones were because Pair 1 was all torn-up and falling apart. They weren't dead, just ratty. I made a mistake. I put the old pair on today with fresh padding, and the felt like a second skin! Sooooo comfortable compared to my new shoes. I have spent all day today trying to soften my shoes up, with no success. Maybe I need to buy a softer shoe next time? I will not be getting Grandes again because 1) I am not happy with them and 2) they are discontinued. 

Pointe shoes should look like a part of your feet when you are wearing them. The picture shouldn't be a definite difference between the shoe and your feet. Here are some examples:

Michaela DePrince from First Position is one example I can give you. Watch her feet at 0:17.

Amazing, huh?

This is an example of a foot separate from the shoe.

See what I mean? During pointe class, think of your pointe shoes as part of your foot, not a shoe. They are extensions of your legs, not ballet apparel. You can get this look and feel through well-broken in shoes.

Sleek Performance

WE ARE NOT CLOUDS.

For dancers, muscle building is key for professional development. I'm not talking about RRRRGGGGHHHH LOOK AT MY ARMS THEY'RE 5 TIMES AS BIG AS MY HEADDDDD. Dancers develop different muscles than many other sports and performing arts, ones that are more sculpted and sleek, less big and bulgy. Many of the muscles developed by dancers are inner muscles, such as the inner thigh, deep in the leg, or the core.  Muscle development varies directly to how many days (not hours) per week you are in the studio.

Misty Copeland

I only take classes on Monday, Thursday, and Saturday, a total of 6 hours per week. Not a professional schedule, I know, but I appreciate not being locked up every day all day with no contact with sunlight. This upcoming year, because my schedule will stay the same, I am planning on taking a higher level class on Tuesday, and any other classes I can the rest of the week, even if they are levels below me. Dance development has nothing to do with how many hours per week you train, but everything to do with how many days per week you dance. Even if you cannot dance every day, there is nothing stopping you from giving yourself your own dance workout at home.

When selecting a dance workout, be careful as to what muscles they are building. Watch or read the instructions carefully and think about what muscles they may be building. It is best to warm up with a barre. I suggest Pure Barre videos, or Finis Jhung videos found on DVD and YouTube. Or you could use your own barre from class. Maybe create your own.

I also suggest teaching yourself a variation from a famous ballet. This improves your teaching, choreography, and dancing skills. You will learn how to adapt a dance from a video, which will come in very handy in the future. Well-known variations include The Sugar Plum Fairy from the Nutcracker, The Lilac Fairy from Sleeping Beauty, and Swanhilda's variation in Coppelia

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Core strength is extremely important for a dancer. Without core muscles, extensions would drop, leaps would be barely off the ground, balance would be nearly impossible, and pirouettes absurd. This expressed, you can NEVER have too much core strength. Crunches, 100s, sit-ups, planks, and the like must be on your workout schedule. 

Yoga and Pilates are considered very healthy for a ballerina, increasing balance, strength, and stamina. Try joining a club such as Groupon to get updates on special deals for yoga and Pilates classes. Special offers on Kindles are also very common. The other day I received coupon that included ten 90-minute yoga classes with a choice of a 15-minute massage or a 30-minute personal training session for only $30! Yoga is a very inexpensive and stress-relieving way to build muscle.

Sole Mates

Jane Winkworth, British shoe designer and founder of French Sole Shoes

Ballet shoes are known for their light, comfortable feel, so much so that a type of street shoes were created after them, ballet flats. These versatile shoes don't come easy; many brands make them dig into your heel, itchy,  slippy, you name it! Jane Winkworth may have solved that. 

Jane Winkworth had a background consisting of the arts, and had a great interest the art of dance. Her greatest inspiration was Josephine Baker, the first African American dancer to join Folies Bergere in Paris, who also was a key influential in the acceptance of African dance as one as whole as ballet.

Winkworth designed her entire line to mimic the lightness of ballet shoes. Her company is the first to specialize completely in ballet flats. Her shoes are said to be extremely comfortable by many reputable sources such as Princess Diana, Reese Witherspoon, Kate Moss, and Sarah Jessica Parker.

Ballet-styled shoes are becoming very popular among the people everywhere, especially for their comfort and versatility. 

Cure (I think) to Pronation

In many ballet classes, dancers are assigned "problems" to work on. Once you work on fixing those for a while, and eventually lose the bad habit, you are assigned another. A few of my previous problems were turning out too much, arching the back, and holding improper alignment.

The day has come. My problem is pronation. Perfect. I have tried and tried, but no matter how hard i work on it, I still pronate. It is impossible for me too demi plie without rolling.

I think I have the solution.

I have some small shoe inserts that I dug out of my closet, and figured they would be good for my back. So, I slipped them in my favorite shoes and started wearing them around. They took a while to get used to, but I wore them from the time that I got up, to the time I went to bed. I didn't take them off at all. I did the same for the next couple days.

Tonight, I took them of and stared doing some demi plies, mindlessly. I realized something was different about them - I wasn't rolling.

I am not saying that this will cure every case of the pronation pox, but it's worth a shot. My arches were so used to being lifted up in the shoes, they just stayed the same when I took them off.

The inserts that I am using are these:




I highly recommend getting a pair of these. Not only can they help solve pronation, but they are very good for your back. I like the 3/4 length, because you can put them in almost any shoe. I love wearing them in my brown and gold AE ballet flats.

Click the link below, and select "Find Powerstep Retailers" under "ProTech 3/4". Fill in your postal code, and distance you are willing to travel to retrieve these life-savers. Then you will see a long list of retailers near you.

http://www.powersteps.com/ProTechThreeQuarters

Have a long happy journey towards lifted arches!